It seems to me that I shall never, never, never be able to move again when I find myself knocking at the Caspiar's door, and next minute the old proprietor of the Inn and his wife are peeping through my window.
"Mon Dieu! It is a wolf!"
Old Caspiar frames the word with his lips rather than utter them.
"You must shoot it," frames his wife.
Old Caspiar gets down his gun.
But it falls from his hands.
"I can't shoot any more," he groans. "I've lost my nerve."
He begins to cry.
Poor old man!
He has lost a son, eleven nephews, and four grandsons in this War, as well as his nerve. Poor old chap. And he remembers the siege of Paris, he remembers only too well that terrible, far-off, unreal, dreamlike time that has suddenly leapt up out of the dim, far past into the present, shedding its airs of unreality, and clothing itself in all the glaring horrors of to-day, until again the Past is the Present, and the Present is the Past, and both are inextricably and cruelly mixed for Frenchmen of Caspiar's age and memories.