So much for inquisitions. As to requisitions, they were always going on, and the farmers never got up at dawn without thinking: "What are they going to steal to-day?" So we continued to hide as well as we could all that we possessed. Think of our anxiety the day we heard they were said to search houses! One morning, about the end of November, the street was suddenly filled with soldiers. The word "perquisition" was hovering over our heads. How anxious we were for the cheese and butter we had the luck to get but the day before! If they happened to notice it they would be sure to come back and fetch it. So we rushed into the garden, and with all possible speed thrust the three pounds of butter and the five pieces of cheese, the hope of many a future meal, into the box borders. Everything was ready. On our features was a mask of carelessness. Then the bell rang; we opened the gate. "Come in, gentlemen, and may it please Mercury, the god of the thieves, your patron, to let you pass close to our hiding-places without discovering them!" A soldier guarded the door. Two other ones came in with a sergeant. As the saint, so the altar. From one room to another we followed the visitors. They were careful not to forget the drawers, which their hands searched and researched. They disturbed the dresses hung in the cupboards, to make sure that no French soldiers were hidden behind. They shook the _portières_, to scare the carrier-pigeons away. "Ah! this bed-curtain is swollen ... a French soldier ... the iron cross for me...." Flat down on his face lay the knave. Alas! no feet were to be seen beneath the curtain, nothing but the innocent frame of a picture forgotten there three months ago. They went upstairs, took a careful survey of the attics, pried into the heaps of logs. Then catching sight of the roof whose shadow served as a screen to our bedding: "What is up there, then?" asked the under-officer. "Up there? It is an empty space between the roof and the ceiling." The man seemed satisfied with the explanation; the big boots got down again; they paused; they had found nothing. At length they made up their minds to go out; they disappeared from sight; they went to search the next house. A week after these operations the villagers still talked about them. "Has your house been carefully searched?" "Oh, dear! dear! they have looked even into the saucepans!" "They have gone through the papers in my desk." "They have climbed upon the beams of our roof." The visitors seldom found anything worth while--one or two pigeons which their owners had hidden in the attic, and for which they had to pay fifty francs each. Other villages were less happy. For a trifle a man was considered suspect, and taken into custody. If a cartridge happened to be discovered in a house, the owner was arrested and sent to Laon, Hirson, or still farther off--and after the retreat of August what urchin had not a collection of French and Belgian cartridges?