and a discharge
of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and
followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane. He extended
his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the
height of the leaping earth.

"_Quinze metres--comme ca, monsieur! Les Allemands? Ah! cochons!_ And
they shoot execrably. We shoot from the shoulder (_sur l'epaule_)--so!
They shoot under the arm (_sous le bras_)--so! And they like to join
hands like children--they are afraid to go alone. They came out of the
wood crouching like dogs--one behind the other. They are a bad
lot--_canaille_. They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on
church-towers. There was one of our sappers--_diable!_ they tied him to
a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him."

"But you make them pay for that?"

He smiled grimly. "_Mais oui!_ When they see us they throw everything
away and run. If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, '_Pas
de mal, Alsatien_.' But we're used to that trick. We just go through
them like butter and say, '_Pour vous!_' A little _etrenne_, you know,
monsieur, what you call 'Christmas-box'!" He laughed at some grim
recollection.

"_Deutschen Hunde! Stink-preussen!_[10] _Ja!_" It was the Alsatian who
was speaking.

"_Sie sprechen Deutsch!_"[11] I exclaimed in astonishment.

"_Ja, ich kann nicht anders--um so mehr schade!_"[12] he replied
mournfully. He was an Alsatian "volunteer," he explained, having
deserted for the French side at an opportune moment. It was odd to hear
him declaiming against the Germans in their own language. It is a way
the Alsatians have. Treitschke once lamented the fact. "But," I
interpolated, "it must be very painful for those of you who cannot get
away like yourself."

"Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German
army. They watch us--and they put Prussian _sous-officiers_ over us to
spy. So when we see the _sous-officier_ sneaking about, we raise our
voices and say, 'Ah! those beastly French, we'll give it them.' But when
we are alone--well, then we say what we think."

And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits--how
they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies,
like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the
knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources
of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied
terr