The stout commandant went away, proud of himself and proud of being one of those Germans who know how to organise camps for refugees.
"Rely on our saying how we have been dealt with," bantered the old women, the moment the officers' large backs were turned.
Another caller was a clergyman, who was quite different from the others.
The Rev. Herr Freyer was about thirty-five, he was tall, dark-haired, with malicious eyes and a turned-up nose. I must say he did his best to comply with our wishes and serve the cause of the emigrants. From the very beginning he told us that he was very fond of the French—yes, but the Germans are all fond of the French—and that his grandmother was of French descent.
"Why! then she had married a German?"
Well, let us go on to something else.
This man was certainly the cleverest German we had met, or rather the only clever one we ever met. We were all the more amazed to notice once more the abyss that separates the French from the German mind. An utter incomprehension of certain delicacies, a lack of sensitiveness, is peculiar to them. If they had fallen from the very moon, our ways of doing and thinking could not be stranger to them.
And in discussion, they are unable to cast out preconceived notions, which will ever get the better of reasoning and observation.
Herr Freyer certainly wished to show us kindness, and at every turn he told us things which set our teeth on edge. Yet he wondered to see us stand up for causes which he had looked upon as lost since a long time.
"How I pity France," he used to tell us, "poor degenerate France!"