After much complaining, Madame de Vauclère consented to put the colonel up: all her sons were officers, and she could not withstand sentimental arguments for very long.
The next day Parker's orderly joined the doctor's in the château kitchen, and together they annexed the fireplace. To make room for their own utensils, they took down a lot of comical little French articles, removed what they saw no use for, put the kettle on, and whistled hymns as they filled the cupboards with tins of boot polish in scientifically graded rows.
After adoring them on the first day, putting up with them on the second, and cursing them on the third, the old cook came up to Aurelle with many lamentations, and dwelt at some length on the sad state of her saucepans; but she found the interpreter dealing with far more serious problems.
Colonel Parker, suddenly realizing that it was inconvenient for the general to be quartered away from his Staff, had decided to transfer the whole H.Q. to the château of Vauclère.
"Explain to the old lady that I want a very good room for the general, and the billiard-room for our clerks."
"Why, it's impossible, sir; she has no good room left."
"What about her own?" said Colonel Parker.
Madame de Vauclère, heart-broken, but vanquished by the magic word "General," which Aurelle kept on repeating sixty
times a minute, tearfully abandoned her canopied bed and her red damask chairs, and took refuge on the second floor.
Meanwhile the drawing-room with its ancient tapestries was filled with an army of phlegmatic clerks occupied in heaping up innumerable cases containing the history in triplicate of the Division, its men, horses, arms and achievements.