that morning in the waters of the Marne, a delicious cream-cheese, for
which La Ferté is justly famous, and a light wine of amber hue and
excellent vintage. The landlord's wife waited on us with her own hands,
and as she waited talked briskly of the German occupation of the town.
The Huns, it appeared, had been too hustled by the Allies to do much
frightfulness beyond the usual looting, but they had inflicted enormous
losses on the pigs of La Ferté. It reminded me of the satirical
headline in a Paris newspaper, over a paragraph announcing a great
slaughter of pigs in Germany owing to the shortage of maize--"Les
Bosches s'entregorgent!" Madame told us with much spirit how she had
saved her own pig, an endearing infant, by the intimation that a far
more succulent pig was to be found higher up the street, and while the
Bosches went looking for their victim she had hidden her own in the
cellar. Her pig is now a local celebrity. People come from afar to see
the pig which escaped the Bosches. For the pigs whom the Bosches love
are apt to die young. But what had impressed her most was the treatment
meted out by a German officer, a certain von Bülow, who was quartered at
the inn, to one of his men. The soldier had been ordered to stick up a
lantern outside the officer's quarters, and had been either slow or
forgetful. Von Bülow knocked him down, and then, as he lay prostrate,
jumped upon him, kicked him, and beat him about the head and face with
sabre and riding-whip. The soldier lay still and uttered not a cry.
Madame shuddered at the recollection, "Épouvantable!"

We crossed the _place_ and called on a prominent burgess. He received us
hospitably. In the hall of his house was a Uhlan's lance with drooping
pennon which excited our curiosity. How had it come here? He was only
too pleased to explain. He had taken it from a marauding Uhlan with whom
he had engaged in single combat, strangling him with his own hands--so!