Now he fairly raged. There is nothing which so provokes a man of hasty temper, with whom you may be in a controversy, as to preserve a tranquil, self-possessed demeanour. Ladies who nag their husbands are aware of this interesting feature in household ethics. "Ah, you _are_ a German!" he yelled. "You are a Prussian. I will not sit in the same compartment with you'!" and he stood up, and danced, and went through a round of epileptic gesticulation. "Your absence will not leave me inconsolable," said I, in soft, sweet accents, ceremoniously lifting my hat. He bounced out of the carriage like a maniac, stamped along the platform, muttering with incoherent vehemence as he went, and presently reappeared with a gendarme, whom he informed that he suspected I was a Prussian spy. Interrogated, he could advance no proof beyond his own suspicions, my arrogant coolness of manner, and my hesitation in returning a straightforward reply. "I am sure he is," he concluded, "for he all but admitted it." The gendarme was perplexed, and asked me very civilly, was I a German? "Distinctly not," I answered. Had Monsieur any papers? I produced my British passport, which he looked at, pretended to understand, folded up, returned to me with excuses for having given me so much trouble, and fixed a look of grave reproach on his countryman. The latter was embarrassed, and had not the grace to make a frank apology, but mumbled something to the effect that I might have saved all this annoyance if I had stated what countryman I was at first. "If you had put your question in the French fashion, that is to say courteously, I might have done so," I said. He blushed, and stammered forth the apology at last; he hoped I would forgive his quickness, but he could not control himself when he met a German; he hated the race--the Germans were a pack of cold-blooded robbers, who had brought ruin on his country. He had vowed vengeance against them, and he had reason for it, for he was an Alsatian. I saw my chance. "_Mon Dieu!_" I exclaimed, throwing up my hands in affected horror. "It is you who are the German, then, and not I. Do you not know, sir, that Alsace has been a province of Germany for the past two years?"