Ned Townsend and I lost no time in finding quarters in the home of a peasant. The house, which could not have been built later than the seventeenth century, had two rooms and a garret. One room with open fire place served as a kitchen, living room and bedroom all combined. A bed was built in the wall and during the day was hidden by curtains. Here slept the patron Tourgant and his wife. Townsend and I took the other room, which had two beds in it. One of the window panes was gone, but this was none the less luxury. Our work was light and we enjoyed the life to the fullest extent. We could retire at night with a sense of security that we were not likely to be disturbed before morning. The house stood under the shadow of an ancient church and if we did lie awake, we could hear the clock in the steeple chiming off the quarter hours. It was sometimes pleasant to awaken in the middle of the night to hear the clock striking the hour and then to fall asleep again with the thought that there were some hours left for undisturbed rest.
It was usually Madame Tourgant, with wrinkled face, bronzed like a gipsy, who called us in the morning and set a cup of hot coffee by our beds. Sometimes when we came in late, chilled and wet with the rain, Monsieur Tourgant would get out of bed, pull on a few clothes, kick the dying embers of the faggots on the hearth into life and heat a cup of coffee for us. And so if there was some work to do, there was time for rest and relaxation.
In this country, it had once been the sport of kings to hunt the wild boar. Now the kings were otherwise engaged, but it was still the sport of peasants and poilus. Kings do not control all the sport there is――especially now.
One night we went out on a wild boar hunt, skirting the edge of a thick forest, not far from Aillianville down in the direction of the ancient town of Grand. Midnight, our hunt being unsuccessful, we sat down on the ground in the moonlight and enjoyed the feast which we had brought with us. We did not have another opportunity to go boar hunting because of the rains, which caused Ned Townsend――or was it “Red” Day?――to complain that the ground was too wet to sit on.
But if we had been unsuccessful on our hunt, our patron M. Tourgant fared better, bringing one in a couple of days later and the following night we were invited to sit around the open fireplace while Madame Tourgant put slices of it to sizzling over the faggots on the open fireplace. She prepared other things for the supper too. Some French soldiers that we knew were with us and I am sure ’most any king would have relinquished his crown for a night, to have sat under those old blackened rafters and enjoyed the sport of ordinary mortals.