CHAPTER VIII

THE CHÂLONS CANTEEN

HÔTEL DE LA HAUTE MÈRE DIEU, CHÂLONS, _October 17th, 1.30 a.m._

Lodged at last with the “High Mother of God.” On arriving, dined in a low-ceilinged, dingy, dowdy room, but the acetylene lights, the uniforms and decorations of the officers, made something brilliant, which half veiled the knowledge of the dark night outside, the approaching winter, the continuing war.

Afterward, I slipped out with my little electric lamp, through the Place de la République, almost empty; low and splendid stars hung over the town. In the rue des Lombards, St.-Alpin was a dark mass, and from its tower the hour was striking a quarter to nine o’clock.

I turned into the long, perfectly black rue de Marne. Not a single light, nor any passer-by. I flashed my little lamp to find the curb. There came a click of wooden-soled shoes from a side street, and a thick voice said, “_Ah, la dame, pourquoi si vite?_” I passed on like the wind, trembling, down the deserted street, but when I flashed the lamp to find another curb, something heavy and stumbling got nearer. And then I didn’t dare to turn the light on, and I took the wrong turning, and found myself in what seemed a wilderness of mud and trees, with the click of those following wooden-soled feet behind, and any woman who has been terrified, she scarcely knows why, will understand. Finally I stopped behind a dark mass of trees, with something sucking about in the mud, and mumbling half-suspected words, and finally retreating.

At that moment a soldier appeared, a gigantic shadow of himself as he struck a match to light his cigarette, and I asked:

“Is this the rue du Port de Marne?”

He answers, “You have missed your way; you are by the canal,” and he puts me onto the road again, and then I turn and grope my way to the little house by the Marne.

Neither Miss Nott nor Miss Mitchell is there, so I depart again, going over the great Marne bridge to the station. Though I can see nothing, I hear the regular practised tread of a marching squad, and when I flash my lamp to find the curb, a little detachment looms up unmeasurably big and distorted, and the horizon blue becomes that ghostly gray.

In the canteen a thousand men at least. Am quite dazzled by the splendor of the installation. Warm welcome from Miss Nott and Miss Mitchell, with the light of a very understandable pride in their eyes. Go behind the long counter, then through the kitchen to the little dressing-room; take off my hat, put on a long apron, twist my pale-blue chiffon scarf about my head and am ready. As I look out over the big room I feel that in the whole world it is the only place to be. Around me surged those blue waves; the light caught helmets and drinking-cups; there was the mist of breath and smoke; the familiar sound of laughing, disputing, humming. That strange atmosphere of fatality hung over each and every one, yet with a merciless confusing of destinies in the extreme anonymity of it all.

Came away at 11.30 enveloped in a strange sidereal light, the stars still more splendid as the night deepened. Even the memory of tropical constellations vaulting high altitudes was dimmed. The Great Bear lay over the left of the Marne bridge, and on the other horizon, over the Promenade du Jard, where I suddenly remembered that St.-Bernard had preached the crusade in presence of Pope Eugene and Charles VII, was Orion, so bright that he alone could have lighted the town of the Catalaunian fields, and Jupiter seemed like a distant sun, under the soft blur of the Pleiades. The river was mysterious, yet personal with its new mantle of history wrapping it sadly, yet tenderly, and with much glory.

Then I was again in the still, dark, long street; no passers-by, no lights from any window, the clock of St.-Alpin striking midnight, and Orion concealed to his belt by the houses of the Place de la République. There was some deep stirring of my heart as I turned in at the door of La Haute Mère Dieu, leaving the gorgeous heavens to stretch over the wide plain of Châlons, where the hosts of Attila were defeated, where the great, misty, tragic, glorious history of Champagne and Lorraine rolls itself out. Now above it all is the whir of _aeros de chasse_, and a faint, very faint booming of cannon. The Châlons plain continues to give me the “creeps.” It is haunting and suggestive in the same way that the Roman Campagna is haunting and suggestive, though the great bare stretch, with its bald, chalky scarrings, its dull spots of pine woods, its dust or mud, has none of the material beauty of the Campagna. Doubtless I’m within the folds of the mantle of the concentrated, continuous human passions that cover it.

I trod as lightly as I could through a resounding corridor, having a profound regard for all sleeping things, past many leather leggings and spurred boots outside of silent doors.

When I left the canteen, the guard, in answer to my cry, “Sentinelle!” said, as he opened the gate, “_Ce n’est pas comme à Verdun, où l’on ne passe pas_”; and then, “_Bonsoir, Mees._” It was so easily and gracefully said in the inimitable French way.

_October 17th, 7.30 a.m._

Tea, a lukewarm pale-gray beverage, with some still crisp leaves afloat on the top. I would have been ungrateful if I had not thought of the Hôtel des Vosges. Mrs. Church, fresh and strong as the morning, though just back from night shift, boiled some water for me and I blessed her. The bleakness of this room is indescribable. Two lithographs of the “_Angelus_” and “_Les Glaneurs_” but add to the desolation. A red-and-yellow striped paper on the walls; on the floor a worn square of Brussels carpet; brown woolen curtains; shutters with slats askew; a large mahogany chest of drawers; a grayish dimity cover to the feather bed, with machine-stitched _motifs_ showing its ugly yellow case underneath; linen sheets, large, thick, and clean—and you have almost any room of La Haute Mère Dieu. Except Mrs. C.’s with its extraordinary bed, painted cream-color, having large “Empirish” corners formed by pale green and gilt Egyptian unduly voluptuous Sphinx-like figures, and a brownish-red plush baldaquin from which depend some yellowish-brown curtains; the brown carpet with purplish flowers is a protest between the two, and the rest of the room a riot of gilt mirrors. It’s a room one couldn’t forget, and why provincial hotels cling so to brown upholstery I don’t know. They give the effect of being old and dirty even when they are—_perhaps_—new.

The corridor has been a sounding-board since dawn, and all during the night _camions_ were being driven over the cobblestones, and motor horns rent the darkness. My room looks out over an old garden. A tall, dead tree-trunk has immemorial ivy clinging to it, and there is an old round well, half covered, and beyond the gate, with ivy and moss-grown urns, is a street that would have been quiet except for the _camions_; and I can see a row of distinguished-looking, plain-façaded gray houses of another century, opposite.

The German General Staff was lodged here before the battle of the Marne, the chambermaid told me, with a reminiscential gleam in her eyes.

But you see how any one’s personal history, his little wants, his little habits, are ground out into something quite different by the war-machine. The only thing any one asks is strength to get through what he has to do. He doesn’t demand to get through in any special way—just get through—where so many don’t. Not to be so cold that you can’t use your hands or your mind, not to be so tired that you can’t stand, not to be so hungry that you are faint and useless, not to go without sleep till you don’t care what happens to anybody, especially yourself. Life is fairly simple, and somehow very satisfactory, on such a basis.

_11.30 p.m._

A long day, with the exception of luncheon at the house on the Marne and a talk in the garden, where Mrs. Corbin and I sat for a while under the yellow chestnut-tree, looking out on the brimming, jade-colored, slow-flowing Marne, talking of destinies, and the illusion of free will, by which, however, all these high deeds which we witness are done. And it seems to me the thing called Destiny resides somewhere. It isn’t a purely subjective affair, created out of the combination of qualities and opportunities of each, rather something definite and operative and immutable; but that may only be the way I feel about it now. I am overcome all the time by the relativity of everything, even of truth.

The little white birch-tree has no leaves, the butterflies are gone, and winter is close upon the war-world. The gardener has been returned to his home. What of his sons, I wonder? He has a tender heart.

Miss Stanton lives in the little yellow room with the niche and the emanations. Now she looks out on yellowing trees; yellow pumpkins lie in the little wet garden; there is a border of yellow and red nasturtiums and dahlias. It’s all like some stage-setting. When I said to her, “I hear you have the little room with the emanations,” she answered, “There must be something about it; for in spite of the fact that I am not comfortable, I don’t dislike it.”

I wondered again what soul had inhabited within those four walls and if the niche had been an altar, and to what god, as I walked along in a sudden cold mist that began to envelope Châlons.

_Since 10 o’clock._

I have been swept about by varying tides of blue-clad men. Some thought the _cantine épatante_, others thought sadly and remarked loudly that so much money being spent on an installation meant that the war was going to last indefinitely. “_C’est trop long_” one thin, blond man, with deep-set eyes and bright spots on his cheeks, kept repeating, till one of his friends in unrepeatable _poilu_ terms told him to “leave the camp.”

Concert in the afternoon, the usual number of extremely good _diseurs_. In the Salle de Récréation, where it was held, are reclining-chairs and writing-tables. When I told one not very young _poilu_ that there _was_ such a heaven, he, too, answered, “_Alors la guerre va durer longtemps, si l’on fait tout cela pour ceux qui restent_.”

Lieutenant Tonzin has converted those old railway sheds into something most artistic. The walls are painted cream with strips of pale blue; conventionalized fruit-filled baskets and designs of flowery wreaths decorate them at intervals. The great roof has drapings of white muslin, and square, engarlanded shades make the light shine softly on the blue-clad men coming and going, coming and going.

On the counter are small green bushes. One homesick-eyed gardener _poilu_ from Marseilles, having felt them, wondered what they would do if watered. “_Les pauvres! Chez nous sont grands comme ça_,” and he raised his hand toward the roof.

“_Toi, grand serin_,” remarked his comrade; “_tu vois tout toujours dix fois grandeur naturelle_.”

Whereupon they began the inevitable dispute. I heard the words “_gueuleton_,” “_qu’est-ce que t’as au bec_,” and the Marseillais finally calling out, as they retreated, that he thanked God _he_ hadn’t been born at Caen.

All is so orderly and the jokes mostly relatable. Only when they are somewhat _allumés_ do they get on the subject of the eternal feminine, and then the dots are put on the i’s, regarding her rôle on the natural plane. But even then there is generally some _copain_ to say, “_Ferme ta gueule_,” or “_Que veux-tu que les mees sachent de tout cela?_” The legend being that the canteens are served almost exclusively by vestals.

When holding out their “quarts,” they often ask, longingly, “_Pas de cogneau; pas de gniole?_”[22] When I answered once, “_Pas de pinard[23] ici_,” the _poilu_ cried back, “_Mais le ‘whisk’! Vous en avez toujours chez vous!_” Another delicate Anglo-Saxon reference.

Late, in between one of the train rushes, two men came in, violently disputing as they stood at the counter:

“_C’est une guerre diplomatique, je te dis, cochon, va._”

“_Qu’est-ce que tu dis là, moi, je te dis, sale type, que c’est une guerre qui ne mène à rien!_”

“_C’est la même chose, nom de—— —nom de—— —t’es bête, espèce d’acrobate_,” etc., etc.

Another comes in saying, loudly:

“_Cette sacrée guerre, cette sacrée guerre! Qu’est-ce que cela me fait que je sois boche ou Français? Suis de Roubaix, moi, il me faut manger du pain sec le reste de mes jours—moi et ma femme et mes cinq enfants._”

When I gave him his cup of steaming _jus_ (coffee), he poured into it, from his _bidon_, a few drops of _gniole_, and by the time he got to the door he was singing the well-known refrain:

_Je fus vacciné,_ _Inoculé,_ _Quatr’ fois piqué ..._

Then a train arrived, the great room was flooded again, and no time for anything except to ask, “_Avez-vous votre quart?_” (the tin cup) our bowls having given out during the rush; or, “_Prenez votre billet à la caisse_,” or, in order to relieve the congestion at _la caisse_, one takes their ten centimes and pours and pours and pours, or indicates the end of the counter, where the _repas complet_, consisting of soup, meat, vegetable, and salad, is served. _Boudin_ with potatoes (a hundred yards of this dark “blood-sausage,” curled up in boxes before being cooked, is an awful sight), or hash with potatoes, they love, but one and all hate macaroni with a deep hatred. Sometimes it is served when the potatoes give out, and they don’t conceal their distaste. They get too much cold macaroni in the trenches.

It’s always the ones who speak English who have the worst manners. One rather nice-looking individual came up to the _repas complet_ counter, saying: “I’m in a ’urry. Got no waiters? Step live.’” No _un_corrupted Frenchman, even half-seas over, would dream of such a form of address!

Lots of tiny, yellow Annamites in to-day, sounding just the way they look and looking just the way they sound. One brought back his salad-plate (accidents will happen in the best canteens) with a little worm a-move upon its edge, and he made some unintelligible sounds. When I thoughtlessly asked a _poilu_ what he was saying, the _poilu_, quite unembarrassed, proceeded to tell me, but _I_ can’t tell _you_! It must go no further.

Lunched at the house by the Marne, where we talk American politics for a change, then back. One goes, one returns, and still they flood the vast room, and one continues the book of the _cantine_, bound in its horizon blue, with its blood-stained, tear-sealed pages.

A quite peculiar warming of the heart when one’s own khaki-clad men come in. Early in the afternoon an American appeared at the counter, accompanied by a French corporal. He had completely forgotten the name of his town, was driving a _camion_, and said, with a distressed air, “If I could only find a certain spot in town, I _could_ get back”; and then added, with a grin, “I suppose you think I’m like the doctor that could cure fits; but I’ve got to get the fits before I can do anything else, and I’m late already,” he finished, anxiously. After giving various descriptions of various localities I hit on the Place de la République, “with a fountain with three women?” and as I explained to the under-officer, he said, “You’ve saved little Willie’s life,” and hurried out.

The names seem the difficult part. One of them, when I asked where he was billeted, said:

“That’s one on me; it’s got three names; but”—and he beckoned to a _poilu_ standing near—“this is a pal of mine. When I give him three knocks on the shoulder he gives the name.”

The _poilu_ didn’t wait for even the first knock before he said, “Demanges-aux-Eaux,” and then the American treated him to chocolate and offered him a “Lucky Strike” cigarette and began some exotic pronunciation of Demanges-aux-Eaux.

There’s always one special thing in every situation in life that comes hard. Now I must confess that whenever I have to take a damp, dark-brown cloth in my hand and mop up puddles of spilled chocolate and coffee from the tiled counter, I feel an invincible repugnance. To-day four Americans came in together. A nice, tall, evidently perceptive one said, unexpectedly:

“Just give me that rag.”

As I gratefully surrendered the clammy thing he continued:

“I will be here all the afternoon and you’ll find me mopping any time you like.” He subsequently ordered four fried eggs apiece for himself and a _poilu_, and then took a whole box of the little sweet round biscuits that we were selling rather gingerly by twos and threes, came back from time to time for bowls of chocolate, when he would cheerfully mop the counter for me. Finally I said:

“What is your name?”

And he answered: “Smith. There’re a few of us,” he added, and then with a twinkle, “but I’m John. Now what do you say to a swap?”

“I’m Mrs. O’Shaughnessy.”

“I bet I spot you. I was in Mexico last summer. Say, wasn’t your husband mixed up with old Huerta?”

I had to answer “yes” to this version of history.

“I wasn’t much on dust when I was down there, but there’s too much water here. However,” he continued, cheerfully, “we’ve got to tin the Teut or he’ll tin us.” Then he added, in a confidential voice: “What do you think of the war? I get mixed sometimes.”

I had noticed a small amethyst ring in the shape of a pansy on one of his large fingers as he was mopping, so, after disposing of his question in the briefest and most effective way by remarking that it was “up to us all” to do every bit we could to win the war, to which he agreed, I asked:

“Are you engaged?”

“To one beaut,” he answered, without an instant’s hesitation. “Met her in San Antonio last summer, but I guess she’s the kind that waits. Gee! they were around her like flies, but I shoo’d ’em all off.”

And he pulled out the picture of a girl with large dark eyes half hidden in love-locks, and showing a lot of white teeth between pleasure-ready lips. What appeared of her person was clad in the most “peek-a-boo” of blouses, and there was a twist of white tulle about it all. I wondered if she was the “kind that waits.” I had a sudden affection for John Smith, thinking, however, as he passed out of the door, that his identification disk would be more definite than his name, and then, for an instant, I pondered on the supremely elemental thing he’s come for.

Damp, cold night had fallen on Châlons, but the canteen was warm and cheery, and the men who knew little of warmth and cheer were sitting about in a moment’s comfort, and there came to mind a canteen I know (oh, far away!) which is presided over by a lady with a mustache like a majordomo, and there are no night hours in her canteen. She rings an inexorable bell at the chaste hour of 9.30, and, rainy or dry, warm or cold, out they go, the _poilus_. Some one with a compassionate heart remarked to one of the men on a pouring night, as the bell was ringing, “I am sorry you must go.” He answered, with a glance at the ringer and a twist of _his_ mustache: “It’s well to choose them that way. It quiets us.” And he went off singing, “_Depuis le jour où je me suis donnée_.” It was too funny....

_Friday, October 19th._

A tightening of the heart at leaving that flooding hall—going out again to pick up the personal life, inconsequential as it now seems. One is hypnotized by the stream of humanity, drawn into its vortex, finally rushing along with it, who knows whence or whither. I jerked myself back by saying, “This is not my bit,” and, “Each one to his own.” There are many ways of helping win the war.

I saw for a moment General Goïgoux, just back from his _permission_, so solicitous for the welfare of his men, so pleased with the results of the canteen, smiling as he said to me:

“_Eh bien, Madame, cela a fait des progrès depuis votre dernière visite._”

There is a quite wonderful entente, and appreciation, on both sides in Châlons.

I went back into the canteen, and found some _poilus_ in fits of laughter over a black cat. Now what a black cat evokes in the mind of the _poilu_ I can only suspect; I don’t quite know. Anyway, it’s something that “makes to laugh”; and our black cat, strayed in weeks ago from who knows where, and perched near a devoted lady of unmistakable respectability, lately arrived to help “save France,” furthermore enveloped in a gray sweater (it’s cold and draughty where she sits behind the small aperture selling tickets for coffee, chocolate, and _repas complets_), and not in her nature playful, seems somehow suggestive to the _poilu_. Even when it perches on the counter by the coffee-jugs it’s the same. We don’t like to get rid of it; it’s supposed to bring good luck. However, enough, or perhaps too little, about the black cat.

There is a _surveillant_ supposed to keep order. He is rarely needed, and if he does say anything, he gets an “_Embusqué!_” thrown at him, between the eyes. It’s not the day of the civilian employee. This one spends a good deal of time eating and not paying, and nobody loves him. There is a favorite story of the _poilu_ saluting a common or garden variety of policeman, thinking he was a corporal; and when telling of his mistake afterward he called it “_le plus malheureux jour de mavie_.”

A hitch in the serving of the _complete repasts_. I looked into the kitchen to see if things couldn’t be hurried up. The group that met my eyes, of the cook and her assistant wrestling with yards of blood-sausage, could have been the female pendant to the Laocoön. It was awful. As I turned back to the counter I heard this bit of conversation between two _poilus_ waiting for their meal:

“_Tu sais_, when a Canadian sees wood he goes wild. He’ll chop up anything from a roadside cross to a baby-carriage. They say it is because of his forests. At —— last spring they took the balusters out of the house where they were quartered, and that pretty Jeanne you’ve heard about—_un amour, je te dis_—fell down in the dark and was killed.”

“Each one has his _manie_,” answered his friend, in perfect tolerance. “_Mais moi, je ne toucherais pas à une croix._” And he proceeded to cross himself at the bare thought.

A colonel whose name I don’t remember took me into the garden to see the kiosks that I had so often indicated when the men asked for _pinard_ or _tabac_. The _guignol_ that I had seen at the camouflage grounds in July was in place; beyond was the huge bomb-proof shelter built by German prisoners to contain 2,000 men in case of _avion_ attack. We took a few steps into its black, moist intricacies. As I came up I found myself close to a group of some thirty German prisoners being marched past to work on a cement emplacement for a gun, the large P.G.[24] stamped on their backs, and wearing their small round caps with the red stripe, and any kind of clothes. I felt for a moment like an illustration for Cæsar’s _Commentaries_, or some sort of a Roman watching northern prisoners being marched by.

The officer who showed me about was one of the twenty-seven men who escaped from the Fort de Vaux, and had lost his only child on Hill 304.

“I was wounded, and I’m not yet worth much, which is why I am here. My boy was only twenty-one—_mais c’était une personne faite_—a leader of men. All, with those qualities, go; I am not alone, alas! in my _douleur_.”

And that is one of the beautiful things of this sorrowful epoch. Each thinks upon the others’ grief.... And then I left it all.

The jade-colored Marne is flat, eddyless, brimming over with its autumn rains, the reeds have disappeared, the trunks of the willows are hidden. Over the gray bridge flows, unabated, that other stream of war and life. _Camions_, ambulances, smart red-and-white-marked staff automobiles, soldiers in every conceivable state of soul and body, “enduring their going hence even as their coming hither.” English, Americans, Senegalese, Annamites—a dozen races swell this Gallic flood, and the Gray Sisters never so busy since the world began.

PARIS, _January 7th, 1918_.

I am waiting to know from one of the most charming of the sons of Gaul, who has promised to be my intercessor before the powers that be, whether I am to go to my front—our front—now or not. If, as Amiel says, “_Être prêt, c’est partir_,” then I am already off.

FINIS

FOOTNOTES

[1] Killed 10th November, 1915, at Zagora, at the head of his battalion.

[2] Planted so that any vista represents the Roman numeral V.

[3] Like porcelain dogs.

[4] Verdun, the Virdunum of the Romans. In the third century a bishopric was founded there with Saint Saintin as first bishop; 843, the treaty of Verdun; after the battle of Fontanet the three sons of Louis the Debonair, Lothair, Louis of Bavaria, and Charles the Bald, divided the empire of Charlemagne, with the result that not only was France separated from Germania, but her natural boundaries, the Alps and the Rhine, were lost; 1792, the Prussians besieged it in force and it was obliged to capitulate after two days; 1870, a heroic defense lasting nearly three months ending in capitulation; 1916, _Ils n’ont pas passé, ils ne passeront pas_.

[5] _Neuvième série._

[6] Alan Seeger, _Letters and Diary_.

[7] Regimental decoration in the form of a cord worn over the left shoulder, passing under the arm.

[8] The _sauf-conduits_ for the army zones are in the form of little, red, paper-bound books.

[9] “_La Pioggia nel Pineto._”—D’ANNUNZIO.

[10] In _L’Horizon_ I found these lines from Verlaine, with a few added, concerning _le Cafard_, by “Bi Bi Bi”:

_Quelle est cette douleur_ _Qui pénètre mon cœur?_ _C’est bien la pire peine_ _De ne savoir pourquoi_ _Sans amour et sans haine_ _Mon cœur a tant de peine._ _En effet, cher Verlaine,_ _C’est bien la pire peine_ _Que ta fameuse peine_ _Et les poilus sans art_ _La nomment le Cafard._

But _le Cafard_ differs from Verlaine’s _peine_ in that it is a very special kind of world-pain, and very complete; for those in its grip know _why_, as well as _not_ why, they suffer. The memory of loved and early things, very probably not to be known again, is part of it. The consciously unreasonable hope that all will be well in an extremely uncertain future is another part of it—and underlying it is crushing physical fatigue, sleeplessness, hunger, cold, heat, the whole smeared in the blood of brothers and foes, the dull reaction after killing, or escape from being killed—one can’t feel that there is anything vague about _le Cafard_.

[11] Cook.

[12] Gondrecourt, the first American encampment in Lorraine.

[13] During the closing days of February, 1918, the air raids on Nancy were so continuous and so disastrous that Molitor had to be evacuated and the inmates, the aged and the children, were redistributed in other parts of France. These words are quite simple to write and to read. Their significance is beyond expression.

March, 1918, E. O’S.

[14] She received ten refusals for the dinner she was giving the next night; among them one from Talleyrand, which caused a permanent rupture in their relations.

[15] Governor-General of Morocco.

[16] The American Red Cross Asylum at Luxembourg (Toul), now under the very able management of Dr. Maynard Ladd, has accommodations for nearly a thousand children, well and ill, and a maternity hospital.

The American forces hold the line to the northwest of Toul.

[17] Her epitaph, written by herself, is to the effect that underneath lies a rotting worm, giving to death the tribute of nature, the earth her only covering, and begging her sisters, the Poor Clares, to say for her a _Requiescat in pace_.

_Ci-gist un ver tout en pourriture,_ _Donnant à mort le tribut de la nature._ _Sœur Philippe de Gueldre fust Royne du passé,_ _Terre soulat pour toute couverture._ _Sœurs, dites-lui une requiescat in pace._

_MDXLVII._

[18] Madame du Châtelet, around whose death-bed three men met in fraternal tolerance, Voltaire, St.-Lambert, and her husband, was buried here September 11, 1749. In 1793 the tomb was profaned, the lead coffin stolen, the bones scattered. In 1858 they were gathered up and put in a modern coffin in which they now repose. She said of herself: “_J’ai reçu de Dieu une de ces âmes tendres et immuables qui ne savent ni déguiser ni modérer leurs passions; qui ne connaissent ni l’affaiblissement ni le dégoût, et dont la ténacité sait résister à tout, même à la certitude de n’être pas aimée.... Mais un cœur aussi tendre, peut-il être rempli par un sentiment aussi paisible et aussi faible que l’amitié?_”

[19] “_Faut pas s’en faire_” is one of the most famous phrases of the French army, and has been described as a combination of two slang expressions, “To keep your hair on, _de ne pas se faire des cheveux_,” and “not to hurt your digestion by undue worry, _de ne pas se faire de la bile_.”

[20] René de Châlons, Prince of Orange, killed in 1544, at the siege of St.-Dizier. The genius of Ligier Richier has represented him according to his wish, as his body might have appeared three years _after_ death.

[21] Slacker, pig, dirty-one, cow!

[22] Cognac.

[23] wine.

[24] _Prisonnier de Guerre._