“When I left the room, the girl was waiting for me at the door, pale as death. She was sobbing.
“‘But he is saved!’ I said, taking her hands.
“The unhappy child hardly had the courage to reply. The true report of Reichshofen had been placarded; MacMahon in retreat, the whole army crushed. We gazed at each other in consternation. She was in despair, thinking of her father. I trembled, thinking of the old man. He certainly could not stand this fresh shock. And yet what were we to do? Leave him his joy, and the illusions which had revived him? But in that case we must lie.
“‘Very well, I will lie!’ said the heroic girl, quickly wiping away her tears; and with radiant face she
entered her grandfather’s chamber.
“It was a hard task that she had undertaken. The first few days she had no great difficulty. The good
man’s brain was feeble, and he allowed himself to be deceived like a child. But with returning health his ideas became clearer. We had to keep him posted concerning the movement of the armies, to draw up military bulletins for him. Really, it was pitiful to see that lovely child leaning night and day over her map of Germany, pinning little flags upon it, and struggling to lay out a glorious campaign: Bazaine besieging Berlin, Froissart in Bavaria, MacMahon on the Baltic. For all this she asked my advice, and I assisted her as well as I could; but it was the grandfather who was especially useful to us in that imaginary invasion. He had conquered Germany so many times under the First Empire! He knew all the strokes beforehand: ‘Now this is where they will go.
always realised, which did not fail to make him very proud.
“Unlucky it was of no avail for us to take cities and win battles; we never went quickly enough for him.
That old man was insatiable! Every day, when I arrived, I learned of some new military exploit.
“‘Doctor, we have taken Mayence,’ the girl would say to me, coming to meet me with a heart-broken
smile, and I would hear through the door a joyous voice shouting to me:
“‘They are getting on! They are getting on! In a week we shall be in Berlin!’
“At that moment the Prussians were only a week’s march from Paris. We asked ourselves at first if it
would be better to take him into the provinces; but as soon as we were outside the city, the state of the
country would have told him everything, and I considered him still too weak, too much benumbed by his great shock, to let him know the truth. So we decided to remain.
“The first day of the investment of Paris, I went up to their rooms, I remember, deeply moved, with that agony at the heart which the closed gates, the fighting under the walls, and our suburbs turned into frontiers, gave us all. I found the good man seated on his bed, proud and jubilant.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘so the siege has begun!’ “I gazed at him in blank amazement.
“‘What, colonel! you know?’
“His granddaughter turned towards me:
“‘Why, yes, doctor, that’s the great news. The siege of Berlin has begun.’
“As she said this, she plied her needle with such a sedate and placid air! How could he have suspected
anything? He could not hear the guns of the forts.
