And then, this afternoon, I heard another soldier say that.
It was in the rue de la Paix. He was giving an order to the chauffeur. His little boy, in a white piqué dress with a big lace collar, was standing beside him, dancing up and down and hanging on his hand.
His wife leaned out of the window of the motor and called to me as I passed, and he turned. I stopped, and we talked for a minute.
He has been home on a six days' leave and is going back to-night.
He is a captain in the chasseurs à pied. Before the war he was an officer in a smart cavalry regiment, but he had himself transferred into the infantry when the war began. I have heard the men in the hospital talk of him. They say, "C'est un type épatant, celui-là." They say he never sends his men to reconnoitre, but goes himself, always.
He looked very young and splendid in his smart uniform, standing at the door of the motor.
The little boy, always dancing up and down beside him, said, "We've got his picture taken! We've got his picture taken!"
His wife tried to laugh but I saw her eyes in the shadow of her white lace hat. "It's true," she said, "we dragged him to it, poor boy. We had nothing decent of him at all, you know."
She was very lovely in her lovely things, with a heap of red roses beside her on the seat of the motor.
Somehow, that it was all so pretty made it sadder. In the bright street I thought: To go back to that, when one has so much, when one has everything in the world, and is young and full of radiant life.