And now, on account of recent events, the painter had added in a fit of rage: "And the devil run away with Italy!" The Hussars of the farm were gone, Bouillot at their head, and that day the village had heaved a deep sigh. As a last theft, the Pandours had carried away a cartful of furniture, in order to make themselves comfortable in the trenches which would shelter them. On the other hand, two convoys were still quartered within our gates, and troops of passage were now and then billeted upon us. We gave hospitality to a young lieutenant, who had succeeded Bubenpech as commandant. He lodged in the two rooms we had abandoned to the Prussians with a heavy heart; he had requisitioned, besides, "the small room" for his servant, and the stable for his horse. Gracieuse and Percinet, shut up in a corner of the coach-house, would gladly have seen the Prussian mare dead, which had usurped their domain. We, too, bore a grudge against the fat Hans, who encumbered our rooms with his person, his pipes, and his clothes. So, resigned to fate, we established ourselves in the drawing-room, Geneviève and I. One of the windows looks into the street, and when, behind the lace of our curtains, we saw, hour after hour, day after day, the same carts loaded with straw, the same placid-looking Prussians,--they are all alike,--the same stiff and sneering lieutenants, we might have believed our stay in Jouville had been but a dream. The invaders seemed more "at home" than ever. The officers enjoyed themselves according to rule. Of course they had not waited for the spring to lead a jolly life. As early as November 1914 they had had drunken revelries. What merry evenings! What dishes never tasted in Germany! What floods of good wine! What erotic, patriotic, and bacchic songs! "Let us drink and eat, for we shall die to-morrow!" "But no, we shall not die, we, who shout the loudest, we are safe; we do not go to the front, we stay behind, secure from danger. No other task but to grind down, vex, and punish civilians! Let us profit by the war. Joy's the word! There was a festival yesterday at Laon; it will be at Morny to-day; to-morrow it will be Coucy's turn. Still more revels, still more junketings. It is war, hurrah for the war!" And all enjoyed themselves: those who cared for nothing as well as those who cared first to save their skin, sybarites as well as sentimentalists, the pompous as well as the dissipated. But this demands an explanation. We had seen many officers of the reserve, the very men whom the _Gazette des Ardennes_ calls "the flower of cultured German manhood"; but we had discovered few varieties among them, and all of them could be comprised in one of the categories we had created for the purpose. Those who cared-for-nothing deserve careful consideration. They partook of the qualities common to their brothers-in-arms, which I will extol farther on, but their pusillanimity or their indifference belonged alone to them.