"
In these mountains Julius Caesar lost (the story says) his sword; and
in these mountains the Roman armies were staved off by the Avernians.
They are as full of wonder as anything in Europe can be, and they are
complicated and tumbled all about, so that those who travel in them with
difficulty remember where they have been, unless indeed they have that
general eye for a countryside which is rare nowadays among men.
Just at the place where the mountain land and the plain land meet, where
the shallow valleys get rounder and less abrupt, I went last September,
following the directions of a soldier who had told me how I might find
where the centre of the manoeuvres lay. The manoeuvres, attempting to
reproduce the conditions of war, made a drifting scheme of men upon either
side of the River Sioule. One could never be certain where one would find
the guns.
I had come up off the main road from Vichy, walking vaguely towards the
sound of the firing. It was unfamiliar. The old and terrible rumble has
been lost for a generation; even the plain noise of the field-piece which
used to be called "90" is forgotten by the young men now. The new little
guns pop and ring. And when you are walking towards them from a long way
off you do not seem to be marching towards anything great, but rather
towards something clever.
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