the Australian ask, in a loud, slow drawl, whether there
was any officer about who could speak French. He asked the question
gravely, but without anxiety. I pushed through the crowd and said:

"I speak French. What's the trouble?"

I saw then that, like the French poilu I have described, this tall
Australian was in the grasp of a French agent de police, a small man of
whom he took no more notice than if a fly had settled on his wrist. The
Australian was not drunk. I could see that he had just drunk enough
to make his brain very clear and solemn. He explained the matter
deliberately, with a slow choice of words, as though giving evidence
of high matters before a court. It appeared that he had gone into the
estaminet opposite with four friends. They had ordered five glasses of
porto, for which they had paid twenty centimes each, and drank them.
They then ordered five more glasses of porto and paid the same price,
and drank them. After this they took a stroll up and down the street,
and were bored, and went into the estaminet again, and ordered five
more glasses of porto. It was then the trouble began. But it was not
the Australian who began it. It was the woman behind the bar. She served
five glasses more of porto and asked for thirty centimes each.

"Twenty centimes," said the Australian. "Vingt, Madame."

"Mais non! Trente centimes, chaque verre! Thirty, my old one. Six sous,
comprenez?"

"No comprennye," said the Australian. "Vingt centimes, or go to hell."

The woman demanded the thirty centimes; kept on demanding with a voice
more shrill.

"It was her voice that vexed me," said the Australian. "That and the
bloody injustice."

The five Australians drank the five glasses of porto, and the tall
Australian paid the thirty centimes each without further argument. Life
is too short for argument. Then, without words, he took each of the five
glasses, broke it at the stem, and dropped it over the counter.

"You will see, sir," he said, gravely, "the justice of the matter on my
side."

But when they left the estaminet the woman came shrieking into the
street after them. Hence the agent de police and the grasp on the
Australian's wrist.

"I should be glad if you would explain the case to this little
Frenchman," said the soldier. "If he does not take his hand off my wrist
I shall have to kill him."

"Perhaps a little explanation might serve," I said.

I spoke to the agent de police at some length, describing th