such tired, pretty mites. "What lies before us?" The babies, too,
might well have asked that question. Do you wonder that I at last
began to share the Frenchman's hatred for the Boche?

An extraordinary person in a white tie, top hat and evening dress
entered. He looked like a cross between Mr. Gerard's description of
himself in Berlin and a head-waiter. He evidently expected his advent
to cause a profound sensation. I found out why: he was the official
welcomer to Evian. Twice a day, for an infinity of days, he had
entered in solemn fashion, faced the same tragic assembly, made the
same fiery oration, gained applause at the climax of the same rounded
periods and allowed his voice to break in the same rightly timed
places. Having kept his audience in sufficient suspense as regards
his mission, he unwrapped the muffler from his neck, removed his coat,
felt his throat to see whether it was in good condition, swelled out
his chest, including his waist-coat which was spanned by the broad
ribbon of his office, then let loose the painter of his emotion and
slipped off into the mid-stream of perfunctory eloquence. With all his
disrobing he had retained his top-hat; he held it in his right hand
with the brim pressed against his thigh, very much in the manner of
a showman at a circus. It contributed largely to the opulence of his
gestures.

He always seemed to have concluded and was always starting up afresh,
as if in reluctant response to spectral clapping. He called upon the
repatriés never to forget the crimes that had been wrought against
them--to spread abroad the fire of their indignation, the story of
their ravished womanhood and broken families all over France. They
watched him leaden-eyed and wept softly. To forget, to forget, that
was all that they wanted--to blot out all the past. This man with