comes in unexpectedly, and shopkeepers and clients hurry, at a decent tempo, to the cellar.  There, in the earthy obscurity, one sits down on empty herring-boxes and vegetable cases to wait calmly for the exasperating Boches to finish their nonsense.  There is a smell of kerosene oil and onions in the air.  A lantern, always on hand for just such an emergency, burns in a corner.  “Have you had a bad time in the trenches this week, Monsieur Levrault?” says the epiciere to a big, stolid soldier who is a regular customer.

“No, quite passable, Madame Champaubert.”

“And Monsieur Petticollot, how is he?”

“Very well, thank you, madame.  His captain was killed by a rifle grenade last week.”

“Oh, the poor man.”

Crash goes a shell.  Everybody wonders where it has fallen.  In a few seconds the eclats rain down into the street.

“Dirty animals,” says the voice of the old man in the darkest of all the corners.

Madame Champaubert begins the story of how a cousin of hers who keeps a grocery-shop at Mailly, near the frontier, was cheated by a Boche tinware salesman.  The cellar listens sympathetically.  The boy says nothing, but keeps his eyes fixed on the soldiers.  In about twenty minutes the bombardment ends, and the bolder ones go out to ascertain the damage.  The soldier’s purchases are lying on the counter.  These he stuffs into his musette, the cloth wallet beloved of the poilu, and departs.  The colonel’s cook comes in; he has got hold of a good ham and wants to deck it out with herbs and capers.  Has madame any capers?  While she is getting them, the colonel’s cook retails the cream of all the regimental gossip.

These people of Lorraine who have stayed behind, “Lorrains,” the French term them, are thoroughly French, though there is some German blood in their veins.  This Teuton addition is of very ancient date, being due to the constant invasions which have swept up the valley of the Moselle.  This intermingling of the races, however, continued right up to 1870, but since then the union of French and German stock has been rare.  It was most frequent, perhaps, during the years between 1804 and 1850, when Napoleon’s domination of the principalities and states along the Rhine led to a French social and commercial invasion of Rhenish Germany, an invasion which ended only with the growth of German nationalism.  The middle classes in particular intermarried because they were more apt to be engaged in commerce.  But since 1870, two barriers, one geographic —­annexed Lorraine, and one intellectual—­hatred, have kept the neighbors apart.  The Lorrain of to-day, no matter what his ancestors were, is a thorough Frenchman.  These Lorrains are between medium height and tall, strongly built, with light, tawny hair, good color, and a brownish complexion.