Madame B., pursuing her philanthropic way, came out of a shop one day to find a spruce poilu comfortably ensconced in her carriage. With arms folded and legs crossed he surveyed the world with conquering eyes.
"I am coming for a drive with you," he remarked genially, and his smile was the smile of a seductive angel, his assurance that of a king.
"Au contraire," replied Madame B. (the poilu was not for her, as for us, an undiscovered country bristling with possibilities of adventure), and his abdication was the most graceful recorded in history.
Now, I wouldn't advise you to accept every offer of companionship you get from a poilu, but you may accept some. More than one tedious mile of road is starred for me with memories of childlike, simple souls, burning with curiosity about all things English, and above all about the independent female bipeds who have no apparent fear of man, God or devil, nor even—bien entendu—of that most captivating of all created things, the blue-coated, trench-helmeted French soldier.
"You march well, Mademoiselle; you would make a fine soldier." Thus a voice behind me as I swung homewards down the hill one chilly evening. A sense of humour disarms me on these occasions. One day, no doubt, it will lead me into serious trouble. I didn't wither him. One soon learns when east winds should blow, and when the sun, metaphorically speaking, may shine. We walked amicably into Bar together, and before we parted he told me all about the little wife who was waiting for him in Paris, and the fat baby who was tout-à fait le portrait de son père.
So ponder long and carefully before you choose your carriage, but if your ponderings are as long as this digression you will never get to Révigny. Even an omnibus train starts some time, and generally when you least expect it.
At Mussey if you crane your head out of the window you may see two wounded German prisoners, white-faced, mud-caked wretches who provoke no comment. At Révigny you will see soldiers (if I told you how many pass through in a day the Censor would order me to be immersed in a vat of official ink); and you will see ruins. The Town Hall is an eyeless skeleton leering down the road, the Grande Place—there is no Grande Place, there is only a scattered confusion of fire-charred stones and desiccated brick.
It was rather foggy that Sunday morning and the town looked used up. Not an attractive place in its palmiest days we decided as we slung our luncheon bags over our shoulders and set out for Villers. Away to the left we could see Brabant-le-Roi, and it was there some weeks later that I assisted at the incineration of a pig. He lay by the roadside in a frame of blazing straw. Flames lapped his ponderous flanks, and swept across his broad back, blue smoke curled around him, an odour of roasting pig hung in the air. A crowd of women and soldiers stood like devotees about a shrine. The flames leaped, and fell. Then came men who lifted him up and laid him on a stretcher. In his neck there was a gaping wound, and out of the fire that refined him he was no longer an Olympian sacrifice, he was mouldering pig, dead pig, black pig, nauseating, horrible. I turned to fly, but a voice detained me.
"Madame Bontemps will be killing to-morrow. If Mademoiselle would like to see?"
But "to-morrow" Mademoiselle was happily far on her way to Troyes, and the swan-song of Madame Bontemps' gros cochon fell on more appreciative ears.