"That's right, my child," pompously exclaimed the grandsire. "Never, never forget the monsters who troubled your innocent sleep with their infamous crimes." "Oh, cut it out, grandpop," was the somewhat irreverent reply. "Aren't you afraid you might miss forty winks?" and then turning to his mother, "I say, mamma, if one of them lands on our house, you promise you'll wake me up, won't you? I want to see everything, and last time and the time before, I missed it!" "Yes, darling, of course, but go to sleep, there's a good boy." A tall, good-looking girl over in one corner openly gave vent to her sentiments. "The idiots! the idiots! if they think they can scare us that way! They'd far better not waste their time, and let us sleep. It isn't a bit funny any more, and I've got to work just the same to-morrow, Boche or no Boche!" Two rickety old creatures clasped each other in arms, and demanded in trembling voices if there was any real danger! This produced a ripple of merriment. Monsieur Duplan, the butcher, then asked the ladies' permission to smoke, the which permission was graciously accorded. "Why, if I'd only thought, I'd have brought down another lamp and my work. It's too bad to waste so much time." "I have my knitting. You don't need any light for that." "Where on earth did you get wool? How lucky you are!" From Monsieur Leddin's lips now rose a loud and sonorous snore. "Decidedly that man is possessed of all the charms," giggled a sarcastic neighbour. "Yes, it must be a perfect paradise to live with such an angel, and to feel that you've got him safe at home till the end of the war. I don't wonder his poor little wife took the children and went to Burgundy." "Why isn't he at the front?" hissed some one in a whisper. "Yes--why?" "There are lots less healthy men than he out there. The fat old plumber who lived on the rue de Jouy, and who can hardly breathe, was taken----" "And the milkman who passed a hundred and three medical inspections and finally had to go." "If you think my husband is overstrong, you're mistaken." "And mine, Madame, how about him?" Something told me that Monsieur Leddin's fate was hanging in the balance on this eventful evening. "Shake him up, Monsieur Neu, he doesn't need to sleep if we can't. We've all got to work to-morrow and he can take a nice long nap at his desk." "Oh, leave him alone," put in Monsieur Laurent, the stationer, who was seated near me. "Just listen to those fiendish women. Why they're worse than we are about the slackers. After all, I keep telling them there must be a few, otherwise who's going to write history? And history's got to be written, hasn't it?" "Most decidedly," I replied. And having at length found a subject of conversation that I had deigned approve, he continued,