d both men away, leaving the women behind, very quiet now,
sobbing in their shawls.

It was the general belief in Paris that many apaches were shot pour
encourager les autres. I cannot say that is true--the police of Paris
keep their own secrets--but I believe a front place was found for some
of them in the fighting lines. Paris lost many of its rebels, who will
never reappear in the Place Pigalle and the Avenue de Clichy on
moonless nights. Poor devils of misery! They did but make war on the
well-to-do, and with less deadly methods, as a rule, than those
encouraged in greater wars when, for trade interests also, men kill
each other with explosive bombs and wrap each other's bowels
round their bayonets and blow up whole companies of men in
trenches which have been sapped so skilfully that at the word "Fire!"
no pair of arms or legs remains to a single body and God Himself
would not know His handiwork.

4

For several months there was a spy mania in Paris, and the police,
acting under military orders, showed considerable activity in "Boche"
hunting. It was a form of chase which turned me a little sick when I
saw the captured prey, just as I used to turn sick as a boy when I saw
a rat caught in a trap and handed over to the dogs, or any other
animal run to earth. All my instincts made me hope for the escape of
the poor beast, vermin though it might be.

One day as I was sitting in the Cafe Napolitain on one of my brief
excursions to Paris from the turmoil in the wake of war, I heard shouts
and saw a crowd of people rushing towards a motor-car coming down
the Boulevard des Italiens. One word was repeated with a long-drawn
sibilance:

"Espion! Espion!"

The spy was between two agents de police. He was bound with cords
and his collar had been torn off, so that his neck was bare, like a man
ready for the guillotine. Somehow, the look of the man reminded me
in a flash of those old scenes in the French Revolution, when a
French aristocrat was taken in a tumbril through the streets of Paris.
He was a young man with a handsome, clear-cut face, and though he
was very white except where a trickle of blood ran down his cheek
from a gash on his forehead, he smiled disdainfully with a proud curl
of the lip. He knew he was going to his death, but he had taken the
risk of that when he stayed in Paris for the sake of his country. A
German spy! Yes, but a brave man who went rather well to his death
through the sunlit streets