And the little man told his story with many gestures, describing
figures on the air with his bread.

"I was washing my shirt, you see, while the rest of them were making
soup. Just try and picture to yourself a miserable hole, a regular
trap, all surrounded by dense woods that gave those Prussian pigs a
chance to crawl up to us before we ever suspected they were there. So,
then, about seven o'clock the shells begin to come tumbling about our
ears. _Nom de Dieu!_ but it was lively work! we jumped for our
shooting-irons, and up to eleven o'clock it looked as if we were going
to polish 'em off in fine style. But you must know that there were
only five thousand of us, and the beggars kept coming, coming as if
there was no end to them. I was posted on a little hill, behind a
bush, and I could see them debouching in front, to right, to left,
like rows of black ants swarming from their hill, and when you thought
there were none left there were always plenty more. There's no use
mincing matters, we all thought that our leaders must be first-class
nincompoops to thrust us into such a hornet's nest, with no support at
hand, and leave us to be crushed there without coming to our
assistance. And then our General, Douay,[*] poor devil! neither a fool
nor a coward, that man,--a bullet comes along and lays him on his
back. That ended it; no one left to command us! No matter, though, we
kept on fighting all the same; but they were too many for us, we had
to fall back at last. We held the railway station for a long time, and
then we fought behind a wall, and the uproar was enough to wake the
dead. And then, when the city was taken, I don't exactly remember how
it came about, but we were upon a mountain, the Geissberg, I think
they call it, and there we intrenched ourselves in a sort of castle,
and how we did give it to the pigs! they jumped about the rocks like