"What village is that over there?"

He glanced around and replied: "Quincy."

It was my town. I ought not to have been surprised. Of course I knew
that if I could see Chauconin so clearly from my garden, why,
Chauconin could see me. Only, I had not thought of it.

Amélie and I looked back with great interest. It did look so pretty, and
it is not pretty at all--the least pretty village on this side of the hill.
"Distance" does, indeed, "lend enchantment." When you come to see
me I shall show you Quincy from the other side of the Marne, and
never take you into its streets. Then you'll always remember it as a
fairy town.

It was not until we were entering into Chauconin that we saw the first
signs of war. The approach through the fields, already ploughed, and
planted with winter grain, looked the very last thing to be associated
with war. Once inside the little village--we always speak of it as "le
petit Chauconin "--we found destruction enough. One whole street of
houses was literally gutted. The walls stand, but the roofs are off and
doors and windows gone, while the shells seem burned out. The
destruction of the big farms seems to have been pretty complete.
There they stood, long walls of rubble and plaster, breeched; ends of
farm buildings gone; and many only a heap of rubbish. The surprising
thing to me was to see here a house destroyed, and, almost beside it,
one not even touched. That seemed to prove that the struggle here
was not a long one, and that a comparatively small number of shells
had reached it.