head is the head of a calf, and, indeed, of several other animals that
are but ill-considered in England.

So I will be brief.

In Seventy, therefore, I fought in the field and scouted with the
Uhlans. Ah, I could tell the stories! Those were the days. It is a
mistake to think that the country-people hated us, or tried to kill us.
On the contrary, if I might tell it, many of the young maids--

Ach, bitte, Herr--of a surety I will proceed and tell of Paris. I am
aware that it is not to be expected that the English should care to hear
of the doings of the Reiters of the black-and-white pennon in the matter
of the maids.

But in Seventy-one, during the siege and the terrible days of the
Commune, I was in Paris, what you call a spy. It was the order of the
Chancellor--our man of blood-and-iron. Therefore it was right and not
ignoble that I should be a spy.

For I have served my country in more terrible places than the field of
Weissenburg or the hill of Spichern.

Ja wohl! there were few Prussians who could be taken for Frenchmen, in
Paris during those months when suspicion was everywhere. Yet in Paris I
was, all through the days of the investiture. More, I was chief of
domestic service at the Hôtel de Ville, and my letters went through the
balloon-post to England, and thence back to Versailles, where my
brothers were and the Kaiser whom in three wars I have served. For I am
Prussian in heart and by begetting, though born in Elsass.