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|                        Billet de Logement.                            |
|                                                                       |
| Mme. Bonnard, 131 rue Robert le Frisson, logera les sous-dits,        |
| savoir:  un officier, un sous officier, deux hommes; fournira le lit,  |
| place au feu et a la chandelle, conformement a loi du 3 juillet, 1877.|
|     Delivre a la Mairie,                                              |
|       le 31me Janvier, 1915.                                          |
|     Le Maire ----                                                     |
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The Camp Commandant, who is a keeper of lodging-houses and an Inspector of Nuisances, had given me a slip of paper on which was inscribed the address No. 131 rue Robert le Frisson and a printed injunction to the occupier to know that by these presents she was enjoined to provide me with bed, fire, and lights.  Armed with this billeting-paper and accompanied by my servant, a private in the Suffolks, who was carrying my kit, I knocked at the door of No. 131, affecting an indifference to my reception which I did not feel.  It seemed to me that a rate-collector, presenting a demand note, could have boasted a more graceful errand.  The door opened and an old lady in a black silk gown inquired, “Qu’est-ce que vous voulez, M’sieu’?” I presented my billeting-paper with a bow.  Her waist was girt with a kind of bombardier’s girdle from which hung a small armoury of steel implements and leather scabbards:  scissors, spectacle case, a bunch of keys, a button-hook, and other more or less intimidating things.  “Jeanne,” she called in a quavering voice, and as the bonne appeared, tying her apron-strings, they read the billeting-paper together, the one looking over the shoulder of the other, Madame reading the words as a child reads, and as though she were speaking to herself.  The paper shook in her tremulous hands, and I could see that she was very old.  It was obvious that my appearance in that quiet household was as agitating as it was unexpected.  “Et votre ordonnance?” she asked, with a glance at my servant.  “Non, il dort dans la caserne.”  “Bien!” she said, and with a smile made me welcome.

It was soon evident that, my credentials being once established, I was to be regarded as a member of the household, and nothing would satisfy Madame but that I should be assured of this.  Having shown me my bedroom, with its pompous bed draped with a tent of curtains, she took me on a tour of her menage.  I was conducted into the kitchen, bright with copper pans and the marmite—­it was as sweet and clean as a dairy; the resources of the still-room were displayed to me, and the confitures and spices were not more remarkable than the domestic pharmacy in which the herbs of the field had been distilled