For all that, many thought--"If only a few came our way with powder and muskets, we would join them and try to get rid of our troubles ourselves." Hope rose with these francs-tireurs; but the requisitions harassed us all the more. The pillage was not quite so bad, but it went on still. When our Landwehr, whom we were obliged to lodge and keep, went off to mount guard at Phalsbourg, others came in troops from the neighboring villages, shouting, storming, and bawling for oxen, sheep, bacon! And when they had terribly frightened the women, these fellows, after all, were satisfied with a few eggs, a cheese, or a rope of onions; and then they would take their departure quite delighted. Our own Landwehr no doubt did the same, for they never seemed short of vegetables to cook; and these good fathers of families conscientiously divided it with all the abominable creatures who followed them and had no other way of living. How else could it be? It takes time to turn a man into a beast, but a few months of war soon bring men back into the savage state. CHAPTER IX On the 29th of September, a Prussian vaguemestre* brought me some proclamations with orders to make them public. * The person in command of a wagon train--also an Army letter-carrier. These proclamations declared that we were now part of the department of La Moselle, and that we were under a Prussian prefect, the Count Henkel de Bonnermark, who was himself under the orders of the Governor-General of Alsace and Lorraine, the Count Bismarck-Bohlen, provisionally residing at Haguenau. I cannot tell what evil spirit then laid hold of me; the Landwehr had brought us the day before the news of the capitulation of Strasbourg; I had been worried past all endurance by all the requisitions which I was ordered to call for, and I boldly declared my refusal to post that proclamation: that it was against my conscience; that I looked upon myself as a Frenchman still, and they need not expect an honest man to perform such an errand as that. The vaguemestre seemed astonished to hear me. He was a stout man, with thick brown mustaches, and prominent eyes. "Will you be good enough to write that down, M. le Maire?" he said. "Why not? I am tired out with all these vexatious acts. Let my place be given to your friend, M. Placiard: I should be thankful. Let him order these requisitions. I look upon them as mere robbery." "Well, write that down," said he. "I obey orders: I have nothing to do with the rest." Then, without another thought, I opened my desk, and wrote that Christian Weber, Mayor of Rothalp, considered it against his conscience to proclaim Bismarck-Bohlen Governor of a French province, and that he refused absolutely. I signed my name to it, with the date, 29th September, 1870; and it was the greatest folly I ever committed in my life: it has cost me dear.