Dormer thought there could not be in the world any person so utterly beaten. Broken-hearted, exposed during four years to considerable bodily privation, being in the occupied area, she was no Mademoiselle Vanderlynden of the Army zone that Dormer knew, making a bold front against things. She was a delicate--had been probably a pretty woman--but it was not from any of her half-audible monosyllabic replies that Dormer was able to discover to what sort of a country he had come. A little farther down the street was the factory, long gutted by the Germans and used as a forage store, where his company were billeted. The old caretaker in the time-keeper’s cottage told Dormer all that was necessary, and left him astonished at the moderation of tone and statement, compared with the accounts of German occupation given by the Propagandist Press. Possibly, it was because he addressed the old man in French--or because he had never parted with his English middle-class manners--or because the old fellow was nearly wild with delight at being liberated. This was what Dormer heard: “Enter, my Captain. It is a Captain, is it not, with three stars? The insignia of Charles Martell!” (Here wife and daughter joined in the laugh at what was obviously one of the best jokes in father’s repertory.) “You will find that the Bosches removed everything, but that makes less difficulty in the workshop. You have only to divide the floor space between your men. I know. I was a corporal in the War of ’Seventy. Ah! a bad business, that, but nothing to what we have now supported. You will do well to make a recommendation to your men not to drink the water of the cistern. The Bosches have made beastliness therein. Ah! You have your own watercart? That is well done, much better than we others used to have, in Algeria. It is always wise to provide against the simple soldier, his thoughts have no connection. You say you are accustomed to Germans and their mannerisms? I do not wonder. We too, as you may judge, have had cause to study them. I will tell you this, my Captain, the German is no worse than any other man, but he has this mania for Deutschland über Alles. It comes from having been a little people and weak, and so often conquered by us others. So that to give him some idea of himself, since he cannot invent a culture like us other French, he must go to put all above below, and make a glory of having a worse one. That shows itself in his three great faults--he has no sentiment of private property--what is others’, is his. He must be dirtier than a dog in his habits--witness our court-yard--and he has to make himself more brute than he really is. You see, therefore, he has stripped the factory, and even our little lodging, down to my daughter’s sewing-machine, and the conjugal bed of mother and myself. You see also, that we had our grandchildren, our dog Azor, our cat Titi. Now many of the Bosches who lodged here were