I think, from their sound, they were French shells."
This debonair gentleman, as presently transpired, was Colonel von
Scheller, for four years consul to the German Embassy at Washington,
more lately minister for foreign affairs of the kingdom of Saxony, and
now doing staff duty in the ordnance department here at the German
center. He had the sharp brown eyes of a courageous fox terrier, a
mustache that turned up at the ends, and a most beautiful command of the
English language and its American idioms. He hurried along with his
dinner and soon he had caught up with us.
"I suggest," he said, "that we go out on the terrace to drink our
coffee. It is about time for the French to start their evening
benediction, as we call it. They usually quit firing their heavy guns
just before dark, and usually begin again at eight and keep it up for an
hour or two."
So we two took our coffee cups and our cigars in our hands and went out
through a side passage to the terrace, and sat on a little iron bench,
where a shaft of light, from a window of the room we had just quit,
showed a narrow streak of flowering plants beyond the bricked wall and a
clump of red and yellow woodbine on a low wall.
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