"Je savions ce que je disions!"
Among our guests were a great many sybarites. Is Barbu's love of creature comforts still remembered? And the many cushions necessary to uphold his person? Can you imagine that some of them, before choosing their room, felt the elasticity of the mattresses, tried the softness of the blankets, inspected the fineness of the sheets? Are the nice afternoon-naps already forgotten?
"We are at war! but that is no reason to give up comfort. Let us have carpets and cushions, wadding and down! We are sybarites!"
The category, to which we come now, the brutes, is the most scandalously celebrated. The present war has been its triumph. I must say we never saw these gentlemen at their best, such as they showed themselves in assaults, in pillage, in massacre, in arson. We did see them as brutes in their treatment of a peaceful, submissive, terrified population,—brutes who thought they had drawn in their claws. Bouillot, for instance, was a beautiful specimen of the kind, but we saw many another. For instance, there was the hero, who had a small boy of Jouville bound fast to a post during an icy cold afternoon. There was that other who knocked down the shepherd-boy of Aulnois, and gave him a good horse-whipping. The poor boy had gone beyond the frontier of the commune with his cattle:
"What am I to do?" he said. "My master's meadow is in Vivaise. I must feed my flock, and at the office they won't give me a pass. They say I don't want one to go those few steps."
I should never finish telling the high deeds of those scoundrels, and I have still to sing the praises of the revellers. They were many in number, and I think more dangerous than the rest. They came to France, allured by the depravity they attributed to us, and it was they who brought to us their vices, particularly those exclusive to their race, on which I had rather not insist. No doubt they thought that they would do a pious work in helping to pervert a country which they hated. Be that as it may, they eagerly exerted themselves to this end, and did their best to transform the country behind the front into a vast brothel. Of course such creatures had not the least respect for the house which sheltered them. An old lady in Morny was deeply shocked at being forced to provide two fast girls of Laon with lodging and board for some days, and many a country house, which had never looked upon other than peaceful scenes, was scared at revels, the noise of which made the very window-panes tremble.
Bubenpech was a remarkably vicious specimen. A bottle of champagne was never emptied in the province without his presence. He was at every feast, he took part in every rejoicing; he rarely came home before two or three o'clock in the morning. He had a pretty taste in wine and nice dinners. Besides, he looked upon himself as Don Juan, and expected every one to yield to him. No thought hindered his caprices. One day he asked a young girl publicly to come and see him in his rooms. Another day we saw him towards dusk kiss two loose girls in the open street. To be at perfect liberty, he sent to prison, under some pretence or another, a man whose daughter he was paying court to. He inscribed, among the women inspected by the police, the name of a young girl who, though not very respectable, had done no harm but reject his advances. With real Gallic humour our good villagers were careful to catalogue the great deeds of our guests, chiefly when heroines from the other side of the Rhine came upon the scene.
One Sunday morning, about ten o'clock, there appeared at our house a little German nurse of the Red Cross, dark-haired, smart, and—a fact hardly to be believed—pretty; but the lady had a peevish air—an air only.
"Lieutenant Bubenpech?"
"Out."