it may be, for those of the enemy also.  Doubtless it appeals to their sinister sense of humour, when two of their own men get drunk and shoot at one another, to execute a French citizen by way of punishment.  It happened that during the German occupation of Coulommiers the gas supply gave out.  The maire was informed by a choleric commandant that unless gas were forthcoming in twenty-four hours he would be shot.  The little man replied quietly:  “M’eteindre, ce n’est pas allumer le gaz.”  This illuminating remark appears to have penetrated the dark places of the commandant’s mind, and although the gas-jets continued contumacious (the gas-workers were all called up to the colours) the maire was not molested.  It was here that we heard a shameful story (for the truth of which I will not vouch) of a certain straggler from our army, a Highlander, who tarried in amorous dalliance and was betrayed by his enchantress to the Huns, who, having deprived him of everything but his kilt, led him mounted upon a horse in Bacchanalian procession round the town.  As to what became of him afterwards nothing was known, but the worst was suspected.  The Huns have a short way and bloody with British stragglers and despatch-riders and patrols, and I fear that the poor lad expiated his weakness with a cruel death.

At Coulommiers we turned northwards on the road to La Ferte-sous-Jouarre, a pleasant little town on the banks of the Marne, approached by an avenue of plane trees whose dappled trunks are visible for many miles.  Here we had lunch at the inn—­a dish of perch caught that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for which La Ferte is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and excellent vintage.  The landlord’s wife waited on us with her own hands, and as she waited talked briskly of the German occupation of the town.  The Huns, it appeared, had been too hustled by the Allies to do much frightfulness beyond the usual looting, but they had inflicted enormous losses on the pigs of La Ferte.  It reminded me of the satirical headline in a Paris newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great slaughter of pigs in Germany owing to the shortage of maize—­“Les Bosches s’entregorgent!” Madame told us with much spirit how she had saved her own pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a far more succulent pig was to be found higher up the street, and while the Bosches went looking for their victim she had hidden her own in the cellar.  Her pig is now a local celebrity.  People come from afar to see the pig which escaped the Bosches.  For the pigs whom the Bosches love are apt to die young.  But what had impressed her most was the treatment meted out by a German officer, a certain von Buelow, who was quartered at the inn, to one of his men.  The soldier had been ordered to stick up a lantern outside the officer’s quarters, and had been either slow or forgetful.  Von Buelow knocked him down, and then, as he lay prostrate, jumped upon him, kicked him, and beat him about the head and face with sabre and riding-whip.  The soldier lay still and uttered not a cry.  Madame shuddered at the recollection, “Epouvantable!”