Prince Scharmberg-Lippe, whom we had passed driving away from the
Prefecture in his automobile as we drove to it in ours, was the last of
four brothers. The other three were killed in the first six weeks of
fighting. Our own companion, Captain Mannesmann, heard only the day
before, when we stopped at Hirson--just over the border from Belgium--
that his cousin had won the Iron Cross for conspicuous courage, and
within three days more was to hear that this same cousin had been sniped
from ambush during a night raid down the left wing.

Nor had death been overly stingy to the members of the Staff itself. We
gathered as much from chance remarks. And so, as it came to be eight
o'clock, I caught myself watching certain vacant chairs at our table and
at the two smaller tables in the next room with a strained curiosity.

One by one the vacant chairs filled up. At intervals the door behind me
would open and an officer would clank in, dusted over with the sift of
the French roads. He would bow ceremoniously to his chief and then to
the company generally, slip into an unoccupied chair, give an order over
his shoulder to a soldier-waiter, and at once begin to eat his dinner
with the air of a man who has earned it. After a while there was but
one place vacant at our table; it was next to me. I could not keep my
eyes away from it. It got on my nerves--that little gap in the circle;
that little space of white linen, bare of anything but two unfilled
glasses. To me it became as portentous as an unscrewed coffin lid. No
one else seemed to notice it. Cigars had been passed round and the talk
eddied casually back and forth with the twisty smoke wreaths.

An orderly drew the empty chair back with a thump. I think I jumped. A
slender man, whose uniform fitted him as though it had been his skin,