e distinction, so fine it was.

We stayed in that taverne and in the small living room behind it, and in
the small high-walled courtyard behind the living room, all that
afternoon and that evening and that night, being visited at intervals by
either the lieutenant or the sergeant, or both of them at once. We
dined lightly on soldiers' bread and some of the prince's wine--
furnished by Rosenthal--and for dessert we had some shelled almonds and
half a cake of chocolate--furnished by ourselves; also drinks of pale
native brandy from the bar.

During the evening we received several bulletins regarding the mythical
automobile. Invariably Mittendorfer was desolated to be compelled to
report that there had been another slight delay. We knew he was
desolated, because he said he was. During the evening, also, we met all
the regular members of the household living under that much-disturbed
roof. There was the husband, a big lubberly Fleming who apparently did
not count for much in the economic and domestic scheme of the
establishment; his wife, a large, commanding woman who ran the business
and the house as well; his wife's mother, an old sickly woman in her
seventies; and his wife's sister, a poor, palsied half-wit.

When the sister was a child, so we heard, she had been terribly
frightened, so that to this day, still frightened, she crept about, a
pale shadow, quivering all over pitiably at every sound. She would
stand behind a door for minutes shaking so that you could hear her
knuckles knocking against the wall. She seemed particularly to dread
the sight of the German privates who came and went; and they, seeing
this, were kind to her in a clumsy, awkward way. Hourly, like a ghost
she drifted in and out.

For a while it looked as though we should spend the night sitting up in
chairs; but about ten o'clock three soldiers, led by Rosenthal and
accompanied by the landlady, went out; and when they came back they
brought some thick feather mattresses which had been commandeered from
neighboring houses, we judged. Also, through the goodness of his heart,
Mittendorfer, who impressed us more and more as a strange compound of
severity and softness, took pity on Gerbeaux and Stevens, and bringing
them forth from that pestilential hole next door, he convoyed them in to
stay overnight with us. They told us that by now the air in the
improvised prison was absolutely suffocating, what with the closeness,
the fouled straw, the