MOBILE DIGITAL LIBRARY - SOCIETY OF YOUNG NIGERIAN ...

"Do you realize what that means, little one? We had to eat horse!"Did she realize what that meant! For two months she had eaten no other meat.As time went on and the old gentleman recovered little by little, our task increased indifficulty. The numbness of the senses which had made it so easy to deceive him wasdisappearing day by day. Two or three times already the terrible cannonading at the PorteMaillot had made him jump, his ear as keen as a hunting dog's, and we had been obligedto invent a last victory for Bazaine at the gates of Berlin and salvos fired at theInvalides[273-1] in honor of the event.Another day, when his bed had been brought over to the window (it was, I think, theThursday on which the battle of Buzenval was fought), he distinctly saw the troops of theNational Guard formed on the Avenue de la Grand Armé."What are those troops?" asked the old gentleman, and we heard him mutter, "Not wellset up."It went no farther, but we understood that thereafter we must take every precaution.Unfortunately we were not sufficiently careful. One evening as I reached the house, thelittle girl came to meet me, considerably troubled. "It is to-morrow that they enter thecity," she said.