piled in the buffet. There were half-a-dozen decorated plates which
had stood on end in the buffet,--just as color notes--no value at all.
There were bits of silver, and nearly all the plated stuff. There was an
old painted fan, several strings of beads, a rosary which hung on a
nail at the head of my bed, a few bits of jewelry--you know how little I
care for jewelry,--and there were four brass candlesticks.

The only things I had missed at all were the plated things. I had not
had teaspoons enough when the English were here--not that they
cared. They were quite willing to stir their tea with each other's
spoons, since there was plenty of tea,--and a "stick" went with it.

You cannot deny that it had its funny side.

I could not help asking myself, even while I wiped tears of laughter
from my eyes, if most of the people I saw flying four weeks ago might
not have found themselves in the same fix when it came to taking
stock of what was saved and what was lost.

I remember so well being at Aix-les-Bains, in 1899, when the Hotel du
Beau-Site was burned, and finding a woman in a wrapper sitting on a
bench in the park in front of the burning hotel, with the lace waist of
an evening frock in one hand, and a small bottle of alcohol in the
other. She explained to me, with some emotion, that she had gone
back, at the risk of her life, to get the bottle from her dressing-table,
"for fear that it would explode!"

It did not take me half an hour to get my effects in order, but poor
Amélie's disgust seems to increase with time. You can't deny that if I
had been drummed out and came back to find my house a ruin, my