balked the Princess of the first tidings of her husband's safety, and the great English newspaper of the earliest details of the most sensational battle of the age. It had fallen at last, but not ingloriously; and the iron of defeat had not entered so deeply into its soul as had been the case with some French fortresses, of which it could not well be said that they had done their honest best to resist their fate. Its self-respect, at least, was left to it, and it was something to know that when the German garrison should march away, it was bound to leave to St. Meuse the artillery and munitions of war of the fortress just as they had been found on the day of the surrender. I came to like St. Meuse immensely in the course of the days I spent in it waiting for the great event of the evacuation. The company at the _table d'hôte_ of the Trois Maures was varied and amusing. The Germans ate in a room by themselves, so that the obnoxious element was not present overtly at the general _table d'hôte._ But we had a few German officials in plain clothes--clerks in General Manteuffel's bureau, contractors, cigar merchants, etc., who spoke French even among themselves, and were painfully polite to the French habitués who were as painfully polite in return. There was a batch of Parisian journalists who had come to St. Meuse to watch the evacuation, and who wrote their letters in the café over the way to the accompaniment of _verres_ of absinthe and bocks of beer. Then there was the gallant captain of gendarmes, who had arrived in St. Meuse with a trusty band of twenty-five subordinates to take over from the Germans the municipal superintendence of the place, and, later, the occupation of the fortress. He was the most polite man I ever knew, this captain of gendarmes, with a clever knack of turning you outside in in the course of half an hour's conversation, and the peculiar attribute of having, to all appearance, eyes in the back of his head. To him, as he placidly ate his food, there came, from time to time, quiet and rather bashful-looking men in civilian attire of a slightly seedy description. Sometimes they merely caught his eye and went out again without speaking; sometimes they handed to him little notes; sometimes they held with him a brief whispered conversation during which the captain's nonchalance was imperturbable. These respectable individuals who, if they saw you once in conversation with their chief, ever after bowed to you with the greatest empressement, were members of the secret police.