Men and women had been then entirely stripped of their garments, and searched according to rule. Nurses of the Red Cross and soldiers showed equal zeal in the task, which had a practical object--the gathering of all gold and even silver coins of five francs which pockets and purses might contain. The sum seized, it must be said, was replaced by notes of the Reichsbank. The victims thought the joke a very bad one, and I am sure Thomas of Marle's bones must have turned in his grave. To think that on this nobleman's own territory soldiers arrested and robbed the passers-by, and he not there to help! And, what is worse, the aggressors were German troopers, and the victims good and loyal French citizens! What does your shade regret, O famous plunderer? To be unable to fight for your countrymen, or to have no share in the robbery? I need not say that after that no gold pieces ever ventured out on the roads. A pass also was necessary to go out into the country, and you were expected to have an identity card in your pocket if you but stood on your threshold. All papers had to be renewed every fortnight. "Fancy," an aged woman said to us, "that I have to pay twenty marks because I forgot my antiquity card!" One Saturday, a farmer's wife, perched on a ladder out of doors, was eagerly polishing the glass of a bull's-eye window. Two gendarmes on horseback passed by and gave heed to this commendable zeal: "Matam! ... carte...." "Hem, hem! Ah, yes, my identity card; wait a minute, it is lying on the table...." "Ha! ha! no, not enter ... no card ... fine...." So she had to pay the fine. One of our neighbours was taking his cows out of the stable. Suddenly one of them seemed to smell some enlivening odour--was it that of powder?--she bent a frolicsome head on one side, lifted up her sprightly nostrils, raised a swaggering tail, and, as fast as she could tear, went full gallop towards the meadows, the brooklet, the rosy horizon where the setting sun pleased her. The owner took to his heels in his turn, and fled after the giddy-pated creature. The better to run, he tore off his jacket, and succeeded in getting hold of the tether. Then he stopped panting, all in a sweat, and rapped out a tremendous oath. As if by miracle, a gendarme happened to stand there, his note-book in hand. "Card, card...." "Ah! oh, it is in my jacket pocket...." The jacket was smiling in the distance, a small spot lying on the green. "Ach!" the Prussian said with a sneer, "not fetch: fine." Cost fifty francs. Rascally cow! I treat the matter as a joke. Sometimes we did joke. We could not have our minds always on the stretch. We already were half-crazy, and we should have gone quite mad if we had not occasionally laughed. We often laughed, with rage, with an empty stomach, with our brain confused after a troubled night. Our race needs to laugh in the midst of tears, and tears are shed in secret, whereas laughter bursts forth in public.