ely left
their saddles, except to be taken to the hospital in Recouvrance.

The rigor of the constant alert wore us to shadows; rockets from the
goulet, the tocsin, the warning boom of a gun from the castle, found
us spurring our jaded horses through ice and snow to scour the
landward banlieue and purge it of a dreaded revolt. The names of Marx,
of Flourens, of Buckhurst, were constantly repeated; news of troubles
at Bordeaux, rumors of the red flag at Marseilles, only served to
increase the rigid system of patrol, which brought death to those in
the trenches as well as to our sleet-soaked videttes.

Suddenly the nightmare ended with a telegram. Paris had surrendered.

Immediately the craze to go beset us all; our improvised squadrons
became clamoring mobs of peasants, wild to go home. Deserters left us
every night; they shot some in full flight; some were shot after
drum-head seances in which Speed and I voted in vain for acquittal.
But affairs grew worse; our men neglected their horses; bands of
fugitives robbed the suburbs, roving about, pillaging, murdering, even
burning the wretched hovels where nothing save the four walls remained
even for the miserable inmates.

Our hussars were sent on patrol again, but they deserted with horses
and arms in scores, until, when we rode into the Rue du Bois d'Amour,
scarce a squadron clattered into the smoky gateway, and the infantry
of the line across the street jeered and cursed us from their
barracks.

On the last day of February our regiment was disbanded, and the
officers ordered to hold themselves in readiness to recruit the debris
of a dragoon regiment, one squadron of which at once took possession
of our miserable barracks.

On the first day of March, by papers from London, we learned that the
war was at an end, and that the preliminary treaty of Sunday, the
26th, had been signed at Versailles.

The same mail brought to me an astonishing offer from Cairo, to assist
in the reorganization and accept a commission in the Egyptian military
police. Speed and I, shivering in our ragged uniforms by the barrack
stove, discussed the matter over a loaf of bread and a few sardines,
until we fell asleep in our greasy chairs and dreamed of hot sunshine,
and of palms, and of a crimson sunset against which a colossal basking
monster, half woman, half lion, crouched, wallowing to her stone
breasts in a hot sea of sand.

When I awoke in the black morning hours I knew that I should