made them fill the silence of the plain with songs in time to the tramp of their nailed boots. Through the violet twilight drifted the winged strophes of the Marseillaise, or the heroic affirmations of the Chant du Départ.
"They are the soldiers of the Revolution," exclaimed Lacour with enthusiasm. "France has returned to 1792."
The two captains established their charges for the night in a half-ruined town where one of their divisions had its headquarters, and then took their leave. Others would act as their escort the following morning.
The two friends were lodging in the Hôtel de la Siren, an old inn with its front gnawed by shell-fire. The proprietor showed them with pride a window broken in the form of a crater. This window had made the old tavern sign—a woman of iron with the tail of a fish—sink into insignificance. As Desnoyers was occupying the room next to the one that had received the mark of the shell, the inn-keeper was anxious to point it out to them before they went to bed.
Everything was broken—walls, floor, roof. The furniture, a pile of splinters in the corner; the flowered wall paper, a fringe of tatters hanging from the walls. Through an enormous hole they could see the stars and feel the chill of the night. The owner stated that this destruction was not the work of the Germans, but was caused by a projectile from one of the seventy-fives when repelling the invaders from the village. And he beamed on the ruin with patriotic pride, repeating:
"There's a sample of French markmanship for you! How do you like the workings of the seventy-fives?… What do you think of that now?" …
In spite of the fatigue of the journey, Don Marcelo slept badly, excited by the thought that his son was not far away.
An hour before daybreak, they left the village in an
