and eating much.

Conversation naturally turned on the war. Terrible stories were told
about the Prussians, deeds of bravery were recounted of the French; and
all these people who were fleeing themselves were ready to pay homage to
the courage of their compatriots. Personal experiences soon followed, and
Bottle le Suif related with genuine emotion, and with that warmth of
language not uncommon in women of her class and temperament, how it came
about that she had left Rouen.

"I thought at first that I should be able to stay," she said. "My house
was well stocked with provisions, and it seemed better to put up with
feeding a few soldiers than to banish myself goodness knows where. But
when I saw these Prussians it was too much for me! My blood boiled with
rage; I wept the whole day for very shame. Oh, if only I had been a man!
I looked at them from my window--the fat swine, with their pointed
helmets!--and my maid held my hands to keep me from throwing my
furniture down on them. Then some of them were quartered on me; I flew at
the throat of the first one who entered. They are just as easy to
strangle as other men! And I'd have been the death of that one if I
hadn't been dragged away from him by my hair. I had to hide after that.
And as soon as I could get an opportunity I left the place, and here I
am."

She was warmly congratulated. She rose in the estimation of her
companions, who had not been so brave; and Cornudet listened to her with
the approving and benevolent smile of an apostle, the smile a priest
might wear in listening to a devotee praising God; for long-bearded
democrats of his type have a monopoly of patriotism, just as priests have
a monopoly of religion. He held forth in turn, with dogmatic
self-assurance, in the style of the proclamations daily pasted on the
walls of the town, winding up with a specimen of stump oratory in which
he reviled "that besotted fool of a Louis-Napoleon."

But Boule de Suif was indignant, for she was an ardent Bonapartist. She
turned as red as a cherry, and stammered in her wrath: "I'd just like to
have seen you in his place--you and your sort! There would have been
a nice mix-up. Oh, yes! It was you who betrayed that man. It would be
impossible to live in France if we were governed by such rascals as you!"

Cornudet, unmoved by this tirade, still smiled a superior, contemptuous
smile; and one felt that high words were impending, when the count
interposed, and, not without