elf is a little, tubby man, who looks as
though he might be about fifty-five; his face is red as fire when it is
not purple, and the way he rages about is enough to make Olympus
tremble. The crowd of frightened people who came to the Hotel de Ville
for _laisser-passers_ and other papers, all found their way straight to
his office; no one was on hand to sort them out and distribute them
among the various bureaus of the civil administration. Even the staff
officers did very little to spare their chief and head off the crowd.
They would come right up to him at his table and shove a _piece
d'identite_ under his nose, with a tremulous request for a vise; he
would turn upon them and growl, "_Bas bossible; keine Zeit; laissez mois
dranquille, nom de D----!_" He switched languages with wonderful
facility, and his cuss words were equally effective in any language that
he tried. Just as with us, everyone wanted something quite out of the
question and then insisted on arguing about the answer that they got. A
man would come up to the General and say that he wanted to get a pass to
go to Namur. The General would say impatiently that it was quite
impossible, that German troops were operating over all that territory
and that no one could be allowed to pass for several days. Then Mr. Man
would say that that was no doubt true, but that _he_ must go because he
had a wife or a family or a business or something else that he wanted to
get to. As he talked, the General would be getting redder and redder,
and when about to explode, he would spring to his feet and advance upon
his tormentor, waving his arms and roaring at him to get the ---- out of
there. Not satisfied with that, he invariably availed of the opportunity
of being on his feet to chase all the assembled crowd down the stairs
and to scream at all the officers in attendance for having allowed all
this crowd to gather. Then he would sit down and go through the same
performance from the beginning. I was there off and on for more than two
hours, and I know that in that time he did not do four minutes'
continuous, uninterrupted work. Had it not been for the poor frightened
people and the general seriousness of the situation, it would have been
screamingly funny and worth staying indefinitely to see.

I had my share of the troubles. I explained my errand to an aide-de-camp
and asked him to see that proper instructions were given for the sending
of the telegrams. He took them and went aw