Monsieur Segotin's Story
preparation in case it should become necessary to make an example of us. Somebody could have been found to have withheld a duck or a gosling, and then they would have had an excuse for a few fusillades. But they made up for their forgetfulness (if it was forgetfulness) by taking everything that they had not mentioned by name, just as if it had been put on the form.
"Then, lest any householder should have been left out, they posted up brilliant green notices which told us that these forms had been distributed, and that they could be obtained at the Mairie, and must be obtained by anyone who had not received one of them. As if any living creature in that paralysed little town could be unaware that the whole of its food supply was being taken from it!
"They had stripped our larders, but your German has a soul that can concern itself with more than victuals and drink, whatever some people may say of him. His desires include money. He is careful to fill his belly, but he thinks also of his pocket. And so our good friends proceeded to levy a contribution of cash upon the town. Nothing very tremendous, you understand. Saint Hilaire is not a Lunéville to be bled to the tune of 650,000 francs or a Brussels to be required to produce millions of your pounds. Thirty thousand francs was all they took from us to begin with; but, my faith, they would have been hard put to it to take more. Their assessment was nicely calculated. It would seem as if they had known to a centime how much
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