German landwehr, whose regiment had
been sent to Sedan to supply the place of troops dispatched to service
in the field. He was a personage of importance, notwithstanding his
comparatively modest rank, for he was nephew to the governor-general,
who, from his headquarters at Rheims, exercised unlimited power over
all the district. He, too, prided himself on having lived at Paris, and
seized every occasion ostentatiously to show he was not ignorant of its
pleasures and refinements; concealing beneath this film of varnish his
inborn rusticity, he assumed as well as he was able the polish of one
accustomed to good society. His tall, portly form was always tightly
buttoned in a close-fitting uniform, and he lied outrageously about
his age, never being able to bring himself to own up to his forty-five
years. Had he had more intelligence he might have made himself an object
of greater dread, but as it was his over-weening vanity, kept him in
a continual state of satisfaction with himself, for never could such a
thing have entered his mind as that anyone could dare to ridicule him.

At a subsequent period he rendered Delaherche services that were of
inestimable value. But what days of terror and distress were those that
followed upon the heels of the capitulation! the city, overrun
with German soldiery, trembled in momentary dread of pillage and
conflagration. Then the armies of the victors streamed away toward the
valley of the Seine, leaving behind them only sufficient men to form
a garrison, and the quiet that settled upon the place was that of a
necropolis: the houses all closed, the shops shut, the streets deserted
as soon as night closed in, the silence unbroken save for the hoarse
cries and heavy tramp of the patrols. No letters or newspapers reached
them from the outside world; Sedan was become a dungeon, where the
immured citizens waited in agonized suspense for the tidings of disaster
with which the air was instinct. To render their misery complete
they were threatened with famine; the city awoke one morning from its
slumbers to find itself destitute of bread and meat and the country
roundabout stripped naked, as if a devouring swarm of locusts had passed
that way, by the hundreds of thousands of men who for a week past had
been pouring along its roads and across its fields in a devastating
torrent. There were provisions only for two days, and the authorities
were compelled to apply to Belgium for relief; all supplies