With somewhat the sensation of walking a tight rope, we sought the mayor to ask for permission to stay in town—­finally to ask for safe-conducts to Soissons.  The charming old gentleman, undisturbed by war’s alarms, politely made them out.

Presently in a hotel full of officers we came on three civilians calmly eating dinner.  They had arrived by train, although there were no trains for civilians; they were now dining at a long table set for officers from which we had a moment before been turned away; and we were rescued by a mysterious being at the head of the table—­a dark, bald, bright-eyed, smiling, sanguine gentleman, who might have been an impresario or a press agent, and continually had the air of saying, as from time to time he actually said:  “Ssst!  Leave it all to me!”

He was an American, he said, but spoke vernacular French.  The other two civilians were a London chartered accountant and a Canadian volunteer—­a young Oxford man—­waiting for his regiment.  Across the table, a big French dragoon, just in from the firing-line, his horsetail helmet on the chair beside him, was also dining.  This man was as different from the little infantrymen we had so often seen as the air of that town was different from deserted Paris.  Just as he was, he might have stepped—­ or ridden, rather—­from some cavalry charge by Meissonier or Detaille; a splendid fellow—­head to spurs, all soldier.

After weeks of newspaper rhetoric and windy civilian partisanship, it was like water in the desert to listen to him—­straight talk from a professional fighting man, modest, level-headed, and, like most fighting men, as contrasted with those who stay at home and write about fighting, ready to give a brave enemy his due.  The German retirement was not at all a rout.  When an army is in flight it leaves baggage and equipment behind, guns in the mud.  The Germans had left very little; they were falling back in good order.  Their soldiers were good fighters, especially when well led.  They might lack the individual initiative of Frenchmen, the nervous energy with which Frenchmen would keep on fighting after mere bone and muscle had had enough, but they had plenty of courage.  Their officers—­the dragoon paused.  Yesterday, he said, they had run into a troop of cavalry.  The German officer ordered his men to charge, and instead they wavered and started to fall back.  He turned on them.  “Schweinhunde!” he shouted after them, and, flinging his horse about, charged alone, straight at the French lances.

“Kill him?” asked the man at the head of the table.

The dragoon nodded.  “It was a pity.  Joli garcon he was”—­he ran a hand round a weather-beaten cheek as if to suggest the other’s well-made face—­“monocle in his eye—­and he never let go of it until it fell off—­ a lance through his heart.”

As we talked two secret-service-men entered, demanded our papers, examined them, and directed us to call at the Maine for them next morning at eight o’clock.  Now, indeed, we were walking a tight rope.  Following the genius who had got us our suppers, we emerged into the dark street, walked down it a few doors, entered a courtyard full of cavalry horses, where men in spurred boots were clanking up and down stairs.  He thrust a heavy key into a lock, opened a door and ushered us into an empty and elegantly furnished house.