nything more touching than these luncheons so innocent in their
egotism--the old gentleman sitting up in bed, fresh and smiling, his
napkin tucked under his chin, and his pale little granddaughter at hand
to guide his hand, make him drink, and help him as he ate all these
forbidden good things.

Then, animated by his meal, in the comfort of his warm room, while the
winter's wind whistled outside and the snow flakes whirled around the
windows, the ex-cuirassier told us for the hundredth time the story of
the retreat from Russia when frozen biscuit and horse flesh was all
that there was to eat.

"Do you realize what that means, little one? We had to eat horse!"

Did she realize what that meant! For two months she had eaten no other
meat.

As time went on and the old gentleman recovered little by little, our
task increased in difficulty. The numbness of the senses which had made
it so easy to deceive him was disappearing day by day. Two or three
times already the terrible cannonading at the Porte Maillot had made
him jump, his ear as keen as a hunting dog's, and we had been obliged
to invent a last victory for Bazaine at the gates of Berlin and salvos
fired at the Invalides[273-1] in honor of the event.

Another day, when his bed had been brought over to the window (it was,
I think, the Thursday on which the battle of Buzenval was fought), he
distinctly saw the troops of the National Guard formed on the Avenue de
la Grand Arme.

"What are those troops?" asked the old gentleman, and we heard him
mutter, "Not well set up."

It went no farther, but we understood that thereafter we must take
every precaution. Unfortunately we were not sufficiently careful. One
evening as I reached the house, the little girl came to meet me,
considerably troubled. "It is to-morrow that they enter the city," she
said.

Was the door of her grandfather's bedroom open? In thinking it all over
afterward, I remember that this evening his face wore a very striking
expression. Probably he had overheard us; but while we were talking of
the entry of the Prussians, the old gentleman was thinking of the
triumphant return of the French troops, for which he had so long been
waiting--Mac Mahon marching down the avenue in the midst of flowers,
his son at the marshal's side, and he himself on his balcony wearing
his full dress uniform as he did at Lutzen, saluting the riddled flags
and the powder-blackened eagles.

Poor old Jouve! No doubt he though