Up once more the curtain lifted, seemingly by its own motive power; and now the seaside drop was raised, and they beheld that, behind it, the stage had been dressed for another scene--a room in a French house. A secrétaire, sadly battered and marred, stood at one side; a bookcase with broken doors and gaping, empty shelves stood at the other, balancing it off. Down stage was an armchair. Its tapestry upholstering was rotted through and a freed spiral of springs upcoiled like a slender snake from its cushioned seat. All three pieces were of a pattern--"Louie-the-Something stuff," Verba would have called them. A table, placed fronting the chair but much nearer the right lower entrance than the chair was, and covered with a faded cloth that depended almost to the floor, belonged evidently to the same set. The scenery at the back showed a balcony, with a wide French window, open, in the middle. Beyond the window dangled a drop, dingy and discoloured as all the rest was, but displaying dimly a jumble of painted housetops and, far away in the simulated distance, the Arc de Triomphe. The colours were almost obliterated, but the suggestion of perspective remained, testifying still to the skill of the creator. From the wings where they had seen him vanish Bateman reappeared. The trousers and the shoes were those he had worn before; but now, thrown on over his shirt, was the melancholy wreck of what once had been a blue uniform coat, with huge epaulets upon the shoulders and gold braid upon the collar and the cuffs, and brass buttons to fasten it in double-breasted fashion down the front. Now, though, it hung open. Some of the buttons were missing, and the gold lacings were mere blackened wisps of rags. Bateman came on slowly, with dragging feet, his arms and legs and head quivering in a violent palsy. He stared out of the window as he let himself down carefully into the ruined armchair. His first movement proved that he played a venerable, very decrepit man--a man near death from age and ailments; yet by his art he managed to project, through the fleshly and physical weaknesses of the character, a power of dignity, of dominance, and of mental authority. He rolled his head back weakly. "'My child,'" he said, addressing a make-believe shape before him, "'I must help to receive our brave, victorious troops. See! I am fittingly dressed to do them honour.'" His tones were pitched in the cracked cackle of senility. He paused, as though for an answer out of space. His inflection told as he, in turn, replied that this answer had been a remonstrance: "'No, no, no!'" he said almost fiercely. "'You must not seek to dissuade me.'" The words stung Verba's memory, raising a welt of recollection there. "I've got it!" he said exultantly, not forgetting, though, to keep his voice down. "Siege of Berlin, by that French fellow--what's his name?--Daudet!" "I remember the story," answered Offutt.