Monsieur Segotin's Story
been given. And, mark, that while the joke is being cracked, the order is being awaited.
"I have told you that I was a hostage. Yes, I had that dubious honour. We were six in number; the mayor, the curé, the schoolmaster, the postmaster, the principal shopkeeper and your servant in his quality of a landowner. Saint Hilaire is little more than a village, and the community is a simple one. We have few notables amongst us, and our visitors had to put up with what they could find in the way of important persons. It was, as it happened, a formality for us. We had as much liberty as our neighbours; only we were required to report ourselves each morning at ten o'clock. But, again, one never knew.
"On the Mairie, on the church door, outside the post office and in a score of other places up and down our streets great green papers announced our names in full and in large, for all the world to see. And as we went along between our homes and the place where we were required to present ourselves, at every corner each of us was mildly reminded that, should there be the least disorder, he would be shot. That was the expression—'the least disorder.' And will you tell me, my good Monsieur, what that might precisely mean. It seemed, at any rate to us, the hostages, an expression of rather too much elasticity. You see one had knowledge of some examples of such 'disorder.' Aerschot, Dinant and Louvain had all been given over to the mercies of the German soldiers because of 'disorder' which had
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