Breteuil in ten hours. There, in a small inn, we
found some eggs and bread, which we devoured like a flight of famished
locusts. It was very cold, and several of us sought shelter in a room at
the station, where there was a fire. In the middle of this room there
were two chairs, on one of them sat a Prussian soldier, on the other
reposed his legs. He was a big red-haired fellow, and evidently in some
corner of his Fatherland passed as a man of wit and humour. He was good
enough to explain to us, with a pleasant smile, that in his eyes we were
a very contemptible sort of people, and that if we did not consent to
all the terms of peace which were proposed by "the Bismarck," he and his
fellow warriors would burn our houses over our heads, and in many other
ways make things generally uncomfortable to us. "Ah! speak to me of
Manteuffel," he occasionally said: and as no one did speak to him of
Manteuffel, he did so himself, and narrated to us many tales of the
wondrous skill and intelligence of that eminent general. As he called,
after the manner of his nation, a _batterie_ a _paderie_, and otherwise
Germanized the French language, much of his interesting conversation was
unintelligible.

We had been at Breteuil about an hour when a Prussian train came puffing
up. I managed to induce an official to allow me to get into the luggage
van; and thus, having started from Paris as a bullock, I reached Amiens
at twelve o'clock as a carpet-bag. The Amiens station, a very large one
covered in with glass, was crowded with Prussian soldiers; and for one
hour I stood there the witness of and sufferer from unmitigated
ruffianism. The French were knocked about, and pushed about. Never were
negro slaves treated with more contempt and brutality than they were by
their conquerors. I could not stand on any spot for two minutes without
being gruffly ordered to stand on another by some officer. Twice two
soldiers raised their muskets with a general notion of staving in my
skull "pour passer le temps." Frenchmen, whatever may be their faults,
are always extremely courteous in all their relations with each other,
and with strangers. In their wildest moments of excitement they are
civil. They may poison you, or run a hook through you; but they will do
it, as Isaac Walton did with the worm, "as though they loved" you. They
were perfectly cowed with the rough bullying of their masters. It is
most astonishing--considering how good-natured Germans are wh