Our visits to the county town were not all marked by such incidents. One day, Yvonne was copying--in order not to lose a word--the official reports, in which we read: German victory here, Prussian success there, Austrian army advancing this way, English forces retreating in that one, and, believing nothing of it, she burst out laughing as she traced the news with her ironical pencil. A stern-looking sergeant came up and announced: "You not laugh, townspeople, all that true." But we laughed all the same. Every one laughed at those reports, the sincerity of which was doubtful, which appeared to us still more false than they were, and which yet were the only threads which connected us with the rest of the world. Fortunately, the benevolent Germans resolved to keep us informed of what going on, and published a weekly paper at Laon, the _Journal de was Guerre_, which appeared for the first time in November. The purpose of this publication, we were told, was to let the invaded know the truth about the war. Oh! a German truth, of course, carefully dressed up, for their self-respect prevents our enemy from showing us unveiled so indiscreet a person as Truth. And the people laughed more than ever. They laughed from Sissonne to La Fère, from Anizy to Marle. I must say that the newspaper was--according to us, if not to the authors--ludicrous both in matter and manner. It was written in a language closely connected with the French. With a knowledge of philology and some application you managed to make out even the obscurest sentences. Thus, after a little practice, we succeeded in reading the new idiom quite fluently, if we were still unable to appreciate its niceties.