One bleak December day in London there came to me this letter, and by it alone I know that Fritz and the baby Solange, and the eight of us are no myth, no figment of my imagination. We really did, all together, drive all day long through the German-infected country, to east, to west, to north, to south, through fields and byways, and strange little villages, over hills and along valleys, with the cannon always booming, the baby always sleeping and old Fritz always going merry and bright.
By noon, we might have known each other a thousand years. I had the baby on my knee, the three men cracked walnuts for us all, and everyone talked at once; strange talk, the strangest in all the world.
"So they killed the priest!"
"She hid for two days in the water-closet."
"She doesn't know what has happened to her five children."
"They were stood in a row and every third one was fusillé."
"They found his body in the garden!"
"Il est tout-à-fait ruiné."
Then suddenly one of the ladies, who knew a little English, said with a friendly smile:
"I have liked very much the English novel—how do you call it—something about a lamp. Everyone reads it. It is our favourite English book. It is splendid. We read it in French too."