The sous-officier, being an artiste in his way, had been giving me a histrionic exhibition of shell-fire.  With a long intake and a discharge of the breath he imitated the sibilant flight of the projectiles and followed it up with a duck of his head over the counterpane.  He extended his arms in a wide sweep to show the crater they make and indicated the height of the leaping earth.

“Quinze metres—­comme ca, monsieur!  Les Allemands?  Ah! cochons! And they shoot execrably.  We shoot from the shoulder (sur l’epaule)—­so!  They shoot under the arm (sous le bras)—­so!  And they like to join hands like children—­they are afraid to go alone.  They came out of the wood crouching like dogs—­one behind the other.  They are a bad lot—­canaille.  They hide guns in ambulance-waggons and mount them on church-towers.  There was one of our sappers—­diable! they tied him to a telegraph-pole and lit a fire under him.”

“But you make them pay for that?”

He smiled grimly. “Mais oui! When they see us they throw everything away and run.  If we catch them, they put up their hands and say, ’Pas de mal, Alsatien.’  But we’re used to that trick.  We just go through them like butter and say, ‘Pour vous!’ A little etrenne, you know, monsieur, what you call ’Christmas-box’!” He laughed at some grim recollection.

“Deutschen Hunde!  Stink-preussen![10] Ja!” It was the Alsatian who was speaking.

“Sie sprechen Deutsch!"[11] I exclaimed in astonishment.

“Ja, ich kann nicht anders—­um so mehr schade!"[12] he replied mournfully.  He was an Alsatian “volunteer,” he explained, having deserted for the French side at an opportune moment.  It was odd to hear him declaiming against the Germans in their own language.  It is a way the Alsatians have.  Treitschke once lamented the fact.  “But,” I interpolated, “it must be very painful for those of you who cannot get away like yourself.”

“Very painful, monsieur; I have two brothers even now in the German army.  They watch us—­and they put Prussian sous-officiers over us to spy.  So when we see the sous-officier sneaking about, we raise our voices and say, ‘Ah! those beastly French, we’ll give it them.’  But when we are alone—­well, then we say what we think.”

And this led us on to talk of German spies and their nasty habits—­how they had mapped out France, its bridges, its culverts, its smithies, like an ordnance-survey, and how predatory German commanders betray the knowledge of an Income-tax Commissioner as to the income and resources of every inhabitant who has the misfortune to find himself in occupied territory.  Also how the German guns get the range at once.  And other such things.  All of which the paperhanger listened to in thoughtful silence and then told a tale.