The "captive Kaiser" never left Croquier's sight. He took it to the factory in the morning and carried it back at night. He slept with the steel chain of the cage fastened to his wrist. In the quarter where they lived, the hunchback had already become a familiar figure, and boys tramped up the stairs in the evening with rats and mice for the eagle's dinner. Under the agile pens of newspaper paragraphists, the story of the "captive Kaiser" had brought merriment and superstitious hope to hearts heavy with listening for the tramp of the ever-nearing German feet. Paris was silent but courageous. Fear brooded heavily over the city, but the terrible tales of individual suffering never robbed the French capital of a simple heroism and a fine devotion that were worthy of its best traditions. The removal of the government to Bordeaux, two days before, had shown the people how narrow was the margin of safety by which Paris rested untaken. They accepted the dictum of their military leaders that it was a measure to allow greater freedom in handling the armies for the great action about to begin. "Has the spring tightened at last?" asked Horace, remembering the veteran's prophecy that the strategic diamond would be pressed back to the reserves, and that then the counter-attack would come. "Tightened to its last spiral," answered Croquier. "It must rebound now, or smash. And the Germans have got a blow right between the eyes, at Nancy!" Horace pressed him for details. The boy was eating his heart out from inaction. He had sent a cablegram to his father, according to his promise to Aunt Abigail, but he did not go to see the American minister, feeling sure that he would be sent back to America. He did not want to go. While he had taken his fill of battle, not for worlds would he have left Paris without seeing, as he phrased it, "the end of the war." Under Croquier's guidance, the boy had followed every official bulletin and news dispatch with avid and intense excitement. His field experience and the veteran's lessons on strategy, when with the guns back of Givet, had given him an insight which enabled him to piece the scraps of information together. He was thus able to grasp the real significance of the victory at Nancy. The defense of Le Grand Couronne was of tenfold more importance than it seemed at the time, for it formed the starting-point of the greatest battle of modern times, known as "The Battles of the Marne," the series of victories which saved France. Croquier, who knew that part of the country thoroughly, was able to give Horace an exact picture of that first great success on the hills south of Verdun. "They've done well, the Germans," the hunchback began, "but if they're going to try to keep up this drive of theirs, they'll soon find themselves in a pickle for the lack of that chief need of a modern army--a short, strong Line of Communication. You remember how the forts of Liége tied up everything, even after the city was taken?"