"The Boche," said Paul Guitry, "has left nothing but his smell."
Rumor spread swiftly through the lines. "We are not to be opposed.
Fritz has been withdrawn in the night. His lines are too long.
He is straightening out his salients. It is the beginning of the
end."
There was good humor and elation. There was also a feeling of admiration for the way in which Fritz had managed to retreat without being detected.
The country over which the troops advanced was a rolling desert, blasted, twisted, swept clear of all vegetation. What the Germans could not destroy they had carried away with them. There remained only frazzled stumps of trees, dead bodies and ruined engines of war.
Paul Guitry and the Idiot came at last to the summit of a little hill. Beyond and below at the end of a long sweep of tortured and ruined fields could be seen picturesquely grouped a few walls of houses and one bold arch of an ancient bridge.
The Idiot blinked stupidly. Then he laughed a short, ugly laugh.
"I had counted on seeing the church steeple. But of course they would have destroyed that."
"Is it Champ-de-Fer?" asked Guitry.
At that moment a dark and sudden smoke, as from ignited chemicals began to pour upward from the ruined village.
"It was," said the Idiot, and once more the word was passed to go forward.