They had their own lovers⁠—boys in blue somewhere between Vaux-sur-Somme and Hartmanns-weilerkopf⁠—and apart from occasional intimacies with English officers quartered in Amiens for long spells, left the traffic of passion to other women who walked the streets.

The Street of the Three Pebbles⁠—la rue des Trois Cailloux⁠—which goes up from the station through the heart of Amiens, was the crowded highway. Here were the best shops⁠—the hairdresser, at the left-hand side, where all day long officers down from the line came in to have elaborate luxury in the way of close crops with friction d’eau de quinine , shampooing, singeing, oiling, not because of vanity, but because of the joyous sense of cleanliness and perfume after the filth and stench of life in the desolate fields; then the booksellers’ (Madame Carpentier et fille ) on the right-hand side, which was not only the rendezvous of the miscellaneous crowd buying stationery and La Vie Parisienne