CHAPTER XXIII
T HE weary weeks passed by with their alternations of hopes and fears. Martin, insignificant speck of blue and red, was in the Argonne. Sergeant Bigourdin of the Armée Territoriale was up in the north. The history of their days is the history of the war which has yet to be written; the story of their personal lives is identical with that of the personal lives of the millions of men who have looked and are looking Death always in the face, cut off as it were from their own souls by the curtain of war.
Things went drearily at the Hôtel des Grottes. But little manhood remained at Brantôme. Women worked in the fields and drove the carts and kept the shops where so few things were sold. Félise busied herself in the fabrique, her staff entirely composed of women. Fortinbras mad
