with the German rearguards, were quickly separated in the swirl of the crowd that surged about us, greeting us as conquering heroes, though none of us were actual fighting-men, being war-correspondents, Intelligence officers (Wickham Brand and three other officers were there to establish an advanced headquarters), with an American doctor—that amazing fellow "Daddy" Small—and our French liaison officer, Pierre Nesle. Now and again we met in the streets and exchanged words.
I remember the Doctor and I drifted together at the end of the Boulevard de la Liberté. A French girl of the middle-class had tucked her hand through his right arm and was talking to him excitedly, volubly. On his other arm leaned an old dame in a black dress and bonnet who was also delivering her soul of its pent-up emotion to a man who did not understand more than a few words of her French. A small boy dressed as a Zouave was walking backwards, waving a long tricolour flag before the little American, and a crowd of people made a close circle about him, keeping pace.
"Assassins, bandits, robbers!" gobbled the old woman. "They stole all our copper, monsieur. The very mattresses off our beds. The wine out of our cellars. They did abominations."
"Month after month we waited," said the girl with her hand through the Doctor's right arm. "All that time the noise of the guns was loud in our ears. It never ceased, monsieur, until to-day. And we used to say, 'To-morrow the English will come! until at last some of us lost heart—not I, no, always I believed in victory!—and said, 'The English will never come.' Now you are here, and our hearts are full of joy. It is like a dream. The Germans have gone!"
The Doctor patted the girl's hand, and addressed me across the tricolour waved by the small Zouave.
