“‘Lieutenant von Hosius will parade at nine o’clock with fifteen volunteers of his company, and will proceed to burn the village of Nouilly.’
“Von Hosius was fond of herrings, so he stayed at table to finish them, while Fischer went out for volunteers. In a few minutes von Hosius was putting on his long boots, taking his little dagger, which every officer wore to ward off the vultures of the battle-field in case of being wounded; then, taking his revolver, he sallied out to meet his little band. The service was full of danger, for the French lay very near, and had strong temptations for entering it by night. If he did encounter a French force inside the village, where would his fifteen volunteers be?
“A little group of us watched by the watch-fire as they marched down at the German quick step. For a while we could hear the crashing through the vines, then the hoarse challenge of the German rear sentry; then all became quiet. For a few minutes the officer in command of the outpost and myself were the only persons who enjoyed the genial warmth of the fire; then through the gloom came stalking the Major, who squatted down silently by our side. Presently another form appeared—the Colonel himself—and in half an hour nearly all the officers of the battalion were round that bright wood fire. They all tried to look unconcerned, but everybody was very fidgety.
“Von Hosius was a long time. An hour had gone, and Nouilly was but ten minutes or so distant, and the Colonel’s nervousness was undisguised as he hacked at the burning log with his naked sword. Suddenly the vigilant Lieutenant gave a smothered shout, and we all sprang to our feet. Flame-coloured smoke at last, and plenty of it. But, bah! it was too far away—a false alarm.
“The Colonel sat down moodily, and the Major muttered something like a swear. One thing was good: there was no sound of musketry firing.
“Another half-hour of suspense, and then a loud “Ha!” from both Lieutenant and sentry. This time it was Nouilly, and no mistake. Not from one isolated house, but in six places at once, belched out the long streaks of flame against the black darkness, and the separate fires made haste to connect themselves. In ten minutes the whole place was in one grand blaze, the church steeple standing up in the midst of the sea of flame until a firework of sparks burst from its top and it reeled to its fall.
“Presently they came back, von Hosius panting with the exertion (he was of a portly figure). The duty had been done without firing a single shot, and they brought with them a respectable old horse which they had found in a village stable.”
One evening, when the German officers were discussing the causes of the French defeats, a First Lieutenant told this story to illustrate it:
The Chief Rabbi of the Dantzic Jews had taken a new house, and his flock determined to stock his wine-butt for him. On a stated evening his friends went down one after another into the Rabbi’s cellar, and emptied each his bottle into the big vat. When the Rabbi came next day to draw off his dinner wine he found the cask was full of pure water. Each Jew had said to himself that one bottle of water could never be noticed in so great a quantity of wine, and so the poor Rabbi had not got a drop of wine in his butt.