Suddenly, the train stopped at a little village station, and a Prussian officer jumped up with a great clatter of his saber on the double footboard of the railway-carriage. He was tall, wore a tight-fitting uniform, and his face had a very shaggy aspect. His red hair seemed to be on fire, and his long moustache, of a paler color, was stuck out on both sides of his face, which it seemed to cut in two. The Englishmen at once began staring at him with smiles of newly-awakened interest, while M. Dubuis made a show of reading a newspaper. He sat crouched in a corner, like a thief in the presence of a gendarme. The train started again. The Englishmen went on chatting, and looking out for the exact scene of different battles, and, all of a sudden, as one of them stretched out his arm towards the horizon to indicate a village, the Prussian officer remarked in French, extending his long legs and lolling backwards: "We killed a dozen Frenchmen in that village, and took more than a hundred prisoners." The Englishman, quite interested, immediately asked: "Ha! and what is the name of this village?" The Prussian replied: "Pharsbourg." He added: "We caught these French blackguards by the ears." And he glanced towards M. Dubuis, laughing into his moustache in an insulting fashion. The train rolled on, always passing through hamlets occupied by the victorious army. German soldiers could be seen along the roads, on the edges of fields, standing in front of gates, or chatting outside _cafes_. They covered the soil like African locusts. The officer said, with a wave of his hand: "If I were in command, I'd take Paris, burn everything, kill everybody. No more France!" The Englishman, through politeness, replied simply: "Ah! yes." He went on: "In twenty years, all Europe, all of it, will belong to us. Prussia is more than a match for all of them." The Englishmen, getting uneasy, said nothing in answer to this. Their faces, which had become impassive, seemed made of wax behind their long whiskers. Then, the Prussian officer began to laugh. And still, lolling back, he began to sneer. He sneered at the downfall of France, insulted the prostrate enemy; he sneered at Austria which had been recently conquered; he sneered at the furious but fruitless defense of the departments; he sneered at the Garde Mobile and at the useless artillery. He announced that Bismarck was going to build a city of iron with the captured cannon. And suddenly he pushed his boots against the thigh of M. Dubuis, who turned his eyes round, reddening to the roots of his hair. The Englishmen seemed to have assumed an air of complete indifference, as if they had found themselves all at once shut up in their own island, far from the din of the world. The officer took out his pipe, and looking fixedly at the Frenchman, said: "You haven't any tobacco--have you?" M. Dubuis replied: "No, monsieur." The German said: "You might go and buy some for me when the train stops next."