A hundred feet from the first house a
triumphal arch was built of pine and laurel across the road. On it was
written in white letters "Soyez le Bienvenu." All the white poor houses
glittered in the snow with flags.
A stream crossed the village street, and a file of geese on its narrow
bridge brought her to a standstill.
"What are the flags for?" she asked of an old man, pressing back into a
safety alcove in the stone wall of the bridge.
"We expect Petain here to-day. He is coming to Thionville."
"But Thionville is forty miles away--"
"Still, he might pass here--"
Running on and on through forest and hilly country, they left the snow
behind them, and slipped down into greener valleys, till at last they
came upon a single American sentry, and over his head was chalked upon a
board: "This is Germany."
They pulled up. Germany it might be--but the road to Treves? He did not
know; he knew nothing, except that with his left foot he stood in
Germany, and with his right in France.
CHAPTER VIII
GERMANY
Over the side of the next mountain all Hans Andersen was stretched
before them--tracts of _little_ country, little wooden houses with
pointed roofs, little hills covered with squares of different coloured
woods, and a blue river at the bottom of the valley, white with geese
upon its banks.
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