pressed me deeply,' said Captain Hamel later. In a few words Colonel Driant declares that every one has done his duty honorably to the end, and that nothing can stop the enemy now. My dear friends,' he says, ' a few moments more and we must either die or be made prisoners.'

'But,' says Captain Hamel, 'why not try to lead some of these brave fellows out of the wood? That will mean just so many more fighting men to

morrow.'

Colonel Driant consults with a glance his two battalion commanders.

"It is hard; I would rather die,' says Captain Vincent.

Tears were rolling down his cheeks, and everybody present was crying.

Major Renouard approved Captain Hamel's suggestion. All agreed. Major Renouard made sure that there was nothing left of which the enemy could make use, and the order was given to withdraw to the village of Beaumont.

What remained of the battalions was formed in four columns. Colonel Driant, Major Renouard, Captains Vincent and Hamel, each took his place at the head of one of them. Only that commanded by the last-named was to succeed in escaping almost intact.

Driant proposed trying to cross the crest behind the wood of Ville. On the edge of the wood, he was checked. He ordered his whole column to pass him, to make sure that there were no laggards, after the manner of a captain who is the last to leave his ship. He had his cloak over his arm and his cane in his hand. The instant that the chasseurs debouched into the open they were shot down by machine-guns.

The shots came from Joli-Cœur, from cover afforded by the hollow which Driant himself had dug on the plateau as a shelter for his reserves, and which the Germans had seized.

The column, which was advancing in

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groups, struggled on and grew still thinner; it was no longer a unit on the march, but small fragments trying to force a way through, leaving dead on the ground at every step. The course was from shell-hole to shell-hole. To convey some idea of the terrain, we may say that, during his retreat, at a near-by point, Captain Berweiler and seventy of his men occupied a single shell-crater.

"The colonel ought not to have tried it,' a chasseur told me. 'He was no good at hiding.'

Just as he was jumping into a shellhole, Driant was hit in the temple, turned half around, exclaiming, 'Oh, my God!' and fell face to the foe. This is the testimony of Paul Coisne, sergeant in the 56th; it is confirmed, word for word, by Sergeant Jules Haquin, of the 59th, who says, 'I put out my head to see what was going on, and I saw Colonel Driant just as he fell, facing the enemy, on the edge of the hole.'

In this extremity Colonel Driant was not abandoned by his men. Coisne jumped down beside Haquin, and together they cleared the approach to the hole so that they could draw the colonel in where they were, hoping that he was merely wounded; but they could hear the death-rattle, and saw blood flowing from his mouth. Two or three minutes later, the Germans came up and seized the two sergeants. The colonel gave no sign of life, but the two prisoners wanted to take him on their shoulders. The Germans objected.

It was between four and five in the afternoon. Lieutentant-Colonel Driant, Deputy for Nancy, lay stretched upon Lorraine soil, bathed in his own blood.

Meanwhile some men of his column joined a group of the 59th about 30 metres ahead of them, and called out that the colonel had been hit. They kept on their way. A moment later Major Renouard was killed and Cap

tain Vincent wounded. Our men were followed so closely by the enemy that they could see Lieutenant Crampel, when, as he was made prisoner, he waved his hand to them in a despairing gesture of farewell.

Captain Hamel, a young man of twenty-eight, the sole survivor of this group of noble officers, was now in command of the two battalions. He made his way back to Beaumont with his column, the last remnant of those heroes.

To the last moment we persisted in hoping. It is the instinct of friendship and patriotism to keep hope anchored in one's heart; and, after all, we knew nothing to make it certain that Colonel Driant had not revived; but here follows the German letter which closed the life of a great Frenchman:

"TO MADAME DRIANT, née BOULANGER 'Chasseurs-à-pied 57/59-France 'WIESBADEN, 16 March, 1916.

'MADAME, My son, a lieutenant of artillery, who fought face to face with your husband, asks me to write and assure you that Monsieur Driant was buried with every mark of care and respect and that his enemy comrades dug and decorated a fitting grave for him. I hasten to add the assurance of my profound sympathy to that of my son. He bids me say to you that there was found on Monsieur Driant's body a medallion with three small hearts, which he wore around his neck. We hold it at your disposal. If you desire, I can send it to you through the Baroness von Glütz-Ruchte at Soleure, who will be kind enough to send you these lines. On one part of the chain there are these words on a gold background (the medallion is gold), "Souvenir of the first communion of Marie Therèse, June 14, 1902."

'Monsieur Driant was buried beside Major Étienne Renouard, of the same

battalion, 57/59 Chasseurs-à-pied, on the edge of Caures Wood, between Beaumont and Flabas.

"The grave is to be cared for, so that you will be able to find it when peace

returns.

'Accept, madame, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.

'BARONESS SCHROTTER.'

And soon there arrived from the King of Spain confirmation of this intelligence and even more precise detail.

MADRID, April 3, 15h. 10m. 'MARTIN, chef protocole, Paris, —

'We learn from Berlin that the grave of Colonel Driant has been found, near Beaumont and Caures, beside that of the major of the 59th Chasseurs, and those of seven of his men. Regards.

'ALFONSO R.

Let us not even yet take our leave of this glorious mound of earth. Beside this grave words have been spoken so fittingly, with such an accent of truth words so expressive of their subject, that I must set them down; they are the best portraits of the dead. And if they seem only to concern a Colonel Driant who fell in the midst of his gallant chasseurs, face to the enemy, to save France in the great battle of Verdun, let us not hesitate to tarry and to gather for our remembrance radiant deeds and words.

Should I myself demur; should I be afraid lest individuals seem too trivial amid the preoccupations in which we are involved by the vast drama, and the nameless sacrifices which flow like a river of blood? In painting the best type of soldier, I paint to the best of my ability the army of 19141916 the whole moral force of the country; I assist in collecting the treasure to which future ages will come to kindle the imagination and warm the

Another writes me,

'I believe that under the circumstances his "children" showed themselves worthy of their "father"; for to us the colonel was always "Father Driant." He was so fatherlike, and so full of kindly consideration!... There was nobody who feared to go to him and ask for what he needed; he knew that his children were boys from Northern Lorraine and the Aisne, from those invaded districts which are groaning under the heel of the oppressor; and he had put them at their ease by saying, "Ask and you shall receive." There was never need of an intermediary; you knocked at the door of his modest dug-out, and received from him with affection what you asked him for: boots, drawers, shirts, pipes, tobacco. What would n't he have done for his chasseurs!

'And now he has died, died like a brave man, face to the foe! Is not this the fulfillment of his dream, and, as it were, the apotheosis of his "works"?" (Letter from a wounded private of the 56th: Br.)

And still another:

'He went very often to the outposts, at all hours, and had haversacks full of tobacco and chocolate brought behind him. He would say a few words to the sentries, and then, turning to the man

'His indifference went to the point of rashness,' said a chasseur. His indifference: do you not like that proud and transparent word to describe courage? And he adds, 'No one can contradict this: Colonel Driant was never afraid. He sought out corners just a little bit dangerous, where the bullets came from time to time. "Colonel," some one would say to him, " don't stand on that spot; the Boches have been firing at it since morning." That would pique his pride: he would go there and say, "You know well enough that they'll never fire at me.'

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Here is another anecdote that I have heard from his men:

'At Gercourt, on September 1, 1914, after he had entered the village, riding, crop in hand, at the head of the 56th, he was ordered to fall back. Many men, among them Lieutenant Delcassé, who was wounded, had fallen. The bullets spat out by the machine-guns at the top of the church-tower were whistling round our ears, and the colonel (then major), rode backward, with no sign of haste. Observing the amazed look of a corporal, he said, "You wonder what I am doing, do you, my boy? Well, I am keeping my face to the foe, for I don't propose to have any one say that Driant died with his back to the Boches."

Driant found a death in harmony with his whole existence, and his last sacrifice would have contented his soul. It takes its place so naturally at the

end of his days that he seems to have foreseen it, to have dreamed it. Do but read this page, which I have copied from his Robinsons Sous-marins, and compare it with the narrative I have given you.

'I am on a battlefield. The bullets sing their death-dealing song through the ranks, which grow thinner and thinner; the melinite shells burst, sending forth their characteristic puffs of black smoke shot with gleams of red.

"The air is poisoned with their acrid vapor; I breathe with difficulty.

'I have no idea where and why I am fighting.

'Is this the war of revenge so long dreamed of? What is this forestcrowned ravine of which my feverish glances search out the details? Are we in France or in Germany?

'By my side chasseurs-à-pied are firing, firing without pause, lying in the furrows. . . . Behind them subalterns run hither and thither, stooping low, to point out the objectives, and rectify the elevation.

'I raise my arm, waving a sword which feels heavy, heavy as an axe or as a sledge-hammer.

'I try to shout, "Forward!" suddenly a sharp pain passes through me: I have heard distinctly a nearer hissing sound amid the intense humming of the projectiles which pass in frenzied swarms, and I fall to the ground, seated pointing to the hill with my arm which seems to grow ever more numb and lifeless.

'A bullet has entered my side, fulfilling its muttered destiny in the dull sound of pierced flesh and crushed bones: then another strikes me in the centre of the forehead, and it seems to me that my brain bursts like a ripe pomegranate. An icy hand stretches me at full length in a furrow, amid poppies and bluebells.

'Silence: the artillery-fire slackens, the fusillade dies away; darkness overspreads the heavens.

'I am close beside a little beardless soldier, with a blue cloak, and on the collar I read, "No. 1," the number of

else. The little chasseur's eyes are closed; he seems to sleep; but he has, as I have, a hole in the centre of his forehead.'

Driant dreamed a true dream. He sleeps beside 'his little chasseurs.'

DROUOT

diers to their officers. Another document, no less authentic, will allow us to probe still deeper into the generous nature of that poet dead on the field of honor, and so to see how a young man typical of France consummates his sacrifice and enters the ranks of heroes. To this end I shall make use of a very beautiful letter written by a friend and comrade in arms, Henri Massis, a young v/riter already wounded

and decorated with the croix de guerre. 'When the mobilization began,' began,' writes Massis, 'I met Paul Drouot at the dépôt near Langres. It was a great satisfaction to our families to know that we were together. I was already well aware of the loftiness of his character and its fine quality; I knew how his imagination turned instinctively toward every form of grandeur, and how he loved only the most vigorous, the most heroic, the most religious of the works of the human intellect. Our friend had his eyes fixed on all the things which are eternal, on all that can make the divine manifest upon the earth. Led by aspiring masters, he had garnered the greatest poems of mankind. He revered the Greeks, the Hindus, the great Englishmen, Hugo, whom he idolized. But is this the time to speak of literature? Nevertheless it was in the field of literature that he toiled to compose that heroic, glowing vision of life and of man which was inspired by the Catholicism which he had lost and found again, and which affords a perfect proof of his sincerity.

'Meanwhile, when war was a fact, he straightway emptied his soul of all that there was within it of youthful enthusiasm, all that tendency to levity due to the turbulence of young blood, to make room for something more serious and more virile-something which those who knew him best had already discerned in his passionate ardor. Drouot had recovered the faith which a Christian mother- how splendid she was! had implanted in his heart. I shall not forget the prayers we said at night, in that garret where for three months we slept on the straw; nor, above all, that Mass which we said at Hûmes for Péguy and Psichari, when we partook of communion together.

"Then, after those uncertain and distressing months, we started north with the Third Chasseurs. On December 20

we arrived together at our destination tion on a terrible night of cold and dread, which gave way to dawn only to reveal to us a ghastly charnel-house of mud. It was our first experience with the realities of war. That march down to Houlette, when we stumbled over dead bodies and rubbed against the unknown shapes of the men we were going to relieve, will live forever in my memory; it was our descent into hell. And yet, in the morning, we were light of heart, and glad to have reached at last that spot to which we had looked forward for three long months in the dreary idleness of a dépôt.

'Despite his feeble health, Drouot, jealous for the honor of the name he bore, had insisted upon serving. I know all that he suffered physically, in order to do his duty, to prove himself worthy of his grandfather, the general in the Grande Armée, and worthy, too, of the noble plans he himself had conceived. He was of those on whom we could rely for the work which will have to be undertaken immediately after the war, in order that all the virtues which the war has revived, and which are destined to regenerate France, may flourish in their full vigor. In the discharge of his duties he came to regard himself as the historian of our glorious battalion. May we some day be privileged to read the sheets which he wrote in feverish haste, in the evening after so many fierce engagements: they must not be left anonymous, although written with no thought of having his name appear. They will console us in a measure for the loss of the work which he had scarcely begun, and they will have for a fitting conclusion his own beautiful death.

'In the evening of May 9, after the victorious assault in which the battalion had captured the enemy's position, Major Madelin selected him to go with him to inspect the captured