“I will do my best,” said the maire simply.

He was now released from arrest, and he retired to his house to think out the new problem that had presented itself.  The threat to burn down the town might or might not be anything but bluff; he himself doubted whether the German Commandant would burn the roofs over his men’s heads, as long as the occupation lasted.  The military disadvantages were too obvious, though what the enemy might do when they left the town was another matter.  They might shoot him, of course; that was more than probable.

But how to find the money was an anxious problem and urgent.  The municipal caisse was empty:  the managers of the banks had closed their doors and carried their deposits off to Paris before the Germans had entered the town; of the wealthier bourgeoisie some had fled, many were ruined, and the rest were inadequate.  The maire pondered long upon these things, leaning back in his chair with knitted brows in that pensive attitude which was characteristic.  Suddenly he caught sight of a blue paper with German characters lying upon a walnut table at his elbow.  He took it up, scrutinised it, and studied the signature: 

     Empfangschein. 
     Werth 500 fr. erhalten. 
     Herr Hauptmann von Koepenick.

Then he smiled.  He got up, put on his overcoat, took up his hat and cane, and went forth into the drizzling rain.

* * * * *

Two hours later he was at the headquarters of the Staff and asked to see the Commandant.  He was shown into his presence without delay.  “Well?” said the Commandant.  “Monsieur le General, I have collected the fine,” said the maire.  The General’s face relaxed its habitual sternness; he grew at once pleasant and polite.  “Good,” he said.  The maire opened a fat leather wallet and placed upon the table under the General’s predatory nose a large pile of blue documents, some (but not all) stamped with the violet stamp of the German A.Q.M.G.  “If the hochgeehrter General will count them,” said the maire, “he will see they come to 325,000 francs.  It is rather more than the fine,” he explained, “but I have made allowance for the fact that they are not immediately redeemable.  They are mostly stamped, and—­they are as good as gold.”

For three minutes there was absolute silence in the room.  The gilt clock in its glass sepulchre on the mantelpiece ticked off the seconds as loudly as a cricket on the hearth in the stillness of the night.  The maire speculated with more curiosity than fear as to how many more of these seconds he had to live.  Never had the intervals seemed so long nor their registration so insistent.  The ashes fell with a soft susurrus in the grate.  The Commandant looked at the maire; the maire looked at the Commandant.  Then the Commandant smiled.  It was an inscrutable smile; a smile in which the eyes participated not at all.  There was merely a muscular relaxation of the lips disclosing the teeth; to the maire there seemed something almost canine in it.  At last the General spoke.  “Gut!” he said gutturally; “you may go.”