For months now the bridge over the Marne, at Meaux, has been guarded, and even those going to market cannot cross without showing their papers.  The formality is very trying to them, for the reason that the mairie opens at eight, and closes at twelve not to reopen again until three and close at six.  You see those hours are when everyone is busiest in the fields.  The man or woman who has to go to market on Saturday must leave work standing and make a long trip into Quincy—­and often they have three or four miles to go on foot to do it—­just at the hour when it is least easy to spare the time.

To make it harder still, a new order went out a few weeks ago.  Every man, woman, and child (over fifteen) in the war zone has to have, after October 1, a carte d’identite, to which must be affixed a photograph.

This regulation has resulted in the queerest of embarrassments.  A great number of these old peasants—­and young ones too—­never had a photograph taken.  There is no photographer.  The photographer at Esbly and the two at Meaux could not possibly get the people all photographed, and, in this uncertain weather, the prints made, in the delay allowed by the military authorities.  A great cry of protestation went up.  Photographers of all sorts were sent into the commune.  The town crier beat his drum like mad, and announced the places where the photographers would be on certain days and hours, and ordered the people to assemble and be snapped.

One of the places chosen was the courtyard at Amelie’s, and you would have loved seeing these bronzed old peasants facing a camera for the first time.  Some of the results were funny, especially when the hurried and overworked operator got two faces on the same negative, as happened several times.

Real autumn weather is here, but, for that matter, it has been more like autumn than summer since last spring.  The fields are lovely to see on days when the sun shines.  I drove the other day just for the pleasure of sitting in my perambulator, on the hillside, and looking over the slope of the wide wheat fields, where the women, in their cotton jackets and their wide hats, were reaping.  The harvesting never looked so picturesque.  I could pick out, in the distance, the tall figure of my Louise, with a sheaf on her head and a sickle in her hand, striding across the fields, and I thought how a painter would have loved the scene, with the long rays of the late September sunset illuminating the yellow stretch.

Last Wednesday we had a little excitement here, because sixteen German prisoners, who were working on a farm at Vareddes, escaped—­some of them disguised as women.

I wasn’t a bit alarmed, as it hardly seemed possible that they would venture near houses in this district, but Pere was very nervous, and every time the dog barked he was out in the road to make sure that I was all right.

Oddly enough, it happened on the very day when two hundred arrived at Meaux to work in the sugar refinery.  The next day there was a regular battue, as the gendarmes beat up the fields and woods in search of the fugitives.