er jumped up with a great clatter of his sabre on the double
footboard of the railway carriage. He was tall, wore a tight-fitting
uniform, and had whiskers up to his eyes. His red hair seemed to be on
fire, and his long mustache, of a paler hue, stuck out on both sides of
his face, which it seemed to cut in two.

The Englishmen at once began staring, at him with smiles of newly
awakened interest, while M. Dubuis made a show of reading a newspaper.
He sat concealed in his corner like a thief in presence of a gendarme.

The train started again. The Englishmen went on chatting and looking out
for the exact scene of different battles; and all of a sudden, as one
of them stretched out his arm toward the horizon as he pointed out a
village, the Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long
legs and lolling backward:

"I killed a dozen Frenchmen in that village and took more than a hundred
prisoners."

The Englishmen, quite interested, immediately asked:

"Ha! and what is the name of this village?"

The Prussian replied:

"Pharsbourg." He added: "We caught those French scoundrels by the ears."

And he glanced toward M. Dubuis, laughing conceitedly into his mustache.

The train rolled on, still passing through hamlets occupied by the
victorious army. German soldiers could be seen along the roads, on the
edges of fields, standing in front of gates or chatting outside cafes.
They covered the soil like African locusts.

The officer said, with a wave of his hand:

"If I had been in command, I'd have taken Paris, burned everything,
killed everybody. No more France!"

The Englishman, through politeness, replied simply:

"Ah! yes."

He went on:

"In twenty years all Europe, all of it, will belong to us. Prussia is
more than a match for all of them."

The Englishmen, getting uneasy, no longer replied. Their faces, which
had become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their long whiskers.
Then the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still, lolling back,
he began to sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France, insulted
the prostrate enemy; he sneered at Austria, which had been recently
conquered; he sneered at the valiant but fruitless defence of the
departments; he sneered at the Garde Mobile and at the useless
artillery. He announced that Bismarck was going to build a city of iron
with the captured cannon. And suddenly he placed his boots against the
thigh of M. Dubuis, who turned away his eyes, reddening