Peace reigned for the next five days, the last taste of careless days
that so many of those poor fellows were to have.

A route march generally occupied the mornings, and a musketry parade the
evenings. Meanwhile, the men were rapidly accustoming themselves to the
new conditions. The Officers occupied themselves with polishing up their
French, and getting a hold upon the reservists who had joined the
Battalion on mobilisation.

The French did everything in their power to make the Battalion at home.
Cider was given to the men in buckets. The Officers were treated like
the best friends of the families with whom they were billeted. The
fatted calf was not spared, and this in a land where there were not too
many fatted calves.

The Company "struck a particularly soft spot." The miller had gone to
the war leaving behind him his wife, his mother and two children.
Nothing they could do for the five officers of the Company was too much
trouble. Madame Mère resigned her bedroom to the Major and his second in
command, while Madame herself slew the fattest of her chickens and
rabbits for the meals of her hungry Officers.

The talk that was indulged in must have been interesting, even though
the French was halting and ungrammatical. Of all the companies' Messes,
this one took the most serious view of the future, and earned for itself
the nickname of "Les Misérables." The Senior Subaltern said openly that
this calm preceded a storm. The papers they got--_Le Petit Parisian_ and
such like--talked vaguely of a successful offensive on the extreme
right: Mülhouse, it was said, had been taken. But of the left, of