id quietly, "not perhaps over trivial matters, though they do
bicker and quarrel a good deal among themselves, but they have their
great calamities, and die of thirst, of hunger, and of cold. I remember
during a very hard frost some years ago our garden was full of dying
birds, though my father had bushels of grain thrown to them every day.
It was one of the most painful sights I ever saw, and I know I felt
pretty nearly as much cut up at it as I do now. I hate to see dumb
animals suffer. There is a sort of uncomplaining misery about them that
appeals to one, at any rate appeals to me, infinitely. These poor
fellows are suffering too, you will say. Yes, but they have their
consolation. They promise themselves that as soon as they get into Paris
they will join a corps and take vengeance on those who have hurt them.
They may think, and perhaps with reason, that when the trouble is over,
they will find their cottages still standing, and will take up life
again as they left it. They have at least the consolation of swearing, a
consolation which, as far as I know, is denied to animals and birds."

"You are a rum fellow, Hartington, and I never know when you are in
earnest and when you are not."

"Let us go back," Rene Caillard, who, with the others, had been
standing silently, said abruptly. "This is too painful; I feel
suffocated to think that such a humiliation should fall on Paris. Surely
all civilized Europe will rise and cry out against this desecration." He
turned and with his comrades walked back towards the gate. Cuthbert
followed with Arnold Dampierre.

"That is just the way with them," the former said, "it would have been
no desecration had they encamped before Berlin, but now, because it is
the other way, they almost expect a miracle from Heaven to interpose in
their favor. Curious people the French. Their belief in themselves is
firm and unshakable, and whatever happens it is the fault of others, and
not of themselves. Now, in point of fact, from all we hear, the Germans
are conducting the war in a very much more humane and civilized way than
the French would have done if they had been the invaders, and yet they
treat their misfortunes as if high Heaven had never witnessed such
calamities. Why, the march of the Germans has been a peaceful procession
in comparison with Sherman's march or Sheridan's forays. They have
sacked no city, their path is not marked by havoc and conflagration;
they fight our men, and mayb