addles. And so they rode, these three,
like true Prussians every one. And I swear it took Jacob Oertler, that
was Jules of the Midi, all his possible to keep from crying out; but he
could not for his life keep down the sobs. However, the Frenchmen
thought that he wept to see the disgrace of Paris. So that, and nothing
else, saved him.

When Strauss and his two stayed a moment to consult as to the way, the
crowd of noisy whelps pressed upon them, snarling and showing their
teeth. Then Strauss and his men grimly fitted a cartridge into each
carbine. Seeing which, it was enough for these very faint-heart
patriots. They turned and ran, and with them ran Jules of the Midi that
waited at the Hotel de Ville. He ran as fast as the best of them; and so
no man took me for a German that day or any other day that I was in
Paris.

Then, after this deliverance, I went on to the Halles. The streets were
more ploughed with shells than a German field when the teams go to and
fro in the spring.

There were two men with me in the uniform of the Hotel de Ville, to
carry the provisions. For already the new marketings were beginning to
come in by the Porte Maillot at Neuilly.

As ever, when we came to the market-stalls, it was "Give place to the
Hotel de Ville!" While I made my purchases, an old man came up to the
butcher-fellow who was serving, and asked him civilly for a piece of the
indifferent beef he was cutting for me. The rascal, a beast of Burgundy,
dazed with absinthe and pig by nature, answered foully after his kind.
The old man was very old, but his face was that of a man of war. He
lifted his stick as though to strike, for he had a beautiful young girl
on his arm. But I saw the lip of the Burgundian butcher draw up over his
teeth like a snarling dog, and his hand shorten on his knife.

"Have politeness," I said sharply to the rascal, "or I will on my return
report you to the General, and have you fusiladed!"

This made him afraid, for indeed the thing was commonly done at that
time.

The old man smiled and held out his hand to me. He said--

"My friend, some day I may be able to repay you, but not now."

Yet I had interfered as much for the sake of the lady's eyes as for the
sake of the old man's grey hairs. Besides, the butcher was but a pig of
a Burgundian who daily maligned the Prussians with words like pig's
offal.

Then we went back along the shell-battered streets, empty of carriages,
for all the horses had bee