'It is not that,' he answered, with hesitation. 'I must tell you honestly, lady, we haven't a single cartridge left.'
He checked himself and was silent; at that moment he did not show the repose of a psychologist.
'Do you understand, lady?'
'I do.'
'And also we have absolutely no officers. There is nothing but what you see there in the forest; the rest are pitiful remnants—some 200 soldiers left out of two regiments.'
Early next day Martin joyously informed me that in the night the soldiers had gone away. They had burnt nothing, but it was likely that another detachment would come in by the evening.
'And the soldier who helped you to pack was here very early. I told him the lady was asleep, so he only left this card.'
It was a visiting card with a bent edge; at the bottom was written, in pencil and in Roman characters,
'p.p.c.'
'Yes, my friend,' I thought to myself, 'that is just the souvenir I should have expected you to leave me after plundering me right and left… a "P.P.C." card! And my deliverance from you means destruction to somebody else's woods, house, and garden.'