at the bar. The waiter greeted them cheerfully in French. He poured out their new wine, cloudy and golden in their glasses, and came back and sat down.

French “Good People.”
“How do they get along with the French here in town?”

“No trouble. They are good people. Just like us. Some of them are nasty sometimes, but they are good people. Nobody hates, except profiteers. They had something to lose. We haven’t had any fun since 1911. If you make any money it gets no good, and there is only to spend it. That is what we do. Some day it will be over. I don’t know how. Last year I had enough money saved up to buy a gasthaus in Hernberg; now that money wouldn’t buy four bottles of champagne.”

I looked up at the wall where the prices were:

Beer, 350 marks a glass. Red wine, 500 marks a glass. Sandwich, 900 marks. Lunch, 3,500 marks. Champagne, 38,000 marks.

I remembered that last July I stayed at a de luxe hotel with Mrs. Hemingway for 600 marks a day.

“Sure,” the waiter went on, “I read the French papers. Germany debases her money to cheat the allies. But what do I get out of it?”

There was a shrill peep of a whistle outside. I paid and shook hands with the waiter, saluted the two forty-year-old second lieutenants, who were now playing checkers at their table, and went out to take the military train to Offenburg.

The End