“Fie, doctor!” said Brand. “What would your old patients in New York say to this Bacchanalian orgy?” “Sonny,” said the doctor, “they wouldn’t believe it. It’s incredible!” He wiped the perspiration from his brow, threaded his fingers through his grey beard, and laughed in that shrill way which was his habit when excited. “My word, it was good fun! I became part of a people’s joy. I had their sense of escape from frightful things. Youth came back to me. Their songs danced in my blood. In spite of my goggles and my grey beard that buxom lady adored me as though I were the young Adonis. The little girl clasped my hand as though I were her younger brother. Time rolled back from the world. Old age was touched with the divine elixir. In that crowd there is the springtime of life, when Pan played on his pipes through pagan woods. I wouldn’t have missed it for a million dollars!” That night Brand and I and some others (Charles Fortune among them) were billeted in a small hotel which had been a German headquarters a few days before. There was a piano in the billiard room, and Fortune touched its keys. Several notes were broken but he skipped them deftly and improvised a musical caricature of “Daddy” Small dancing in the carnival. He, too, had seen that astonishing vision, and it inspired him to grotesque fantasies. In his imagination he brought a great general to Venders--“Blear-eyed Bill, the Butcher of the Boche”--and gave him a _pas seul_ in the Grande Place, like an elephant gambolling in green fields and trumpeting his joy. Young Harding was moody, and confided to me that he did not like the idea of crossing the German frontier and going to Cologne. “There will be dirty work,” he said, “as sure as fate. The Huns will begin sniping and then we shall have to start reprisals. Well, if they ask for it I hope we shall give it them. Without mercy, after all they have done. At the first sign of treachery I hope the machine-guns will begin to play. Every time I see a Hun I shall feel like slitting his throat.” “Well, you’ll get into a murderous state of mind,” I answered him. “We shall see plenty, and live among them. I expect they will be tame enough.” “Some poor devils of ours will be murdered in their beds,” said Harding. “It makes my blood boil to think of it. I only hope we shan’t stand any nonsense. I’d like to see Cologne Cathedral go up in flames. That would be a consolation.” Charles Fortune broke away from his musical fantasy of “Blear-eyed Bill” and played a bar or two of the “Marseillaise” in ragtime. It was a greeting to Pierre Nesle, who came into the room quietly in his _képi_ and heavy motor-coat, with a salute to the company. “_Bon soir, petit Pierre!_” said Fortune, “_qu’il y a, done--quoi?--avec ta figure si sombre, si mélancolique, d’une tristesse pitoyable_----” Pierre Nesle inspired him to sing a little old French _chanson_ of Pierrot disconsolate.