"Suppose Monsieur gets typhoid?"
"He has it now," the elderly man replied. "His temperature is high, that is why he has so great thirst." The patient drank another glass. Then they both went away. We often wondered whether he recovered.
Once, at least, our hearts went out to another sick man. He leaned against the counter with pallid face, over which the sweat of physical weakness was breaking. Questioned, he told us he had just been discharged from hospital, he was going back to the trenches, to Verdun, in the morning. He looked as if he ought to have been in his bed. I wonder if any society exists in France with the object of helping such men? We never heard of one (which by no means proves that it does not exist), but oh, how useful it might have been in Bar! One morning, for instance, a man tottered into the canteen, ordered a cup of coffee, drank, laid his head down on the table and fell into a stupefied doze. So long did he remain the canteeners became anxious. Presently he stirred, and told them that he had come there straight from a hospital, that he was going home on leave, that his home was far—perhaps two days' journey—away, and he had not a sou in his pocket. He was by no means an isolated case. As a packet of food was being made up for him, a soldier, obviously a stranger to the sick man, ordered deux œufs sur-le-plat."
"They are not for myself," he said, "but for the pal here." A little act of good comradeship that was by no means the only one of its kind.
The moment which always thrilled was that in which a regimental Rothschild treated his companions to the best of our store. How eagerly and exhaustively the list of boissons was studied!
"Un café? C'est combien? Deux sous? ce n'est pas cher ça." Then to a friend, "Qu'est-ce-que-tu-prends?"
"Moi? je veux bien un café."
"No, non, un chocolat. C'est très bon le chocolat." The coffee lover wavers.
"Soit. Un chocolat alors." Then some one else cannot make up his mind. A bearded man pouring bouillon down his throat recommends that. It is excellent. The merits of soup are discussed. Then back they go to coffee again, and all the time as seriously as if the issue of the war depended upon their deliberations. At length, however, a decision is made—not without much pleading for gniolle (rum) on the part of Rothschild. "A drop? Just a tiny drop, Mad'm'zelle. Eh, there is none? Mais comment ça? How can one drink a jus (coffee) without gniolle? Mad'm'zelle is not kind." He would wheedle a bird from the bushes, but happily for our strength of mind there is no drink stronger than jus in the canteen, a fact he finds it exceedingly difficult to believe. We know that when at last he accepts defeat he is convinced that fat bottles lie hidden under the counter to be brought forth for one whose powers of persuasion are greater than his. He loads his bowls on a tray, carries them by some occult means unbroken through the throng, and has his reward when the never-failing ceremony of clinking bowls or glasses with Bonne chance! or Bonne Santé! or À vous, prefaces the feast.
A pretty rite that of the French. Never did two comrades drink together in the canteen without doing it reverence. Never did I, visiting a refugee, swallow, for my sins, vin ordinaire rouge in which a lump of sugar had been dissolved without first clinking glasses with my hosts and murmuring a "Good health," or "Good luck," and feeling strangely and newly in sympathy with them as I did so. The little rite invested commonplace hospitality with grace and spiritual meaning.