Monsieur Segotin's Story
cheerful restaurant and drinking the wine of Champagne—alas! poor country!—at your expense.
"It is soon told. I was among the deported. I, Aristide Gustave Segotin, sixty-two years of age, was appointed to perform labour behind the firing line. For contumacy, yes. No matter what I did; it was connected with the deportations. There are some things, Monsieur, which flesh and blood cannot endure, and I behaved contumaciously. A year earlier I would have been shot out of hand for my pains; but latterly they have been a little sparing of both their bullets and their beasts (I mean us, the Belgian people). And so I was condemned myself to share in the deportations; and since I was a strong old fellow and highly contumacious, where better could I be sent than to the battle lines, to dig trenches and carry sandbags and do anything else wherein a reasonably active old man could be serviceable?
"Believe me, my friend, it was a pleasant change. I was much more of a slave than at Saint Hilaire, but I had no longer before my eyes the spectacle of my native streets either silent under the menace of brightly-coloured proclamations or echoing to the screams of girls. And here, behind Bapaume, it was always possible that a British shell might find me out and do my business. Yes, I welcomed my change of scene.
"I think you can see for yourself what happened. Yes, when the Germans went back, I stayed behind. It was not difficult. They were so busy clearing
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