still left standing. Others were working or talking just as if
they were members of the families. As you passed through the different
towns you saw entire regiments drilling in the squares, and, in spite
of the rumble of the carriage-wheels, you could every moment hear the
hoarse words of command.

M. Dubuis, who during the entire siege, had served as one of the
National Guard in Paris, was going to join his wife and daughter, whom
he had prudently sent away to Switzerland before the invasion.

Famine and hardship had not diminished his big paunch so
characteristic of the rich, peace-loving merchant. He had gone through
the terrible events of the past year with sorrowful resignation and
bitter complaints at the savagery of men. Now that he was journeying
to the frontier at the close of the war, he saw the Prussians for the
first time, although he had done his duty at the ramparts, and
staunchly mounted guard on cold nights.

He stared with mingled fear and anger at those bearded, armed men,
installed all over French soil as if in their own homes, and he felt
in his soul a kind of fever of impotent patriotism even while he
yielded to that other instinct of discretion and self-preservation
which never leaves us. In the same compartment, two Englishmen, who
had come to the country as sight-seers, were gazing around with looks
of stolid curiosity. They were both also stout, and kept chattering in
their own language, sometimes referring to their guide-book, and
reading in loud tones the names of the places indicated.

Suddenly, the train stopped at a little village station, and a
Prussian officer jumped up with a great clatter of his saber on the
double footboard of the railway-carriage. He was tall, wore a
tight-fitting uniform, and his face had a very shaggy aspect. His red
hair seemed to be on fire, and his long moustache, of a paler color,
was 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 crouched in a corner, like a thief in the 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 towards the horizon to indicate a
village, the Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long
legs and lolling backw