However, it served a moral if not a physical purpose. It was the prophet of the sunrise, the false dawn that was the inevitable herald of a readjusted life. If bread could come from Copenhagen, it followed that the grocery parcels from London were not so immeasurably remote. For weeks they had appeared on the horizon far withdrawn, invested with Utopian glamour. Orderlies who had been captured since Mons had told us what tins each parcel of the cycle would contain. The list of delicacies had been devoured by eager eyes, but their existence had always savoured of the impossible. They were the dreams of some incurable romantic; there could not really be such things, at least not in Germany. But now they actually began to approach within mortal gaze; after all, the Citadel Mainz was not so utterly separated from the rational world. The authorities in England had apparently realised that some six hundred officers were beleaguered there upon those ultimate islands. An agreeable reflection; and, once more, conversation centred wholly upon food. And a more barren topic could hardly be discovered. Perhaps some romance might be woven round the intricacies of a Trimalchio’s banquet, and a distinguished novelist made one of his characters woo triumphantly his beloved with a dazzling succession of French _pâtisseries_; but bully beef and pork and beans are too solid a matter for anything but a moral discourse. They have no lyric fervour, their very sound is redolent of platitudes, and from the beginning of the day up to the very end to hear nothing but panegyrics on their composition,--it was indeed a trial. [Illustration: A “PRISON CELL.” [_To face page 104._ ] § 2 It was not till the end of June that parcels began to arrive at fixed and regular intervals, and those were days of great excitement. Each morning at 8.30 a.m. the names went up on the notice board, and immediately a cry ran round the barracks, “List up.” Pandemonium broke loose. The laziest _Gefangener_ leapt from his bed, pulled on a pair of trousers, dived into the safety of a trench coat, and rushed for the board. In that space were waged Homeric contests. Some hundred brawny soldiers were all struggling towards a small board, on which fluttered the almost illegible carbon copies of the sacred list. There was much craning of necks, and driving of elbows, much cursing and much apologising. The weak were driven to the wall; and even when a forward surge had borne the eager aspirant to the portals of his inquiry, there remained for him the ardours of retreat. Through a solid square of humanity he had to drive his harassed frame. These were moments of high excitement and of an equivalent depression. Those to whom the rush for the board had seemed too hazardous an exploit waited impatiently within the room for the tidings of some enterprising herald. Anxiously they would lean out of the window looking for a returning comrade. “By Jove,” some one would say, “look, here’s Evans coming.”