Thus the couplets
"Dans le service de l'Autriche
Le militaire n'est pas riche"
were changed to
"Dans le service de la Suisse
Le militaire n'est pas riche."
These passionate lines of a political exile:
"A l'etranger un pacte impie
Vendait mon sang, liait ma foi,
Mais a present, o ma patrie
Je pourrai done mourir pour toi!"
were rendered harmless as
"A l'etranger, en reverie
Chaque jour je pleurais sur toi
Mais a present, o ma patrie
Je penserai sans cesse a toi!"
The pleasure he took in recasting this doggerel--calling in Vivie to
help him as presumably a good scholar in French--got on her nerves,
and she was hard put to it to keep her temper.
Sometimes he proposed that she should take a hand, even become a
salaried subordinate; compose articles for his subsidized paper,
"_L'Ami de l'Ordre_" (nicknamed "L'Ami de L'Ordure" by the
Belgians), "_La Belgique_," "_Le Bruxellois_," "_Vers la Paix_."
He would allow her a very free hand, so long as she did not attack
the Germans or their allies or put in any false news about military
or naval successes of the foes of Central Europe. She might, for
instance, dilate on the cruel manner in which the Woman Suffragists
had been persecuted in England; give a description of forcible
feeding or of police ferocity on Black Friday.
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