by marching down
the streets arm-in-arm singing ribald songs, or a squad of sullen German
prisoners were marched up them on their way to the prison, within which
they vanished amid the imprecations of the crowd. One such squad I saw
arriving in a motor lorry, from the tailboard of which they jumped down
to enter the gates, and one of them, a clumsy fellow of about thirteen
stones, landed heavily in his ammunition boots from a height of about
five feet on the foot of a British soldier on guard. The latter winced
and hastily drew back his foot, but beyond that gave no sign; I wondered
whether, had the positions been reversed and the scene laid across the
Rhine, a German guard would have exhibited a similar tolerance. I doubt
it.

The town itself seemed to be living on its past, for indubitably it had
seen better days. An ancient foundation of the Jesuits now converted
into the Map and Printing Department of the R.E.'s, a church whose huge
nave had been secularised to the uses of motor transport, a museum which
served to incarcerate the German prisoners, all testified to the
vanished greatness, as did also the private mansions, which preserved a
kind of mystery behind their high-walled gardens and massive double
doors. There was one such which I never passed at night without thinking
of the Sieur de Maletroit's door. The streets were narrow, tortuous, and
secretive, with many blind alleys and dark closes, and it required no
great effort of the imagination--especially at night when not a light
showed--to call to mind the ambuscades and adventures with the watch
which they must have witnessed some centuries before. The very names of
the streets--such as the _Rue d'Arbalete_--held in them something of
romance. To find one's billet at night was like a game of blind man's
buff, and one felt rather than saw one's way. Not a soul was to be seen,
for the whole town was under _droit de siege_, and the civilian
inhabitants had to be within doors by nine o'clock, while all the
entrances and exits to and from the town were guarded by double sentries
night and day. Certain dark doorways also secreted a solitary sentry,
and my own office boasted a corporal's guard--presumably because the
Field-Cashier had his rooms on the first floor. The sanitation was truly
medieval; on either side of the cobbled streets noisome gutters formed
an open sewer into which housewives emptied their slop-pails every
morning, while mongrel dogs nosed among th