A little later a woman told us she had heard the Germans
caught him watching from a window with a pair of opera glasses, and on
this evidence took him for a spy. But we could secure no direct
evidence either to confirm the tale or to disprove it.
We got to the center of the town, leaving the venerable nag behind to be
baited at a big gray barn by a big, shapeless, kindly woman hostler
whose wooden shoes clattered on the round cobbles of her stable yard
like drum taps.
In the Square, after many citizens had informed us there was nothing to
eat, a little Frenchwoman took pity on our emptiness, and, leading us to
a parlor behind a shop where she sold, among other things, post cards,
cheeses and underwear, she made us a huge omelet and gave us also good
butter and fresh milk and a pot of her homemade marmalade. Her two
little daughters, who looked as though they had escaped from a Frans
Hals canvas, waited on us while we wolfed the food down.
Quite casually our hostess showed us a round hole in the window behind
us, a big white scar in the wooden inner shutter and a flattened chunk
of lead.
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