their
teeth from huts now far behind the German lines, and censors who
knew that no blue pencil could hide the truth of the retreat, and war
correspondents who had to write the truth and hated it.

Gaston whispered gloomily behind my chair: "Mon petit caporal"--he
called me that because of a fancied likeness to the young
Napoleon--"dites donc. Vous croyex quils vont passer par Amiens? Non,
ce n'est pas possible, ca! Pour la deuxieme fois? Non. Je refuse a le
croire. Mais c'est mauvais, c'est affreux, apres tant de sacrifice!"

Madame, of the cash-desk, sat in the dining-room, for company's sake,
fixing up accounts as though the last day of reckoning had come...as it
had. Her hair, with its little curls, was still in perfect order. She
had two dabs of color on her cheeks, as usual, but underneath a waxen
pallor. She was working out accounts with a young officer, who smoked
innumerable cigarettes to steady his nerves. "Von Tirpitz" was going
round in an absent-minded way, pulling at his long whiskers.

The war correspondents talked together. We spoke gloomily, in low
voices, so that the waiters should not hear.

"If they break through to Abbeville we shall lose the coast."

"Will that be a win for the Germans, even then?"

"It will make it hell in the Channel."

"We shall transfer our base to St.-Nazaire."

"France won't give in now, whatever happens. And England never gives
in."

"We're exhausted, all the same. It's a question of man-power."

"They're bound to take Albert to-night or to-morrow."

"I don't see that at all. There's still a line..."

"A line! A handful of tired men."

"It will be the devil if they get into Villers-Bretonneux to-night. It
commands Amiens. They could blow the place off the map."

"They won't."

"We keep on saying, 'They won't.' We said, 'They won't get the Somme
crossings!' but they did. Let's face it squarely, without any damned
false optimism. That has been our curse all through."

"Better than your damned pessimism."

"It's quite possible that they will be in this city tonight. What is to
keep them back? There's nothing up the road."

"It would look silly if we were all captured to-night. How they would
laugh!"

"We shouldn't laugh, though. I think we ought to keep an eye on things."

"How are we to know? We are utterly without means of communication.
Anything may happen in the night."

Something happened then. It was half past seven in the evening. There
were t