Do you remember that I told you some time ago about Louise's brother, Joseph, in the heavy artillery, who had never seen a Boche? Well, he is at home again for his eight days. He came to see me yesterday. I said to him: "Well, Joseph, where did you come from this time?"
"From the same place--the mountains in Alsace. We've not budged for nearly two years."
"What can we do, madame?" he replied. "There we are, on the top of a mountain. We can't get down. The Germans can't get up. They are across the valley on the top of a hill in the same fix."
"But what do you do up there?" I demanded.
"Well," he replied, "we watch the Germans, or at least the aeroplanes do--we can't see them. They work on their defenses. They pull up new guns and shift their emplacements. We let them work. Then our big guns destroy their work."
"Well, they fire a few shots, and go to work again. But I'll tell you something, madame, as sure as that we are both living, they would not do a thing if we would only leave them in peace,--but we don't."
"Well, Joseph," I asked, "have you seen a Boche yet?"
"Oh, yes, madame, I've seen them. I see them, with a glass, working in the fields, ploughing, and getting ready to plant them."
"And you don't do anything to prevent them?"
"Well, no. We can't very well. They always have a group of women and children with every gang of workmen. They know, only too well, that French guns will not fire at that kind of target. It is just the same with their commissary trains--always women at the head, in the middle, and in the rear."
Well, at last, the atmosphere on the hilltop is all changed. We have a cantonnement de régiment again, and this time the most interesting that we have ever had,--the 23d Dragoons, men on active service, who are doing infantry work in the trenches at Tracy-le-Val, in the Forêt de Laigue, the nearest point to Paris, in the battle-front.
It is, as usual, only the decorative and picturesque side of war, but it is tremendously interesting, more so than anything which has happened since the Battle of the Marne.
As you never had soldiers quartered on you--and perhaps you never will have--I wish you were here now.
It was just after lunch on Sunday--a grey, cold day, which had dawned on a world covered with frost--that there came a knock at the salon door. I opened it, and there stood a soldier, with his heels together, and his hand at salute, who said: "Bon jour, madame, avez- vous un lit pour un soldat?"