Meaux is full of Germans.  The biggest department shop there is a German enterprise.  Even Couilly has a German or two, and we had one in our little hamlet.  But they’ve got to get out.  Our case is rather pathetic.  He was a nice chap, employed in a big fur house in Paris.  He came to France when he was fifteen, has never been back, consequently has never done his military service there.  Oddly enough, for some reason, he never took out his naturalization papers, so never did his service here.  He has no relatives in Germany—­that is to say, none with whom he has kept up any correspondence, he says.  He earns a good salary, and has always been one of the most generous men in the commune, but circumstances are against him.  Even though he is an intimate friend of our mayor, the commune preferred to be rid of him.  He begged not to be sent back to Germany, so he went sadly enough to a concentration camp, pretty well convinced that his career here was over.  Still, the French do forget easily.

Couilly had two Germans.  One of them—­the barber—­got out quick.  The other did not.  But he was quietly informed by some of his neighbors—­with pistols in their hands—­that his room was better than his company.

The barber occupied a shop in the one principal street in the village, which is, by the way, a comparatively rich place.  He had a front shop, which was a cafe, with a well-fitted-up bar.  The back, with a well-dressed window on the street, full of toilette articles, was the barber and hairdressing-room, very neatly arranged, with modern set bowls and mirrors, cabinets full of towels, well-filled shelves of all the things that make such a place profitable.  You should see it now.  Its broken windows and doors stand open to the weather.  The entire interior has been “efficiently” wrecked.  It is as systematic a work of destruction as I have ever seen.  Not a thing was stolen, but not an article was spared.  All the bottles full of things to drink and all the glasses to drink out of are smashed, so are counters, tables, chairs, and shelving.  In the barber shop there is a litter of broken porcelain, broken combs, and smashed-up chairs and boxes among a wreck of hair dyes, perfumes, brillantine, and torn towels, and an odor of aperitifs and cologne over it all.

Every one pretends not to know when it happened.  They say, “It was found like that one morning.”  Every one goes to look at it—­no one enters, no one touches anything.  They simply say with a smile of scorn, “Good—­and so well done.”

There are so many things that I wish you could see.  They would give you such a new point of view regarding this race—­traditionally so gay, so indifferent to many things that you consider moral, so fond of their individual comfort and personal pleasure, and often so rebellious to discipline.  You would be surprised—­surprised at their unity, surprised at their seriousness, and often touched by their philosophical acceptance of it all.