savor less of bravery than of
fool-hardiness. And foolhardiness is no longer a failing of the citizens
of Rouen as it was in the days when their city earned renown by its
heroic defenses. Last of all-final argument based on the national
politeness--the folk of Rouen said to one another that it was only right
to be civil in one's own house, provided there was no public exhibition
of familiarity with the foreigner. Out of doors, therefore, citizen and
soldier did not know each other; but in the house both chatted freely,
and each evening the German remained a little longer warming himself at
the hospitable hearth.

Even the town itself resumed by degrees its ordinary aspect. The French
seldom walked abroad, but the streets swarmed with Prussian soldiers.
Moreover, the officers of the Blue Hussars, who arrogantly dragged their
instruments of death along the pavements, seemed to hold the simple
townsmen in but little more contempt than did the French cavalry
officers who had drunk at the same cafes the year before.

But there was something in the air, a something strange and subtle,
an intolerable foreign atmosphere like a penetrating odor--the odor of
invasion. It permeated dwellings and places of public resort, changed
the taste of food, made one imagine one's self in far-distant lands,
amid dangerous, barbaric tribes.

The conquerors exacted money, much money. The inhabitants paid what was
asked; they were rich. But, the wealthier a Norman tradesman becomes,
the more he suffers at having to part with anything that belongs to him,
at having to see any portion of his substance pass into the hands of
another.

Nevertheless, within six or seven miles of the town, along the course
of the river as it flows onward to Croisset, Dieppedalle and Biessart,
boat-men and fishermen often hauled to the surface of the water the
body of a German, bloated in his uniform, killed by a blow from knife or
club, his head crushed by a stone, or perchance pushed from some bridge
into the stream below. The mud of the river-bed swallowed up these
obscure acts of vengeance--savage, yet legitimate; these unrecorded
deeds of bravery; these silent attacks fraught with greater danger than
battles fought in broad day, and surrounded, moreover, with no halo of
romance. For hatred of the foreigner ever arms a few intrepid souls,
ready to die for an idea.

At last, as the invaders, though subjecting the town to the strictest
discipline, had not commi