e were two Englishmen, who had
come to the country as sightseers and were gazing about them with looks
of quiet curiosity. They were both also stout, and kept chatting in their
own language, sometimes referring to their guidebook, and reading aloud
the names of the places indicated.

Suddenly the train stopped at a little village station, and a Prussian
officer jumped up with a great clatter of his sabre on the double
footboard of the railway carriage. He was tall, wore a tight-fitting
uniform, and had whiskers up to his eyes. His red hair seemed to be on
fire, and his long mustache, of a paler hue, stuck out on both sides of
his face, which it seemed to cut in two.

The Englishmen at once began staring, at him with smiles of newly
awakened interest, while M. Dubuis made a show of reading a newspaper. He
sat concealed in his corner like a thief in presence of a gendarme.

The train started again. The Englishmen went on chatting and looking out
for the exact scene of different battles; and all of a sudden, as one of
them stretched out his arm toward the horizon as he pointed out a
village, the Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long legs
and lolling backward:

"I killed a dozen Frenchmen in that village and took more than a hundred
prisoners."

The Englishmen, quite interested, immediately asked:

"Ha! and what is the name of this village?"

The Prussian replied:

"Pharsbourg." He added: "We caught those French scoundrels by the ears."

And he glanced toward M. Dubuis, laughing conceitedly into his mustache.

The train rolled on, still passing through hamlets occupied by the
victorious army. German soldiers could be seen along the roads, on the
edges of fields, standing in front of gates or chatting outside cafes.
They covered the soil like African locusts.

The officer said, with a wave of his hand:

"If I had been in command, I'd have taken Paris, burned everything,
killed everybody. No more France!"

The Englishman, through politeness, replied simply:

"Ah! yes."

He went on:

"In twenty years all Europe, all of it, will belong to us. Prussia is
more than a match for all of them."

The Englishmen, getting uneasy, no longer replied. Their faces, which had
become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their long whiskers. Then the
Prussian officer began to laugh. And still, lolling back, he began to
sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France, insulted the prostrate
enemy; he sneered