redly read such news as he thought might interest them, while
Pache, the seamstress of the company, mended his greatcoat for him and
Lapoulle cleaned his musket. The first item was a splendid victory won
by Bazaine, who had driven an entire Prussian corps into the quarries of
Jaumont, and the trumped-up tale was told with an abundance of dramatic
detail, how men and horses went over the precipice and were crushed on
the rocks beneath out of all semblance of humanity, so that there was
not one whole corpse found for burial. Then there were minute details of
the pitiable condition of the German armies ever since they had invaded
France: the ill-fed, poorly equipped soldiers were actually falling
from inanition and dying by the roadside of horrible diseases. Another
article told how the king of Prussia had the diarrhea, and how Bismarck
had broken his leg in jumping from the window of an inn where a party
of zouaves had just missed capturing him. Capital news! Lapoulle laughed
over it as if he would split his sides, while Chouteau and the others,
without expressing the faintest doubt, chuckled at the idea that soon
they would be picking up Prussians as boys pick up sparrows in a field
after a hail-storm. But they laughed loudest at old Bismarck's accident;
oh! the zouaves and the turcos, they were the boys for one's money! It
was said that the Germans were in an ecstasy of fear and rage, declaring
that it was unworthy of a nation that claimed to be civilized to employ
such heathen savages in its armies. Although they had been decimated
at Froeschwiller, the foreign troops seemed to have a good deal of life
left in them.

It was just striking six from the steeple of the little church of
Dontrien when Loubet shouted:

"Come to supper!"

The squad lost no time in seating themselves in a circle. At the very
last moment Loubet had succeeded in getting some vegetables from a
peasant who lived hard by. That made the crowning glory of the feast: a
soup perfumed with carrots and onions, that went down the throat soft as
velvet--what could they have desired more? The spoons rattled merrily in
the little wooden bowls. Then it devolved on Jean, who always served the
portions, to distribute the beef, and it behooved him that day to do it
with the strictest impartiality, for hungry eyes were watching him and
there would have been a growl had anyone received a larger piece than
his neighbors. They concluded by licking the porringers, a