“Rabot! they are going to bring the lady in green to see you.”
IN THE VINEYARD
Between Epernay and Château-Thierry, the Marne flows through an exquisite valley, whose gay hills are rich in orchards and vine plantations, and crowned with verdure like woodland goddesses, and abundantly adorned with those plants which have made France a country without price, beautiful and noble.
It is the valley of rest. Jaulgonne, Dormans, Châtillons, Œuilly, Port-à-Binson—those old smiling villages can never be repaid for lavishing such hours of forgetful repose, that refresh like spring water, on the exhausted troops leaving Verdun for the once quiet sectors of the Aisne.
During the summer of 1916 the —— Corps was once again concentrated on the Marne, ready to take its share in the immense and bloody sacrifice on the Somme front. Our battalion was patiently waiting the word which would send them up the line; as they waited, they passed the time in calculating, from the top of the hills, the number of waggons that could be seen struggling along far down in the valley, and as usual they made all sorts of conjectures.
Most of the time we passed in the fields with our friends, avoiding serious thought as much as possible, and letting the body enjoy to the full the repose which offered itself far from the murderous struggles on the front.
There had been a few days of dazzling heat, then the storm had come with a thundering sky, the clouds wildly charging, and a wide sweeping wind carrying along with it the dust or the mist.
Late one afternoon we happened to be on the road which rises gently from Chavenay to the copses of the south.
There were three of us. Conversation flagged, and, imperceptibly, we had each fallen back on our secret thoughts—thoughts that were full of pain, and which the climbing road seemed to make harder to bear.
“Let’s sit down on this bank,” said a voice softly.