e,
madame?"

"Yes," replied the Countess, listlessly.

Now, what in Heaven's name attracted that rogue to Paradise?

VII

A STRUGGLE FORESHADOWED

I took my breakfast by the window, watching the German soldiery
cleaning up Morsbronn. For that wonderful Teutonic administrative
mania was already manifesting itself while ruined houses still smoked;
method replaced chaos, order marched on the heels of the Prussian
rear-guard, which enveloped Morsbronn in a whirlwind of Uhlans, and
left it a silent, blackened landmark in the August sunshine.

Soldiers in canvas fatigue-dress, wearing soft, round, visorless caps,
were removing the debris of the fatal barricade; soldiers with shovel
and hoe filled in the trenches and raked the long, winding street
clean of all litter; soldiers with trowel and mortar were perched on
shot-torn houses, mending chimneys and slated roofs so that their
officers might enjoy immunity from rain and wind and defective flues.

In the court-yards and stables I could see cavalrymen in
stable-jackets, whitewashing walls and out-buildings and ill-smelling
stalls, while others dug shovelfuls of slaked lime from wheelbarrows
and spread it through stable-yards and dirty alleys. Everywhere quiet,
method, order, prompt precision reigned; I even noticed a big,
red-fisted artilleryman tying up tall, blue larkspurs, dahlias, and
phlox in a trampled garden, and he touched the ragged masses of bloom
with a tenderness peculiar to a flower-loving and sentimental people,
whose ultimate ambition is a quart of beer, a radish, and a green leaf
overhead.

At the corners of the walls and blind alleys, placards in French and
German were posted, embodying regulations governing the village under
Prussian military rule. The few inhabitants of Morsbronn who had
remained in cellars during the bombardment shuffled up to read these
notices, or to loiter stupidly, gaping at the Prussian eagles
surmounting the posters.

A soldier came in and started the fire in my fireplace. When he went
out I drew my code-book from my breeches-pocket and tossed it into the
fire. After it followed my commission, my memoranda, and every scrap
of writing. The diamonds I placed in the bosom of my flannel shirt.

Toward one o'clock I heard the shrill piping of a goat-herd, and I saw
him, a pallid boy, clumping along in his wooden shoes behind his two
nanny-goats, while the German soldiers, peasants themselves, looked
after him with cu