Explore "A Duel" by Guy de Maupassant on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The war was over; the Germans were occupying France; the country lay quivering like a beaten wrestler fallen beneath the conqueror's knee.
From frenzied, famished, desperate Paris the first trains were departing, going to new frontiers, slowly traversing the countryside and the villages. The first travellers gazed through the windows at the ruined fields and burnt hamlets. At the doors of the houses left standing, Prussian soldiers, wearing their black, brass-spiked helmets, were smoking their pipes, straddling across their chairs. Others were working or talking, as though they were part of the family. When the train went through town, whole regiments could be seen drilling in the squares, and despite the din of the wheels, the hoarse words of command occasionally reached the travellers' ears.