very clever of you to put this terrible doll in La Ferte; I should have
left him in Belgium with his little doll-wife if I had been You; for when
governments are found dead there is always a little doll on top of them,
pulling and tweaking with his little hands to get back the microscopic
knife which sticks firmly in the quiet meat of their hearts.

One day only did I see him happy or nearly happy--when a Belgian baroness
for some reason arrived, and was bowed and fed and wined by the
delightfully respectful and perfectly behaved Official Captors--"and I
know of her in Belgium, she is a great lady, she is very powerful and she
is generous; I fell on my knees before her, and implored her in the name
of my wife and _Le Bon Dieu_ to intercede in my behalf; and she has made
a note of it, and she told me she would write the Belgian King and I will
be free in a few weeks, FREE!"

The little Machine-Fixer, I happen to know, did finally leave La
Ferte--for Precigne.

... In the kitchen worked a very remarkable person. Who wore _sabots_.
And sang continuously in a very subdued way to himself as he stirred the
huge black kettles. We, that is to say, B. and I, became acquainted with
Afrique very gradually. You did not know Afrique suddenly. You became
cognisant of Afrique gradually. You were in the _cour_, staring at ooze
and dead trees, when a figure came striding from the kitchen lifting its
big wooden feet after it rhythmically, unwinding a particoloured scarf
from its waist as it came, and singing to itself in a subdued manner a
jocular, and I fear, unprintable ditty concerning Paradise. The figure
entered the little gate to the _cour_ in a business-like way, unwinding
continuously, and made stridingly for the cabinet situated up against the
stone wall which separated the promenading sexes--dragging behind it on