speaking constantly for six months. This was particularly the case if
I was at all embarrassed; my face and figure, moreover, were plainly
Teutonic and not Latin. The French ascribed their disasters largely to
the fact that German spies were everywhere prying into the conditions,
and reporting every assailable point and element of weakness. This
belief was well grounded; the Germans probably knew France better than
the French themselves and skilfully adapted their attacks to the lacks
and negligences which the swarming spies laid bare. The group, of
whose scrutiny we had become aware, was made up of _ouvriers_ and
_ouvrières_, the men in the invariable blouse, with dark matted
hair and black eyes, sometimes with a ratlike keenness of glance as
they surveyed us. The women were roughly dressed, sometimes in sabots,
with heads bare or surmounted by conical caps. They belonged to the
proletariat, the class out of which had come in the Reign of Terror
the sans-culottes of evil memory and the _tricoteuses_ who had
sat knitting about the _guillotine_, the class which, within
a few months, was again to set the world aghast as the mob of _La
Commune_. As we stood disconcerted by their intent gaze, they put
their heads together and talked in low and rapid tones; then their
spokesman approached us, a man of polite bearing but ominously stern.
He was not a clumsy fellow, but darkly forceful and direct, a man
capable of a quick, desperate deed. At the moment there was the grim
tiger in their eyes and from the soft paw the swift protrusion of the
cruel claw. One thought of the wild revolutionary song, "Ça ça, ça
ira, les aristocrats à la lanterne!" They were the children of the mob
that had sung that song. With a bow, the spokesman said: "Messieurs,
we think you are Germans and we wish to know if we are right." We
protested that we were Americans, but the spokesman said he was
unconvinced, and as he pressed for further evidence I gave way to my
companion whose readier French could deal better with the situation.