moustache quivered with suppressed mirth, and his blue eyes were
demurely gleaming. Then the joke came out. He had spotted a German
working party, his guns had concentrated on it, and afterwards he had
seen the stretchers go forward. A grim joke, it may seem. But the
French see this war from a different angle to us. If we had the Boche
sitting on our heads for two years, and were not yet quite sure whether
we could ever get him off again, we should get Cyrano's point of view.
Those of us who have had our folk murdered by Zeppelins or tortured in
German prisons have probably got it already.

* * * * *

We passed in a little procession among the French soldiers, and viewed
their multifarious arrangements. For them we were a little break in a
monotonous life, and they formed up in lines as we passed. My own
British uniform and the civilian dresses of my two companions
interested them. As the General passed these groups, who formed
themselves up in perhaps a more familiar manner than would have been
usual in the British service, he glanced kindly at them with those
singular eyes of his, and once or twice addressed them as 'Mes
enfants.' One might conceive that all was 'go as you please' among the
French. So it is as long as you go in the right way. When you stray
from it you know it. As we passed a group of men standing on a low
ridge which overlooked us there was a sudden stop. I gazed round. The
General's face was steel and cement. The eyes were cold and yet fiery,
sunlight upon icicles. Something had happened. Cyrano had sprung to his
side. His reddish moustache had shot forward beyond his nose, and it
bristled out like that of an angry cat. Both were looking up at the
group above us. One wretched man detached himself from his comrades and
sidled down the slope. No skipper and mate of a Yankee blood boat could