The dead tiger is a splendid beast-obviously over ten feet long, and deeply coated for the time of year. My lucky shot had got him in the middle of the forehead. I let off three rounds in quick succession the preconcerted sign that all is well, and that no wounded animal is left skulking near to attack the passer-by. The followers will be some time in arriving. So I sit down and rest. A few level rays of sunlight are filtering through the leaves. The sal trees stand motionless, bright in their attire. In these forests, even in the hot weather, there is some freshness at the coming of day. The wind has not yet risen. It is very quiet. The two dead bodies before me are silent, almost incredible, witnesses of the fierce life which that peaceful scene conceals. Then I hear the men calling. I call back; and in a few minutes they arrive reassured the forest-guard with my spare rifle, Phaganu and Chaitu, a syce bringing one of the horses, and a couple of odd men to help. The tiger is trussed up and slung on a pole, and so we start for camp. It is 8 o'clock when we arrive there. I have been having a fairly strenuous time since 4 o'clock of the previous morning. But the delight of the servants as we arrive, added to the prospect of toast and lots of hot tea, banishes fatigue. Besides, the skinning of the tiger must be superintended-a delicate operation. At midday, however, I retire to my tent, and get three hours' sleep in a temperature ap proaching 120°. Then, as it is the last day, I go out to look for a chetel-and get him. But that is another story. the Boulogne gave one time to sh- lunch pleasantly; but which ave of us in Boulogne can get was away from crude memories? om Those quays will be always ect haunted by a phantom jostle out of tired men in khaki hauling ver their heavy kit to the leavehat boat, or-less tired but less nd cheerful-from it: and next nd door to where I ate my meal 08- used to be the officers' club. ng Too many memories there, of an friends one crossed, coming or or- going, and did not see again. ect When the train started, for France presented at first the he spectacle of Cockney vulgarities dd in building worse than any ys. which England perpetrates. ce The French have a way of en using ironwork about villas 988 so that it resembles the frilling il. in some picture - paper's dehe lineation of a cocotte's under by clothes. Then came Etaples and the abomination of desolation along those sand-dunes with disused munition-makers' huts they cannot all be converted into hen-houses, I suppose, but one was, a blessed transformation. It was good, also, to see at a foundry near Boulogne vast heaps of rusty barbed-wire in rolls, poisonous stuff on its way to become some clean useful piece of metal. Beyond Etaples we seemed to be traversing ordinary undulating country, for only a quick eye would detect an ancient tideway in the valley of the Canche, up which the line to Arras runs from Etaples junction; and Montreuil-surMer came on me as a surprise in the middle of tillage. Also, I had not expected to see a fortress. From the station a broad flight of steps cut across a steep zigzag of the main road; then at the next turning a gateway tunnelled through the huge brick wall of rampart, and instantly there came the shock of delight at seeing an old, old, little street climbing straight up, with houses whose lines are all bulged and budged by time. That also crossed a zigzag, and from the top of it the Grande Rue led on through the town, between houses, many of them old and all of them pleasant. Then on the left was a little mall, with trees breaking into green, and beyond it, what I had been told to look for,-the Hôtel de France. It was not a hotel at all, however, but an oldfashioned inn built about a courtyard full of tables, on which guests had left such a profusion of bottles and glasses as gave good promise of hospitality. I got a room for rather fewer francs than you would pay shillings in Eng. land, left my pack, and went out upon the ramparts-anx ious chiefly to find the sea. Not a sign of it. The nearest salt water is now at ParisPlage, ten kilometres as the crow flies; and in that sunny haze of north-easterly weather nothing was clear. But what filled one's eye was the fortress: complete, and almost modern: to-day no doubt no better than a shell trap, but even in Crimean times an awkward place to tackle. How did it get there? What was it for! Even admitting that the Canche was once a sea-way, Montreuil was never a port of landing when such works as these were constructed. Putting General Headquarters there was like quartering Lord Jellicoe in one of Nelson's three-deckers, an odd mixture of fitness and unfitness. But I had to wait for my answer till next day, and then got it basking in the sun on the ramparts, while I read in a local guide-book what I now set down. When France really began to be France, and not a mere huddle of disputed princi palities, Montreuil was its northern outpost. You still enter from the station from the north through the Porte de Boulogne: but near where the Hôtel de France keeps a mem ween became a luxury for great the monarchs, and nations instead ther of tribes or principalities went 3ur- at each other. When the Emish. peror Charles the Fifth, a man who of the newer type, wanted to ape, push outwards from Artois and re- take in all Picardy, Montreuil the stood a siege of six weeks de- valiantly. That was in 1522. con- But in 1537 the Imperial troops You came again, under Egmont, ack Count de Buren, thirty thouand sand strong, and having artilhar- lery. In half an hour walls give built only to stand batteringbe- ram or catapult had a breach In in them. The garrison got and leave to march out with the one honours of war, but when ow: they had departed the place ed: was sacked, burnt, and better came a desert. Francis the tain First had to bribe people to eval re 1 in уре ark, and reinhabit it, behind new fortifications, on which four thousand men were at work when war broke out afresh in 1542. Two years later de Buren was Con- before it again with forty thoudis- sand men, but the new works ises very largely those which you in now see had been designed to meet gunnery, and for three months the place prolonged its resistance till peace relieved it. From that day on Montreuil of was never directly engaged in euil war: though in 1689 Vauban, hen making a chain of works to Dom of .ose defend the territory which in France had acquired in Flan ders from the Spaniards,thought architecture might easily be it worth while to bring this worse employed. Her name fortress up-to-date as a part has something practical and of his second defence line. housewifely about it: I picture What remains of it to-day is her in the image of a certain used much as are the hulks solid capable Mother Superior, for naval cadets. Where a who, in addition to running a bridge crosses the wide deep hospital, an orphanage, a school, fosse to what was the citadel, a and other subsidiary appliances, notice forbids entrance. I im- used to provide officers during agined a magazine: but here the war with excellent meals was only the abode for officials and hot baths, just away from of the Ecole Militaire-a big the line. She indeed was Belbarrack devoted to educating gian, by a matter of two enfants de troupe, children born miles: but Belgian or Picard, while their parents are on the what is the racial difference! strength of some regiment, and That Low Country type has trained with a view to becom- contributed a good deal to the ing professional non-commis- amalgam which we call France. sioned officers. Montreuil is not quintessential French, like Tours or Angers, but French it is a French town, full of the life of little rentiers, retired officers, huissiers, school-teachers, and other simple people, terribly anxious about the dwindling franc: looking out from its walls across vast undulating stretches of tillage, where nothing but a road here and there breaks the leisurely curves of ground, on which heavy lumbering horses drag plough and harrow for slow-moving phlegmatic Picard farmers. The day to know Montreuil would be a Saturday, when it is the market-place for that rich district. Montreuil has also its civil Ecole Supérieure, and is and is a considerable centre for education. A good many buildings that were ecclesiastical have been annexed for the purpose. Others were destroyed in the Revolution, for the place went Red, and wanted to get rid of its name. Montreuil, or Monstrueil, is Monasteriolum, and recalls that a little monastery, founded by Salvius, or St Saulve, in the seventh century, was the first settlement on this hillock; whereas in 1793 they desired to show their approval of the Montagnards by becoming Montagne-sur-Mer. However, Saint Saulve won, and his church still dominates the town. But St Austreberthe's chapel is now a club or common - room for secondary teachers. I hope the lady feels that this scrolltopped piece of squat Picard But merely to see it, Eastertime was good enough for me. Sun streamed down upon the ramparts, and the townspeople were out there taking their pleasure: black-robed women, somehow very mediaval and appropriate; wise de |