On the other side of the Hotel des Invalides from that occupied by the military school and Champ-de-Mars is the principal diplomatic and departmental district of Paris, with many embassies (not ours, however, nor the British—­which are across the river) and many administrative offices of the French nation.

Soldiers and government officials and foreign diplomats dominate the quarter—­and homes of the old French aristocracy.

The Hotel des Invalides, founded by Louis XIV and designed to accommodate, as an old soldiers’ home, some seven thousand veterans of his unending wars, has latterly served as headquarters for the military governor of Paris, and also—­principally—­as a war museum.

Here are housed collections of priceless worth and transcendent interest.  The museum of artillery contains ten thousand specimens of weapons and armor of all kinds, ancient and modern.  The historical museum, across the court of honor, was—­in the years when I spent many fascinating hours there—­extraordinarily rich in personal souvenirs of scores of illustrious personages.

What it must be now, after the tragic years of a world war, and what it will become as a treasure house for the years to come, is beyond my imagination.

It was into this enormously rich atmosphere, pregnant with everything that conserves France’s most glorious military traditions, that Captain Ferdinand Foch was called in 1885 for two years of intensive training and study.

VII

JOFFRE AND FOCH

After quitting the School of War in 1887 (he graduated fourth in his class, as he had at Saumur; he was third at Fontainebleau), Ferdinand Foch was sent to Montpellier as a probationer for the position of staff officer.

He remained at Montpellier for four years—­first as a probationer and later as a staff officer in the Sixteenth Army Corps, whose headquarters are there.

[Illustration:  Marshall Joffre, General Foch]

It is a coincidence—­without special significance, but interesting—­that Captain Joseph Joffre had spent several years at the School of Engineering in Montpellier; he left there in 1884, after the death of his young wife, to bury himself and his grief in Indo-China; so the two men did not meet in the southern city.[1]

Joffre returned from Indo-China in 1888, while Foch was at Montpellier, and after some time in the military railway service, and a promotion in rank (he was captain for thirteen years), received an appointment as professor of fortifications at Fontainebleau.

Some persons who claim to have known Joffre at Montpellier have manifested surprise at the greatness to which he attained thirty years later; he did not impress them as a man of destiny.  That is quite as likely to be their fault as his.  And also it is possible that Captain Joseph Joffre had not then begun to develop in himself those qualities which made him ready for greatness when the opportunity came.