were together in France. That's what I always say: 'Live well and the longer the better!'" The major introduced him. "Professor Kühnchen, of the High School." The little man entered into lively explanations as to how he had come to be forgotten there in the dark. Earlier he had been with some people. "I suppose I must have dozed off a bit, and then the damned fellows left me in the lurch." His sleep had not dulled the fire of what he had drunk, and with boastful cries he reminded the major of their mutual achievements in the iron year. "The frank-tiroors!" he yelled, and moisture ran, out of his wrinkled, toothless mouth. "Those were the boy-os! As sure as you gentlemen are looking at me, I have still got a stiff finger where a frank-tiroor bit me, just because I wanted to slit his throat a bit with my sword. A dirty trick the fellow played on me!" He showed the finger round the table and elicited cries of admiration. Diederich's feeling of enthusiasm was frankly mixed with fear. Involuntarily he saw himself in the position of the franc-tireur: the fiery little man was kneeling on his chest and pointing the blade at his throat. He had to go outside for a moment.
When he returned the major and the professor, each trying to shout louder than the other, were telling the story of a wild battle. Neither of them could be heard properly. Kühnchen, however, yelled more piercingly than the other bellowed, until he had reduced him to silence and could take up the story undisturbed. "No, my old friend, you have a mind for detail. If you fell downstairs you wouldn't miss a step. But it was Kühnchen who set fire to the house when the frank-tiroors were inside, there's no doubt about that. I employed a ruse of war and pretended to be dead, so that the silly idiots did not notice anything. Once it was burning of course, they had no more desire to defend their country, and thought only of getting out, of soofe-qui-pooh. Then you should have seen us Germans! We shot them off the wall as they tried to clamber down! They bucked like rabbits!"
