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A man enveloped in a handsome grey cloak groped through a dark alley which led into the fashionable district of the Rue de Béthisy. From time to time he paused, with a hand to his ear, as if listening. Satisfied that the alley was deserted save for his own presence, he would proceed, hugging the walls.
Cecil and I remained after the others had gone, and when the wife of the lodge-keeper came in and expressed her utter detestation of all troops, we told her that we were shedding our blood for France, and offered her forgetfully a glass of her own good wine. That night we slept at Béthisy St Martin.
But it was impossible to say how long it would remain so. Yet the soldier loitered, staring about him, as one remembering things. "Did not the Admiral live in this street?" he inquired. "De Coligny? No. Round the corner in the Rue de Béthisy," replied the clerk, brusquely. "But see! The ladder will not reach the bar no, not by four feet."
We stopped and questioned a "civvy" push-cyclist. He had just come from Béthisy and had seen no Germans. The officers started arguing whether or no they should wait for an escort. We got impatient and slipped on. Of course there was nothing in Béthisy except a wide-eyed population, a selection of smells, and a vast congregation of chickens.
For two whole years Oscar lived in the rue de Bethisy, a den of pettifogging; for if ever that superannuated expression was applicable to a lawyer's office, it was so in this case. Under this supervision, both petty and able, he was kept to his regular hours and to his work with such rigidity that his life in the midst of Paris was that of a monk.
Marius willed with the will of a man who hopes no more. He had been summoned, he must go. He found a means to traverse the throng and to pass the bivouac of the troops, he shunned the patrols, he avoided the sentinels. He made a circuit, reached the Rue de Bethisy, and directed his course towards the Halles. At the corner of the Rue des Bourdonnais, there were no longer any lanterns.
The child was the only son of Fauchet, one of the Receivers-General of the Revenue; a man who kept great state in the largest of the old-fashioned houses in the Rue de Bethisy, where he, had lately entertained the King.
It was a confusing place, crammed full of transport, but I found my way to our potential H.Q. with the aid of a joyous little flapper on my carrier. Then I remembered I had left my revolver behind on the hill above Béthisy. Just before I started I heard that there were bags of Uhlans coming along over the hills and through the woods. But there was nothing for it but to go back, and back I went.
I have said that the hôtel was in the Rue de l'Arbre Sec, at the corner of the Rue de Bethisy, and we were passing along the Rue des Fossés de St. Germain, when a man approached the Admiral with what looked like a petition. We quickened our pace, but the citizen was an inoffensive person, and the Admiral, taking the paper, began to read, walking on slowly the while.
We had been told that our H.O. were going to be at a place called Béthisy St Martin, so on we went. A couple of miles from Béthisy we came upon a billeting party of officers sitting in the shade of a big tree by the side of the road. Had we heard that the Germans were at Compiègne, ten miles or so over the hill? No, we hadn't. Was it safe to go on into Béthisy? None of us had an idea.
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