rrow--' And then he left the room.

"The next day the terrified old servant wished to dress her, but the
mad woman began to scream violently, and resisted with all her might.
The officer ran upstairs quickly, and the servant threw herself at his
feet and cried: 'She will not come down, Monsieur, she will not.
Forgive her, for she is so unhappy.'

"The soldier was embarrassed, as in spite of his anger, he did not
venture to order his soldiers to drag her out. But suddenly he began to
laugh, and gave some orders in German, and soon a party of soldiers was
seen coming out supporting a mattress as if they were carrying a
wounded man. On that bed, which had not been unmade, the mad woman, who
was still silent, was lying quite quietly, for she was quite
indifferent to anything that went on, as long as they let her lie.
Behind her, a soldier was carrying a parcel of feminine attire, and the
officer said, rubbing his hands: 'We will just see whether you cannot
dress yourself alone, and take a little walk.'

"And then the procession went off in the direction of the forest of
Imauville; in two hours the soldiers came back alone, and nothing more
was seen of the mad woman. What had they done with her? Where had they
taken her to? No one knew.

"The snow was falling day and night, and enveloped the plain and the
woods in a shroud of frozen foam, and the wolves came and howled at our
very doors.

"The thought of that poor lost woman haunted me, and I made several
applications to the Prussian authorities in order to obtain some
information, and was nearly shot for doing so. When spring returned,
the army of occupation withdrew, but my neighbor's house remained
closed, and the grass grew thick in the garden walks. The old servant
had died during the winter, and nobody troubled any longer about the
occurrence; I alone thought about it constantly. What had they done
with the woman? Had she escaped through the forest? Had somebody found
her, and taken her to a hospital, without being able to obtain any
information from her? Nothing happened to relieve my doubts; but by
degrees, time assuaged my fears.

"Well, in the following autumn the woodcock were very plentiful, and as
my gout had left me for a time, I dragged myself as far as the forest.
I had already killed four or five of the long-billed birds, when I
knocked over one which fell into a ditch full of branches, and I was
obliged to get into it, in order to pick it up, and I f