d
husband, who was not to be avenged, I went with her as far as the
inn. She is free; I have just left her, and she kissed me with
tears. I am going upstairs to my husband; come as soon as possible,
my dear friend, to look for our two bodies."

I set off with all speed, and when I arrived, there was a Prussian
patrol at the cottage, and when I asked what it all meant, I was told
that there was a captain of _Franc-tireurs_ and his wife inside, both
dead. I gave their names; they saw that I knew them, and I begged to be
allowed to undertake their funeral.

"Somebody has already undertaken it," was the reply. "Go in if you wish
to, as you knew them. You can settle about their funeral with their
friend."

I went in. The captain and his wife were lying side by side on a bed,
and were covered by a sheet. I raised it, and saw that the woman had
inflicted a similar wound in her throat to that from which her husband
had died.

At the side of the bed there sat, watching and weeping, the woman who
had been mentioned to me as their best friend. It was the lancer's wife.

THE COLONEL'S IDEAS

"Upon my word," Colonel Laporte said, "I am old and gouty, my legs are
as stiff as two pieces of wood, and yet if a pretty woman were to tell
me to go through the eye of a needle, I believe I should take a jump at
it, like a clown through a hoop. I shall die like that; it is in the
blood. I am an old beau, one of the old school, and the sight of a
woman, a pretty woman, stirs me to the tips of my toes. There!

"And then, we are all very much alike in France; we remain cavaliers,
cavaliers of love and fortune, since God has been abolished, whose
body-guard we really were. But nobody will ever get a woman out of our
hearts; there she is, and there she will remain, and we love her, and
shall continue to love her, and go on committing all kinds of frolics on
her account, as long as there is a France on the map of Europe, and even
if France were to be wiped off the map, there would always be Frenchmen
left.

"When I am in the presence of a woman, of a pretty woman, I feel capable
of anything. By Jove! When I feel her looks penetrating me, her
confounded looks which set your blood on fire, I should like to do I
don't know what; to fight a duel, to have a row, to smash the furniture,
in order to show that I am the strongest, the bravest, the most daring,
and the most devoted of men.

"But I am not the only one,