light his pipe, and singing sea-songs, which ing on the ground, to give to mine. I had made the Prussian officers laugh. They collected a small bundle, when a corporal said: "This fellow is a real Frenchman; on guard in the neighbourhood, having he sees things in a bright light." noticed what I was doing, came and seized me by the whiskers, shaking me, and striking me on the face.

I could not understand that at all: no, indeed! I said to myself that my cousin was losing his senses.

What grieved me still more was to see my fine horses perishing my poor horses so sleek, so spirited, so steady, the best horses in the commune, and which I had reared with so much satisfaction. Oh, how deplorable! ... Passing along the hedges, by the roadside, I pulled here and there handfuls of grass, to give them a taste of something green, and for a moment they would stare at it, and toss up their heads, then devour this poor stuff. The poor brutes could be seen wasting away, and this pained me more than anything.

"Ah! you greedy old miser! Is that the way you feed your beasts?"

I was beside myself with rage, and had already lifted my whip-handle to send the rascal sprawling on the earth, when Cousin George precipitated himself between us crying : "Christian! what are you dreaming of?"

He wrested the whip from me, and whilst I was quivering in every limb, he began to excuse me to the dirty Prussian; saying that I had acted hastily, that I had thought the hay was to be left, that it ought to be considered that our horses too followed the battalion, &c.

The fellow listened, drawn up like a gendarme, and said: "Well, then, I will pass it over this time; but if he begins his tricks again, it will be quite another thing."

Then I went into the stable and stretched myself in the empty rack, my hat drawn over my face, without stirring for a couple of hours.

The battalion was going to march again. George was looking for me everywhere. At last he found me. I rose, came out, and the sight of all these soldiers dressed in line, with their rifles and their helmets, made my blood run cold: I wished for death.

George spoke not a word, and we moved forward; but from that moment I had resolved upon flight, at any price, abandon

For a fortnight or three weeks there had been no more fighting; the city and Bazaine's army were surrounded by huge earthworks, which the Prussians had armed with guns. We could see that afar off, following the road on our right. We could see many places, too, where the soil had been recently turned over; and George said they were pits, in which hundreds of dead laying everything. buried. A few burnt and bombarded villages, farms, and castles in ruins, were also seen in the neighbourhood. There was no more fighting; but there was a talk of francs-tireurs, and the Silesians looked un

comfortable.

At last, on the tenth day after our departure, after having crossed and recrossed the country in all directions, we arrived about three o'clock, at a large village on the Moselle, when the battalion came to a halt. Several detachments from our battalion had filled up the gaps in other battalions, so that there remained with us only the third part of the men who had come from Droulingen. After the distribution of provender, seeing that the officers' horses had been fed, and that they were putting their bridles on, I just went and picked up a few handfuls of hay and straw which were ly

The same evening, an extraordinary event happened; we received a little straw! We lay in the open air, under our carts, because the village at which we had just arrived was full of troops. I had only twelve sous left, and George but twenty or thirty. He went to buy a little bread and eau-de-vie in a public-house; we dipped our bread in it, and in this way we were just able to sustain life.

Every time the corporal passed, who had laid his hand upon me, my knife moved of its own accord in my pocket, and I said to myself: "Shall an Alsacian, an old Alsacian, endure this affront without revenge? Shall it be said that Alsacians allow themselves to be knocked about by such spawn as these fellows, whom we have thrashed a hundred times in days gone by, and who used to run away from us like hares?"

The Prussians knew a month beforehand that Bazaine would never come out of his camp, and that he would finally surrender after he had consumed all the provisions in Metz; they said this openly, and looked upon Marshal Bazaine as our best general: they praised and exalted him for his splendid campaign. The only fault they could find was, that he had not shut himself up sooner; because then things would have been settled much earlier. They complained too, of our Emperor, and affirmed that the best thing we could do would be to set him on his throne again.

George, who could see by my countenance what I was thinking of, said: Christian! Listen to me. Don't get angry. Set down these blows to the account of the Plébiscite, like the bonds for bread, flour, hay, meat, and the rest. It was you who voted all that: the Germans are not the causes! They are brute beasts, so used to have their faces slapped, that they catch every opportunity to give others the like, when there is no danger, and when they are ten to one. These slaps don't produce the same effect on them as on us; they are felt only on the surface, no further! So comfort George and I heard these things reyourself; this monstrous beast never peated a hundred times at the inns and thought he was inflicting any disgrace up-public-houses where we halted. The on you; he took you for one of his own French innkeepers made us sit behind the sort."

stove, and for pity, passed us sometimes But instead of pacifying me, George the leavings of the soup; but for this we only made me the more indignant; espe- should have perished of hunger. They cially when he told me that the Germans, asked us in whispers what the Germans talking together, had told how Queen Au- were saying, and when we repeated their gusta of Prussia had just sent her own sayings, the poor people said to us: cook to the Emperor Napoleon, to cook“ Really, how fond the Prussians are of nice little dishes for him; and her own us! Certainly they do owe some comfort band to play agreeable music under his to the men who have surrendered! Every balcony ! brave deed deserves to be rewarded."

I had had enough! I lay under our cart, and all that night I had none but bad dreams.

:

We had always hoped that, on coming near a railway, the remains of the battalion would get in, and that we should be sent home unhappily our men were intended to fill up gaps in other battalions: companies were detached right and left, but there were always enough left to want our conveyances, and to prevent us from setting off home.

We had not had clean shirts for a fortnight; we had not once taken off our shoes, knowing that we should have too much difficulty in getting them on again; we had been wetted through with rain and dried by the sun five-and-twenty times; we had suffered all the misery and wretchedness of hunger, we were reduced to scarecrows by weariness and suffering; but neither cousin nor I suffered from dysentery like those Germans; the poorest nourishment still sustained us; but the bacon, the fresh meat, the fruits, the raw vegetables devoured by these creatures without the least discretion, worked upon them dreadfully no experience could teach them wisdom; their natural voracity made them devoid of all prudence.

As a climax to our miseries, the officers of our battalion were talking of marching on Paris.

One of the Lorraine innkeepers said this to us; he was also the first to tell us that Gambetta, having escaped from Paris in a balloon, was now at Tours with GlaisBizoin, and several others, to raise a powerful army behind the Loire. In these parts they got the Belgian papers, and whenever we heard a bit of good news, it screwed up our courage a little.

Quantities of provisions and stores were passing: immense flocks of sheep, and herds of oxen, cases of sausages, barrels of bread, wine, and flour; sometimes regiments also. The trains for the East were carrying wounded in heaps, stretched one over another in the carriages upon mattrasses on frames, their pale faces seeking fresh air and coolness at all the windows. German doctors with the red cross upon their arms were accompanying them, and in every village there were ambulances.

The heavy rains and the first frosts had come. A thousand rumours were afloat of great battles under the walls of Paris. The Prussians were especially wroth with Gambetta; "that Gambetta! the bandit!" as they called him, who was preventing them from having peace and bringing back Napoleon. Never have I seen men so enraged with an enemy because he would not surrender. The officers and soldiers talked of nothing else.

"That Gambetta," said they, "is the cause of all our trouble. His francs-tireurs

deserve to be strung up. But for him, peace would be made. We should already have got Alsace and Lorraine; and the Emperor Napoleon, at the head of the army of Metz, would have been on his way to restore order at Paris."

At every convoy of wounded their indignation mounted higher. They thought it perfectly natural and proper that they should set fire to us, devastate our country, plunder and shoot us; but for us to defend ourselves was infamous!

Is it possible to imagine a baser hypocrisy? For they did not believe what they were saying: they wanted to make us think that our cause was a bad one; yet how could there be a holier and a more glorious one?

This poor woman had observed our wretched plight; she had invited us in, asking us where we were from, and we had told her of our misfortunes. She her self had told us that there remained a few bundles of hay in the loft, and that we might take them, as she had no need for them; the Germans having eaten her cow.

We climbed up there to sleep by night, and we drew up the ladder after us, listening to the rain plashing on the roof and running off the tiles.

George had but ten sous left, and I had nothing, when, on the third day, as we were lying in the hay-loft, about two in the morning, the bugle sounded. Something had happened: an order had come I don't know what.

Of course every Frenchinan, from the We listened attentively. There were oldest to the youngest - and principally hurrying footsteps; the butts of the musthe women-prayed for Gambetta's suc-kets were rattling on the pavement; they cess, and more than once tears of emotion were assembling, falling in, and in all didropped at the thought that, perhaps, he rections were cries: might save us. Crowds of young men left the country to join him, and then the Prussians burdened their parents with a war contribution of fifty francs a day. They were ruining them; and yet this did not prevent others from following in numerous bands.

The Prussians threatened with the galleys whosoever should connive at the flight, as they called it, of these volunteers, whether by giving them money, or supplying them with guides, or by any other means. Violence, cruelty, falsehood - all sorts of means seemed good to the Germans to reduce us to submission; but arms were the least resorted to of all these means, because they did not wish to lose men, and in fighting they might have done so.

"The drivers! the drivers! where are they?"

The commander was swearing; he shouted furiously.

"Fetch them here! find them! shoot the vagabonds!"

We did not stir a finger.

Suddenly the door burst open. The Prussians demanded in German and in French: "Where are the drivers - those Alsacian drivers?"

The aged dame answered not a word; she shook her head, and looked as deaf as a post, just as usual. At last, out they rushed again. The rascals had indeed seen the trap-door in the ceiling, but it seems they were in a hurry, and could not find a ladder without losing time. last, whether they saw it or not, presently we heard the tramping of the men in the mud, the cracking of the whips, the rolling of the carts, and then all was silent.

At

The battalion had disappeared. Then only, after they had left half-anhour, the kind old woman below began to call us. "You can come down," she said;

And we came down.

We had stopped three days at the village of Jametz in the direction of Montmédy. It was in the latter part of October; the rain was pouring; George and I had been received by an old Lorraine womau, tall and spare, Mother MarieJeanne, whose son was serving in Metz. She had a small cottage by the roadside, with a little loft above, which you reached" they are gone now." by a ladder, and a small garden behind, entirely ravaged. A few ropes of onions, a few peas and beans in a basket, were all her provisions. She concealed nothing; and whenever a Prussian came in to ask for anything, she feigned deafness and answered nothing. Her misery, her broken windows, her dilapidated walls, and the little cupboard left wide open, soon induced these greedy gluttons to go somewhere else, supposing there was nothing for them there.

The poor woman said, laughing heartily, "Now you are safe! Only you must lose no time; there might come an order to catch you. There, eat that."

She took out of the cupboard a large basin full of soup made of beans; for she used to cook enough for three or four days at a time - and warmed it over the fire.

"Eat it all; never mind me! I have got more beans left."

There was no need for pressing, and in, a couple of minutes the basin was empty. The good woman looked on with pleasure, and George said to her: "We have not had such a meal for a week."

So much the better! I am glad to have done you any service! And now go. I wish I could give you some money; but I have none.'