The Herr Doktor smiled conciliatingly, but she gave him no answering smile. Her heart was still too full of wrath, of surprise, of agonised, impotent rage, at the happenings of the last two hours.
A troop of the abhorred, dreaded Uhlans had suddenly appeared, clattering along the wide Route Nationale which followed the right bank of the river Marne. Without drawing rein they had ridden up the steep, central street of Valoise, and then they had turned straight into the courtyard of the Tournebride.
Madame Blanc had been amazed at the extent and particularity of the Prussians' knowledge of the town, and of her inn. Not only had they greeted her, with a strange mixture of joviality and sternness, by name, but the golden-haired, pink-cheeked commanding officer had actually alluded to the spécialité of the Tournebride—a certain chicken-liver omelette which Parisians motored out to enjoy on all fine Sundays from each May to each October! And then, perhaps because she had tacitly refused to fall in with his pleasant humour, the young Uhlan officer, after his first roughly jovial words, had suddenly threatened her with mysterious and terrible penalties if she disobeyed, in any one particular, his own and his comrades' confusing orders.
Yes, they had only arrived two hours ago, and yet already Madame Blanc hated these arrogant Uhlan officers with all the strength of her powerful, secretive French nature. Quite willingly, had she thought it would have served the slightest good purpose, would she have put a good dose of poison in the excellent soup they, in the company of the man now talking to her, had just eaten.
She also hated, but in an infinitely lesser degree, their men—those big, bearded, splendidly equipped soldiers clad in the grey-green cloth which her strong common sense had at once told her must be so far more serviceable, because blending with nature's colouring, than the bright blue and red uniforms of her own countrymen. But for the wounded youth, who now lay straight and still in the huge grey motor-car, bearing on its side a painted Red Cross which she could almost touch from where she stood at her low kitchen door, she felt a thrill of motherly pity and concern....
'A Red Cross barge on the river?' repeated the Herr Doktor doubtfully.
For a man who had never been in France before, and who had been taught French by a German who, in his turn, had never been in France save during the brief, glorious-and-ever-victorious-campaign of 1870, the Herr Doktor spoke very fair French. But while he spoke, and even more while he listened to Madame Blanc's quick, short utterances, he blamed himself severely for having wasted so much time on the English language. English was now never likely to be of much use to him, save perhaps during the coming Occupation of London. If only he had spent as much time and trouble over French as he had done over English, not only would it have been useful here and now, but it would have been invaluable a little later on—when he took up his quarters, as he hoped to do within the next two or three weeks, at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
'Yes,' said Madame Blanc, with a touch of irritation in her even, vibrating voice, 'as I have just had the honour of explaining to M. le Médecin, there is a Red Cross barge on our river. Mademoiselle Rouannès is there all day, from six in the morning till nine o'clock each night.'
'Is Mademoiselle'—he had not really caught the curious name, 'is she'—he hesitated for the right phrase—'is she a Sister of Compassion?'
'I have just told M. le Médecin that all our good sisters were chased away by the Government four years ago. Mademoiselle Rouannès is our doctor's daughter.'