But d’Arnoult has kept his principal item of news for a tit-bit. A man named Schieder, one of the two grocers of Hepperg, house number 31, jealous at finding that his trade rival was exclusively patronized for the clandestine purchases made on our behalf by the soldiers of the guard, has just written a furious letter to Commanding Officer Major Baron von Stengel. His first complaint is that the commandant’s boot-cleaning orderly has insulted his (the commandant’s) wife, “going to the length of making indecent and public observations upon the imperfections of her face and figure—conduct unworthy of the German army and the German name.” The letter proceeds: “Further, it is an open secret that the aforesaid orderly returns daily from the village of Hepperg laden with a huge bundle of rolls, sticks of chocolate, boxes of cigarettes and of cigars, not to mention butter, sausages, smoked ham, and roast goose—conduct even more scandalous, if possible, than the insults offered to your honoured lady, for it transforms into an abode of bliss a national fortress where it is intended that the petulant pride of the French should experience salutary suffering.” The worthy grocer, in order to give vent to his spleen, had pirated all the grandiloquence he could find in the local papers. It was extremely laughable. But d’Arnoult and I saw another side as well as the amusing one. Were we to be cut off from our extra supplies? The commandant had already summoned his _Wichser_, and after administering a temperate reprimand, had forbidden him to revisit Hepperg. Without losing his head, Georg (we, his patrons, speak of him thus familiarly) pointed out to the _Herr Major_ that it was necessary to go somewhere for his honour’s marketing. “You will go to Kösching!”—“At your orders, _Herr Major_, but Kösching is an hour’s walk!”—“Very well, you will go to Kösching for three days; Hepperg is out of bounds for three days!” Le Chasseur concluded by saying: “But after all, I am convinced that the commandant will let the matter drop. This laborious letter reeks too much of the counter. Von Stengel has no fancy to see his gentility contaminated by association with the greasy scales of Schieder the grocer!”