But so far as we could discern the General paid it no heed--he nor any of his staff.

It was his business, but seemingly the business went well.
It was late that afternoon when we met our third general, and this meeting was quite by chance.

Coming back from a spin down the lines we stopped in a small village called Amifontaine, to let our chauffeur, known affectionately as The Human Rabbit, tinker with a leaky tire valve or something.

A young officer came up through the dusk to find out who we were, and, having found out, he invited us into the chief house of the place, and there in a stuffy little French parlor we were introduced in due form to General d'Elsa, the head of the Twelfth Reserve Corps, it turned out.

Standing in a ceremonious ring, with filled glasses in our hands, about a table which bore a flary lamp and a bottle of bad native wine, we toasted him and he toasted us.
He was younger by ten years, I should say, than either Von Heeringen or Von Zwehl; too young, I judged, to have got his training in the blood- and-iron school of Bismarck and Von Moltke of which the other two must have been brag-scholars.