Poor "Papa" Joffre

Good "Papa" Joffre was snoring. He has a touch of water on the knee, nowadays, and he tires easily. Therefore after a morning stroll in his Paris garden last week the beloved old Marshal climbed stiffly and painfully upstairs, sank with relief into a large armchair, dozed off and soon was snoring.

Seeing her husband thus at peace, Madame La Marechale, frugal, set off to market, taking along her cook to carry the market bag. Then for a time there was no one in the house but "Papa" Joffre, so fast asleep that he did not hear light steps on the porch, the creak of the front door which Madame La Marechale had accidentally left unlocked, or stealthy footfalls which soon indicated that someone was prowling all over the house. Surely it could be no sneakthief. Who would steal from lovable, heroic "Papa" Joffre, who saved Paris at the Battle of the Marne?

After a time the Marshal waked, and he was busily working on his memoirs when his wife returned, followed at a respectful distance by cook and market basket. In the basket was an old cock, just right for an old man's chicken soup, a bottle of wine as the Bible says "for thy stomach's sake," and some cheap but wholesome vegetables, for heroes are seldom rich.

"Mon dieu!" cried Madame La Marechale as she saw the half open front door and rushed frantically within. The house had been ransacked. Silver, jewelry and securities to the value of 50,000 francs were gone--not much in the U. S., scarcely $2,000, but much to grizzled Joseph Joffre. When excited gendarmes came, the Marshal, no longer his fat self of younger days but very thin and trembly, exclaimed, "Whoever burglarized my house was no Frenchman. That, I could not believe!"