h so
many men of size--of a genial and gentle disposition. Yet Henri and
Jules knew well enough that no such thing was to be expected; indeed,
to speak only the truth, the people of Berlin knew this Fritz as a
sardonic, brutal, overbearing individual. He bore down upon the trio
like a huge, overgrown bull, and, making no bones of the matter, seized
Henri in a grip from which there was no escaping.

"Get on with you to the station. A spy, eh?" he asked the cheerful
constable who had called for his assistance.

"Who knows?" the man grunted. "But it's more than likely, for all
Frenchmen in these parts are spies. Drag him along, while I see to
this other whipper-snapper."

They were followed by a growing crowd of citizens of Berlin, a curious
crowd which ran beside the two mountains of the law, so as to get a
clear view of the prisoners, a crowd composed of elderly, white-bearded
gentlemen, of middle-aged ladies of almost aristocratic appearance, and
of youths and young girls, and gutter urchins--people who, you would
have thought, once they had obtained a view of the captives and
ascertained the reason for their arrest, would have been satisfied to
leave the matter and to go on their way forgetting the subject.
Perhaps in other days that crowd might have so behaved itself, and
might have vanished long before the constables and their captives had
reached the station; but crowds in the city of Berlin of other days,
and the mob as it was in the latter part of July and the early days of
August of 1914, were essentially and unmistakably different. War had
been declared by the Fatherland, that war expected by the nation,
eagerly awaited by all Teutons, longed for, oh how much and how
eagerly, by all the subjects of the Kaiser! And now that it had come,
now that the Emperor had thrown down the gauntlet before France and
Russia, you would have imagined that the people of Berlin would have
been overjoyed, would have been delighted, too happy and too contented
to be angry. And yet, it so happened that there was disappointment,
anger, rage, in the hearts of almost all these Germans. True, they had
obtained, after all those years of training, a declaration for which
they had so eagerly waited. France was in their power, conquered
already, they told themselves, for was she not utterly unprepared for
war? And as for Russia, Russia the Colossus, the steam-roller,
inefficiency reigned in her ranks, and she, too, in her turn,