"No, you stay too. You are lent to us for five days. They should have told you!"
"Oh, I stay too. In this tunnel, here! How odd, how amusing!"
"Monsieur Dellahousse has gone to ask the Commandant of the _citadelle_ to house us all. Here he comes."
The Russian returned under the chain of lights. "Follow me," he said, and led them further into his cavern.
They followed him like children, and as they advanced the lieutenant whispered: "We are now well beneath the town. It lies like a crust above our heads. Exactly beneath the palace you will see the steps go up...."
"Bread for the garrison. There are great bakeries in the _citadelle_."
Further and further still.... Till the Russian turned to the right and took a branching tunnel. Here, lining the curve of the stone wall were twenty little cubicles of light wood, raised a few inches from the moist floor, and roofless except for the arch of the tunnel that ran equally above them all. These were the rooms assigned to the _officers de passage_, officers whom duty kept for a night in Verdun. Each cubicle held a bed, a tin basin on a tripod, a minute square of looking-glass, a chair and a shelf, and each bore the name of its temporary owner written on a card upon the door.
"Twenty ... twenty-one ... and twenty-two," read the Russian from a paper he carried, and threw open the door of twenty-two.
"This is yours, mademoiselle"; he bowed and waved her toward it. Fanny entered the room, which, from his manner, might have been the gilded ante-chamber of his Tzar.
She heard him enter his own room, and through the partition the very sighing of his breath was audible as it rustled upon his lips! He tried to give her the illusion of privacy, for, wishing to speak to her, he left his room again to tap at her door, though his voice was as near her ear whether at door or wall.
"I hope you are content, mademoiselle?" he said through the woodwork.
"You will sleep here," he continued, as though he suspected her of sleeping anywhere but there, "and dine with us in the officers' mess at seven. Until then, please stay in the _citadelle_ in case I need you."
She heard his footsteps go up the corridor, the lieutenant following him. "I will unpack," she thought, and from her knapsack drew what she had by chance brought with her. Upon the shelf she arranged a tin of _singe_--the French bully beef--a gilt box of powder, a toothbrush, a comb, a map, a packet of letters to be answered, and a magneto spanner.