Directly opposite Mme. Gabrielle lives Mme. Odille Delorme. One lifts the latch of a heavy wooden gate to enter her courtyard. On left and right are the remains of barn and stable, from the rafters of which depend bundles of haricots hung to dry. A half dozen chickens scurry from under foot, and at the commotion Mme. Delorme steps out. “I have come to make a little visit,” I begin. “Enter then, and see misery,” is her reply. It is a startling reply from this woman, strong, intelligent, and direct. The room of which she throws open the door is tiny; the floor is of earth; there is no window, only a hole covered with oiled linen, which lets in a ray of light but never any sun. A stove, a table, two stools, a shelf or two and a few dishes hung on nails are her furnishings. In her arms she holds her sixteen-months’ baby; a little girl of three comes running in from an adjoining alcove, and is followed presently by her seven-year-old sister, Charmette. The three children look like plants blanched in a cellar. As gently as possible, I proceed with necessary questions: for in social parlance, I am making a preliminary survey of the family needs. “Your husband?” I inquire. She turns to her little girl, “Marie, tell the lady, then, where is Papa.” And Marie, smiling up into her mother’s face, repeats her lesson proudly, “Avec—les—Boches.” “Avec les Boches,” reiterates the mother, and catches the child to her in a passionate embrace. There is a pause before I can continue. “Have you beds and covers?” “See for yourself, Mademoiselle,” and she leads the way through her mÉnage; three passage-ways opening the one into the other, like the compartments of a train. The first contains a child’s bed of white enamel, and beneath an aperture like that in the outer room, a crib. Both are canopied and ruffled in spotless white. “Yes,” Mme. Delorme says in answer to my unspoken surprise, “I bought these beds. The ruffles are made of sheets, one can but do one’s best. As you see, it is only a chicken-house after all.” Beyond, quite without light, is a space occupied by her own bed, a springless frame of planks. From nails in the walls clothes of all sizes and descriptions hang. In fact, one wonders at the amount of clothing saved by the panic-stricken peasants in their flight. They not only took away with them heavy sacks made out of sheets, but buried what they had time to. Of course, some of their hiding places were rifled; but most of the villagers have a real embarrassment of riches in their old clothes. Their first request is usually for a wardrobe, so that the mice will not nest in them.

But Mme. Delorme asked for nothing. She rested her case in the simple statement, “VoilÀ la misÈre.” At a later date, when I returned with a camera, she repeated, “What would you? Take a picture of our misery?” “Yes, Madame, to carry with me to America, that they may see it there and fight the harder for knowing what the Boches have done.” “Eh, bien!” she replied, and the picture was taken. Framed in the deep gateway, from which the clusters of dried beans depend like a stage curtain, her baby in her arms, her two little girls clinging beside her, and neighbourly Adrien, broom in hand, sweeping the light snow from the path,—I see her yet amid the ruins, brave, broken-hearted Odille Delorme.

Before the war, Mme. Delorme had not the social position of her neighbour, Mme. Gabrielle. She lived on her smaller property, and attended to her truck garden and her poultry yard and her children, while her husband served the Government as bargeman on the canal. Yet the two were close friends. Mme. Gabrielle having bought a cow, shared the milk with Mme. Delorme. Mme. Gabrielle told me that Mme. Delorme needed blankets. “She would never admit it,” she explained. “We are not used to accepting gifts, you see.” Or were it necessary for Mme. Delorme to go to Ham perhaps for her allocation, Mme. Gabrielle transferred the baby and Marie to her kitchen until their mother’s return.

From this extreme end of the village, by the Calvary, the street continues across the railroad track. Here, on almost any day, children may be seen digging miniature coal mines. They do it not in play, but in earnest. The ties which the Germans left have long since been used as fuel, but in the roadbed the villager still finds a scant supply of coal. Beyond the track, the first habitable building is a barn. Its interior consists of one room, earthen-floored where two makeshift beds allow it to be seen. In one corner stands a small stove. No light enters except from the open door. Here lodge the old mother, the married daughter, two children, a girl of seventeen and a boy of eleven, and their orphaned cousin, four-year-old NoËl. Lydie, capable, red-cheeked, crisp-haired, welcomes us and pulls forward a bench. “Be seated, please.” Her voice has a ring of youth, her mouth a ready smile. One wonders how it can be, yet it is so. The grandmother complains querulously from the untidy bed where she is lying to keep warm. Lydie tells us with perfect equanimity that she herself has no bed. Where does she sleep? On the bench. Beds would be welcome, yes, and sheets and blankets. The grandmother adds a request for warm slippers; her feet are so often cold. A pane of glass for the door I set down also in the list in my notebook, and as assets—the furniture being negligible—300 kilos of cabbages, 100 kilos of potatoes, leeks and chicory in smaller quantities.

My next call I have been urged to make by our doctors. Here in a ramshackle ell, facing a court deep in mire, live the poorest family in the village, comprising Mme. Laure Tabary, her six children, and a black and bearded goat. The goat inhabits a rabbit hutch from which her tether allows her the freedom of the narrow brick path. From the sidelong gleam in her eyes, one always expects an attack in the flank or rear. But Madame, her mistress, regards her as a pet; perhaps because she cannot regard her in any other favourable light,—since la petite gives no milk. Once past the goat, the door is quickly gained. Two rooms has Mme. Tabary, and a loft and a shed. She needs them! From forlorn Olga to forlorn AndrÉa, the girls of the family descend in graduated wrappings of rags. “O, Mme. Tabary,” exclaimed the school teacher, with whom I discussed the all too evident need of soap, and of clothing, “she is a very worthy woman, but she is always poor.” Always poor, always ailing, yet always humorous, were the Laure Tabarys. Did the unfortunate woman try to boil her washing, the stove must needs break, and the cauldron full of scalding water descend upon Madeleine. No sooner were her wounds dressed than AndrÉa developed a fever. It would be interesting to know how many litres of gasoline were consumed by us in the carrying of Mme. Tabary’s children to and from hospitals located ten and twenty miles away. One would have thought the distracted mother might welcome these deportations. But, naturally enough, she distrusted them, and having faithfully promised to give up the baby to our care on a certain day, left instead for Ham. Of how she was won over,—that is a tale which belongs to the annals of the medical department rather than to me. But I have heard rumours of hair ribbons and dolls and candy and fairy stories and I know not what of similar remedies which Hippocrates and Galen never mentioned. Judge, then, whether our doctors were bugbears or no among the children of our villages!

But the ell housed another family besides the Tabarys. Across the hall lodged the Moroys; M. Edouard, an old man of eighty-four, his niece and nephew and his granddaughter, Mlle. Suzanne. All lived in the one room. It was a room with only three corners as well, because in the fourth the floor rose in an arch which indicated the cellar-way. In this room were three beds, a table, a stove, three chairs and a broken sewing machine. Yet I never saw the room in disorder, nor heard any requests from the family beyond that of a little sugar for GrandpÈre, and, if possible, another bed, so that Charles might have a place to sleep. Meantime, Charles slept upon the floor. In this room were two windows. The one to the south interested me by chance, because the panes looked so clear. I stepped over and put out my hand. It went straight through the framework; there was no glass. “But you must be cold!” I exclaimed, knowing well the common fear of courants d’air. Besides, it was late October, and the nights were already frosty. “Yes, a little,” Mlle. Suzanne admitted in a matter of fact way. “Yes,” agreed her aunt, in a more positive tone. “And besides, Mademoiselle, our stove is too small, as you see. In fact, it is not ours, but belongs to Mme. Tabary. But she has so large a family, we made an exchange. Perhaps when you distribute stoves——” I promise to remember, wondering the while if we in like circumstances would share our last crusts with like generosity. For the window, so scarce was glass, oiled linen was the best that could be done, a pity considering that it excluded the sun with the cold.

Mlle. Suzanne, with the exception of Germaine Tabary and Lydie Cerf, is the only young woman in Canizy. She had been taken captive by the Germans, but was allowed to return. Her family, however, met an unknown fate; father and brother, they were avec les Boches. A curious circumstance in this connection was that Suzanne, having been an independent worker, received no pension for her loss. She, too, seemed a Good Samaritan to her neighbours—lame Mme. Juliette depends on Suzanne to bring her her pitcher of milk; Mme. Musqua, sick and irresponsible, has only to send over her children to Mlle. Suzanne to be cared for,—what matter two more or less in the crowded room? I added my quota to her labours by asking her to take charge of washing rags, and started her in with those of her next-door neighbour, Mme. Tabary. For the purpose, I have given her a cylindrical boiler, standing three feet high. This, when not in use, is placed over by the cellar-way. On washing days, it is set on an open fire in the court, where GrandpÈre feeds it with laboriously chopped twigs. Meantime, back of the house, patches of colour and of flapping white begin to adorn the wire fence. Suzanne also sews, by hand and, now that its frame is mended by I know not how many screws in the warped wood, by machine. We give out the sewing, and she earns by it perhaps three francs a week.

Beyond the Moroys, lives Mme. Thuillard, Charles, as the neighbours call her to distinguish her from the Thuillards, O. I have seldom found this energetic lady at home, but I often see her, and sometimes hear her, as she passes with firm step down the street to work in her garden. When not playing, her ten-year-old granddaughter OrÉlie follows in her wake. This leaves in the unlighted recesses of the barn, her husband, M. Charles. He seems an apologetic and conciliatory soul, with whom I discuss domestic needs, such as a window, a lamp, and sheets for the beds. He will tell his wife what I say and report to-morrow when he comes for the milk. It is in his entrance-way, so to speak, that I first noticed a pile of willow-withed market baskets. “O, yes,” he said, “I had hundreds of such, but the Boches took them.” “Are they then made hereabouts?” “Before the war; but now no one is left who understands the trade.” The next day I am likely to get a report, and a sharp one, from Madame, his wife. “Sheets,” she queries, “what sort of sheets? Are they linen sheets? Blankets. Are they wool? Are they white? Look you, before the war, I had five dozen linen sheets and plenty of blankets and down quilts of the finest quality. Keep your gifts about which you make so much talk! I will have none of them, none of them at all!”

I have sometimes wondered if Madame were related to the contrary-minded but equally independent wife of the garde champÊtre who distributes—or not—at her pleasure, the communal supply of bread. “I hear,” she began one day, as I waited for change for a hundred franc note—change which came in gold, by the way, as well as in silver—“I hear that you are to make a distribution of gifts. Do not forget me! I will receive anything, but you understand, not for payment; only as a present. Behold,” this with a playful slap on the shoulder, “any one will tell you that I have a tongue. O, lÀ, lÀ, lÀ!”