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Malvina Levesque got into trouble last year with Mathurin Poilu. Leg of mutton...................twenty-five sous Salt............................one sou Rosalie Vatinel was seen in the Riboudet woods with Cesaire Pienoir, by Mme. Onesime, the ironer, on July the 20th about dusk.
She was knitting for the French War-Relief Committee a pair of those prodigious socks with which well-meaning souls all over these United States have inspired many a poor little devil of a poilu with the thought that the French must be regarded by us as a Brobdingnagian race. "We're arranging a big blowout, unknown to The Laird and Donald, to celebrate the boy's return to health.
We left Paris determined to undertake the journey to the Front in the true spirit of the French Poilu, and, no matter what happened, "de ne pas s'en faire."
I shall not dwell on the journey because I did not meet a single human being worth recording during the trip. At eight at night I arrived in Paris. So varied had been my experiences at the front that had I stepped out into a dark and deserted city I should not have been surprised. The poilu, when he sees the city lights again, almost feels like saying, "Why, it is still here!"
I spent a great part of my fortune upon establishing a hospital, and this child" she threw her arm around Val Beverley "worked with me night and day. I think I wanted to die. Often I tried to die. Did I not, dear?" "You did, Madame," said the girl in a very low voice. "Twice I was arrested in the French lines, where I had crept dressed like a poilu, from where I shot down many a Prussian.
We were bearded like that incomparable fighter, the poilu, and we were separated by an abyss of years, so our stomachs told us, from our last square meal. But we were wonderfully placid about it all.
There is a French Territorial regiment which has a notice up at the entrance of its "music hall" "Entrée pour Messieurs les Poilus. Prix un sourire." Admission a smile! There is never a man turned away from its doors, for where is the "poilu" or where is the "Tommy" who is not always ready with a smile and a laugh and a song?
If one had lifted up his hair and estimated his age by the last two inches of the jet locks the poilu would have been about thirty-five, but the hair, pure white at the roots, and a glance at his face told us that he was fifty-five to sixty. "He passed inspection," said the captain, "by dyeing his hair, and several weeks ago he broke the bottle of dye.
I do wish you could see them together. The poilu would hug Tommy and plant a kiss on each of his cheeks if he dared. But, needless to say, that is the last sort of thing Tommy wants. So, faute de mieux the poilu walks as close to Tommy as he can when he gets a chance and the undemonstrative, sure-of-himself Tommy permits it without a smile which is doing well.
The missile burst with that loud hammer pound made by a thick-walled iron shell, and lay smoking in the withered leaves. "It begins it begins," said an old poilu, tossing his head. "Now we shall have those pellets all afternoon." An instant after the burst the trench relaxed; some of the sentries looked back to see where the shell had fallen, others paid no attention to it whatsoever.
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