"Bien! Very good! And now we will ask you all about it," said the officer, smiling pleasantly. "Mon camarade, you who look so strong, tell us of your experience."
He halted in front of a broad-shouldered, burly man, who was well past thirty-five years of age, and whose chin was deeply scarred by a wound, now healed completely.
"What experience, mon Capitaine?" the gallant fellow repeated. "Well, at Ypres, in 1915, and before that, at Charleroi, in the great retreat past Château Thierry, and so to the south of the Grand Morin."
"And afterwards, mon ami?" asked the officer, patting him in paternal manner on the shoulder; for, though discipline is strict in the French army, indeed stricter in no other, there is yet the best of feeling between officers and men, a species of camaraderie which unites them closely. "You have seen much service, my friend. What then, after the Grand Morin?"
"What, then? Mon Dieu! There was the Battle of the Marne, mon Capitaine, when we drove the Boche before us; and there followed the fight about the Aisne, when the British were just to the left of us; and, later, yes later, for I have seen a great deal, mon Capitaine, there was fighting near Arras, fighting to the north of the line later, between Ypres and Nieuport, when the Germans assailed the British at Ypres, and lost the flower of their Prussian Guard Corps. This is the full tale, monsieur, for I have already mentioned the Second Battle of Ypres, in which those Huns first nearly stifled me with asphyxiating gas, and then took this chip out of my chin with a bullet."
"And you would repay that same chip, my friend?", laughed the officer.
"Bien! You may say that, Monsieur le Capitaine—repay it a hundredfold if I am able."
From one to another the officer passed, questioning them in the same friendly manner, inviting their confidence, listening to their stories, extolling their actions with words which reached the ears of their comrades.
"And you," he said at last, arriving at the gallant Henri, and tapping him on the breast with a friendly finger, while he ran his eye over this young soldier, admiring his clean, well-bred, active appearance, the set of his figure, his healthy looks, and the perky little moustache which Henri still boasted. "Well, you," he asked, "mon enfant?"
"I, mon Capitaine? Well, I have seen but little more than the heart of Ruhleben camp," Henri told him; "for I was there, a prisoner for many weary months."