Among the other numerous places of interest was the store of a dealer in haberdashery and draperies. An honest, well equipped old fashioned French concern, whose long oak counters were well polished from constant use. The shelves were piled high with piece after piece of wonderful material, but not a single one of them had been exempt from the murderous rain of steel; they were pierced, and pierced, and pierced again.
"So pierced that there is not a length sufficient to make even a cap!" explained Madame L., "but you just can't live in disorder all the time, and customers wouldn't like to see an empty store. Everything we have to sell is in the cellar!"
And true enough this subterranean existence had long ceased to be a novelty, and had become almost a habit.
From the basement windows of every inhabited dwelling protruded a stove pipe, and the lower regions had gradually come to be furnished almost as comfortably as the upper rooms in normal days. Little by little the kitchen chair and the candle had given way to a sofa and a hanging lamp; beds were set up and rugs put in convenient places.
"We live so close to the trenches that by comparison it seems like a real paradise to us," gently explained Madame Daumont, the pork butcher. Her charcuterie renowned far and wide for its hot meat patès, ready just at noon, had been under constant fire ever since the invasion, but had never yet failed to produce its customary ovenful at the appointed hour.
"At the time of the battle of Crouy," she confessed, "I was just on the point of shutting up shop and leaving. I'm afraid I was a bit hasty, but three shells had hit the house in less than two hours, and my old mother was getting nervous. The dough for my patés was all ready, but I hesitated. Noon came, and with it my clientèle of Officers.
"'Eh bien, nos patés? What does this mean!'
"'No, gentlemen, I'm sorry, but I cannot make up my mind to bear it another day. I'm leaving in a few moments.'
"'What? Leaving? And we who are going out to meet death have got to face it on empty stomachs?'
"They were right. In a second I thought of my own husband out there in Lorraine. So I said to them 'Come back at four o'clock and they'll be ready.'"