d this dignified young woman, whose opinions coincided so closely
with their own.

The basket was empty. The ten people had finished its contents without
difficulty amid general regret that it did not hold more. Conversation
went on a little longer, though it flagged somewhat after the passengers
had finished eating.

Night fell, the darkness grew deeper and deeper, and the cold made Boule
de Suif shiver, in spite of her plumpness. So Madame de Breville offered
her her foot-warmer, the fuel of which had been several times renewed
since the morning, and she accepted the offer at once, for her feet were
icy cold. Mesdames Carre-Lamadon and Loiseau gave theirs to the nuns.

The driver lighted his lanterns. They cast a bright gleam on a cloud of
vapor which hovered over the sweating flanks of the horses, and on the
roadside snow, which seemed to unroll as they went along in the changing
light of the lamps.

All was now indistinguishable in the coach; but suddenly a movement
occurred in the corner occupied by Boule de Suif and Cornudet; and
Loiseau, peering into the gloom, fancied he saw the big, bearded
democrat move hastily to one side, as if he had received a
well-directed, though noiseless, blow in the dark.

Tiny lights glimmered ahead. It was Totes. The coach had been on the
road eleven hours, which, with the three hours allotted the horses in
four periods for feeding and breathing, made fourteen. It entered the
town, and stopped before the Hotel du Commerce.

The coach door opened; a well-known noise made all the travellers start;
it was the clanging of a scabbard, on the pavement; then a voice called
out something in German.

Although the coach had come to a standstill, no one got out; it looked
as if they were afraid of being murdered the moment they left their
seats. Thereupon the driver appeared, holding in his hand one of
his lanterns, which cast a sudden glow on the interior of the coach,
lighting up the double row of startled faces, mouths agape, and eyes
wide open in surprise and terror.

Beside the driver stood in the full light a German officer, a tall young
man, fair and slender, tightly encased in his uniform like a woman in
her corset, his flat shiny cap, tilted to one side of his head, making
him look like an English hotel runner. His exaggerated mustache, long
and straight and tapering to a point at either end in a single blond
hair that could hardly be seen, seemed to weigh down the corners of