every move. "This will be the enemy's next move, here," he would say,
"and ours will be this." His anticipations were always justified by the
event, which made him not a little proud.

Unhappily, no matter how fast we took cities and won battles, we never
went fast enough for him. The old fellow was insatiable. Each day as I
came in, I learned of some new success.

"Doctor, we have taken Mayence,"[269-1] said the little girl coming to
meet me with a smile that went to your heart, and through the door I
heard his glad salutation, "We're getting on! In another week we shall
be in Berlin."

At that time the Prussians were only a week's march from Paris. At
first we wondered whether we had not better carry our patient into the
country. Then we reflected that as soon as he was taken out of the
house, he would learn the true state of affairs, and I decided that he
was still too feeble, too stunned by his stroke, to let him find out
the truth. So we decided to stay where we were.

The first day of the Prussian occupation, I climbed the stairs to his
apartment, I remember, with a heavy heart at the thought of all the
closed doors of Paris and the fighting going on under her walls, in the
suburbs which were now on the frontier. I found the old gentleman
sitting up in bed jubilant and proud.

"Well," he said, "the siege has begun."

I looked at him in amazement. "So you know now, Colonel?"

His grandchild turned to me; "Why, yes, doctor. That is the great news
to-day. The siege of Berlin has begun."

And while she spoke, she went on with her sewing as calmly as you
please. How could he suspect what was happening? He couldn't hear the
guns at the fortifications. He couldn't see the city in its fear and
sorrow.

From his bed he could see one side of the Arc de Triomphe, and his room
was filled with odds and ends of the period of the First Empire--all
admirably fitted to sustain his illusions. Portraits of Napoleon's
marshals, battle prints, a picture of the little King of Rome in his
baby dress; big stiff consoles decorated with trophies, covered with
imperial relics, medallions, bronzes, a piece of the rock of St. Helena
under a glass case, miniatures all representing the same blue-eyed
lady, now with hair curled, now in a ball dress, now in a yellow gown
with leg-of-mutton sleeves. And all this--consoles, King of Rome,
marshals, yellow-gowned, short-waisted ladies, with that prim stiffness
which was considered gracefu