“Two weeks had passed since Sedan; in other words, it was mid-September 1870. The copyist of the Prussian geological department, and this time a lieutenant from the reservists, Mr. von Bleichroden, sat without a frock coat at a desk in one of the rooms of the Cafe du Cercle - the most sophisticated establishment in the village of Marlotte. The lieutenant hung his uniform frock coat with a stand-up collar on the back of the chair, and it drooped like a dead body, convulsively wrapping its empty sleeves around the legs of the chair - as if in case of a sudden fall head first. On the right field there was a trace from the sword belt, the left one was worn to a shine by the scabbard, and the back was as dusty as a country road. Using the bottoms of his worn-out trousers, Mr. Geologist with the rank of lieutenant could, even in the evening, easily study the tertiary deposits in a given area, and when a messenger came to him, he unmistakably determined from the footprints of his dirty boots which formations lay on the messenger’s path - Eocene or Pliocene... " Translation: Sofia Fridland