The month of January arrived. The army of the enemy held Paris day by day in a still closer grip. Food was getting scarce. Bitter cold enveloped the city, and poor soldiers who fell, sometimes only slightly wounded, passed away gently in a sleep that was eternal, their brain numbed and their body half frozen.

No more news could be received from outside, but thanks to the United States Minister, who had resolved to remain in Paris, a letter arrived from time to time. It was in this way that I received a thin slip of paper, as soft as a primrose petal, bringing me the following message: “Every one well. Courage. A thousand kisses.—Your mother.” This impalpable missive dated from seventeen days previously.

And so my mother, my sisters, and my little boy were at The Hague all this time, and my mind, which had been continually travelling in their direction, had been wandering along the wrong route, towards HÂvre, where I thought they were settled down quietly at the house of a cousin of my father’s mother.

Where were they, and with whom?

I had two aunts at The Hague, but the question was, were they there? I no longer knew what to think, and from that moment I never ceased suffering the most anxious and torturing mental distress.

I was doing all in my power just then to procure some wood for fires. Comte de KÉratry had sent me a large provision before his departure to the provinces in a balloon on October 9. My stock was growing very short, and I would not allow what we had in the cellars to be touched, so that in case of an emergency we should not be absolutely without any. I had all the little footstools belonging to the theatre used for firewood, all the wooden cases in which the properties were kept, a good number of old Roman benches, arm-chairs and curule chairs, that were stowed away under the theatre, and indeed everything which came to hand. Finally, taking pity on my despair, pretty Mlle. Hocquigny sent me ten thousand kilograms of wood, and then I took courage again.

I had been told about some new system of keeping meat, by which the meat lost neither its juice nor its nutritive quality. I sent Madame GuÉrard to the Mairie in the neighbourhood of the OdÉon, where such provisions were distributed, but some brute answered her that when I had removed all the religious images from my ambulance I should receive the necessary food. M. Herisson, the mayor, with some functionary holding an influential post, had been to inspect my ambulance. The important personage had requested me to have the beautiful white Virgins which were on the mantel-pieces and tables taken away, as well as the Divine Crucified—one hanging on the wall of each room in which there were any of the wounded. I refused in a somewhat insolent and very decided way to act in accordance with the wish of my visitor, whereupon the famous Republican turned his back on me and gave orders that I should be refused everything at the Mairie. I was very determined, however, and I moved heaven and earth until I succeeded in getting inscribed on the lists for distribution of food, in spite of the orders of the chief. It is only fair to say that the mayor was a charming man. Madame GuÉrard returned, after her third visit, with a child pushing a hand-barrow containing ten enormous bottles of the miraculous meat. I received the precious consignment with infinite joy, for my men had been almost without meat for the last three days, and the beloved pot-au-feu was an almost necessary resource for the poor wounded fellows. On all the bottles were directions as to opening them: “Let the meat soak so many hours,” &c. &c.

Madame Lambquin, Madame GuÉrard, and I, together with all the staff of the infirmary, were soon grouped anxiously and inquisitively around these glass receptacles.

I told the head attendant to open the largest of the bottles, in which through the thick glass we could see an enormous piece of beef surrounded by thick, muddled-looking water. The string fastened round the rough paper which hid the cork was cut, and then, just as the man was about to put the corkscrew in, a deafening explosion was heard and a rank odour filled the room. Every one rushed away terrified. I called them all back, scared and disgusted as they were, and showed them the following words on the directions: “Do not be alarmed at the bad odour on opening the bottle.” Courageously and with resignation we resumed our work, though we felt sick all the time from the abominable exhalation. I took the beef out and placed it on a dish that had been brought for the purpose. Five minutes later this meat turned blue and then black, and the stench from it was so unbearable that I decided to throw it away. Madame Lambquin was wiser, though, and more reasonable.

“No, oh no, my dear girl,” she said; “in these times it will not do to throw meat away, even though it may be rotten. Let us put it in the glass bottle again and send it back to the Mairie.”

I followed her wise advice, and it was a very good thing I did, for another ambulance, installed at Boulevard Medicis, on opening these bottles of meat had been as horrified as we were, and had thrown the contents into the street. A few minutes after the crowd had gathered round in a mob, and, refusing to listen to anything, had yelled out insults addressed to “the aristocrats,” “the clericals,” and “the traitors,” who were throwing good meat, intended for the sick, into the street, so that the dogs were enjoying it, while the people were starving with hunger, &c. &c.

It was with the greatest difficulty that the wretched, mad people had been prevented from invading the ambulance, and when one of the unfortunate nurses had gone out, later on, she had been mobbed and beaten until she was left half dead from fright and blows. She did not want to be carried back to her own ambulance, and the druggist begged me to take her in. I kept her for a few days, in one of the upper tier boxes of the theatre, and when she was better she asked if she might stay with me as a nurse. I granted her wish, and kept her with me afterwards as a maid.

She was a fair-haired girl, gentle and timid, and was pre-destined for misfortune. She was found dead in the PÈre Lachaise cemetery after the skirmish between the Communists and the Versailles troop. A stray bullet struck her in the back of the neck as she was praying at the grave of her little sister, who had died two days before from small-pox. I had taken her with me to St. Germain, where I had gone to stay during the horrors of the Commune. Poor girl! I had allowed her to go to Paris very much against my own will.

As we could not count on this preserved meat for our food, I made a contract with a knacker, who agreed to supply me, at rather a high price, with horse flesh, and until the end this was the only meat we had to eat. Well prepared and well seasoned, it was very good.

Hope had now fled from all hearts, and we were living in the expectation of we knew not what. An atmosphere of misfortune seemed to hang like lead over us, and it was a sort of relief when the bombardment commenced on December 27. At last we felt that something new was happening! It was an era of fresh suffering. There was some stir, at any rate. For the last fortnight the fact of not knowing anything had been killing us.

On January 1, 1871, we lifted our glasses to the health of the absent ones, to the repose of the dead, and the toast choked us with such a lump in our throats.

Every night we used to hear the dismal cry of “Ambulance! Ambulance!” underneath the windows of the OdÉon. We went down to meet the pitiful procession, and one, two, or sometimes three conveyances would be there, full of our poor, wounded soldiers. There would be ten or twelve rows of them, lying or sitting up on the straw. I said that I had room for one or two, and, lifting the lantern, I looked into the conveyance, and the faces would then turn slowly towards the lamp. Some of the men would close their eyes, as they were too weak to bear even that feeble light. With the help of the sergeant who accompanied the conveyance and our attendant, one of the unfortunates would with difficulty be lifted into the narrow litter on which he was to be carried up to the ambulance.

Oh, what sorrowful anguish it was for me when, on lifting the patient’s head, I discovered that it was getting heavy, oh, so heavy! And when bending over that inert face I felt that there was no longer any breath! The sergeant would then give the order to take him back, and the poor dead man was put in his place and another wounded man was lifted out.

The other dying men would then move back a little, in order not to profane the dead.

Ah, what grief it was when the sergeant said: “Do try to take one or two more in! It is a pity to drag these poor chaps about from one ambulance to another. The Val-de-GrÂce is full.”

“Very well, I will take two more,” I would say, and then I wondered where we should put them. We had to give up our own beds, and in this way the poor fellows were saved. Ever since January 1 we had all three been sleeping every night at the ambulance. We had some loose dressing-gowns of thick grey flannel, not unlike the soldiers’ cloaks. The first of us who heard a cry or a groan sprang out of bed, and if necessary called the other two.

On January 10, Madame GuÉrard and I were sitting up at night, on one of the lounges in the green-room, awaiting the dismal cry of “Ambulance!” There had been a fierce affray at Clamart, and we knew there would be many wounded. I was telling her of my fear that the bombs which had already reached the Museum, the Sorbonne, the SalpÉtriÈre, the Val-de-GrÂce, &c., would fall on the OdÉon.

“Oh, but, my dear Sarah,” said the sweet woman, “the ambulance flag is waving so high above it that there could be no mistake. If it were struck it would be purposely, and that would be abominable.”

“But, GuÉrard,” I replied, “why should you expect these execrable enemies of ours to be better than we are ourselves? Did we not behave like savages at Berlin in 1806?”

“But at Paris there are such admirable public monuments,” she urged.

“Well, and was not Moscow full of masterpieces? The Kremlin is one of the finest buildings in the world. That did not prevent us giving that admirable city up to pillage. Oh no, my poor petit Dame, do not deceive yourself. Armies may be Russian, German, French, or Spanish, but they are armies—that is, they are beings which form an impersonal ‘whole,’ a ‘whole’ that is ferocious and irresponsible. The Germans will bombard the whole of Paris if the possibility of doing so should be offered them. You must make up your mind to that, my dear GuÉrard——”

I had not finished my sentence when a terrible detonation roused the whole neighbourhood from its slumbers. Madame GuÉrard and I had been seated opposite each other. We found ourselves standing up close together in the middle of the room, terrified. My poor cook, her face quite white, came to me for safety. The detonations continued rather frequently. The bombarding had commenced from our side that night. I went round to the wounded men, but they did not seem to be much disturbed. Only one, a boy of fifteen, whom we had surnamed “pink baby,” was sitting up in bed. When I went to him to soothe him he showed me his little medal of the Holy Virgin.

“It is thanks to her that I was not killed,” he said. “If they would put the Holy Virgin on the ramparts of Paris the bombs would not come.”

He lay down again then, holding his little medal in his hand, and the bombarding continued until six in the morning. “Ambulance! Ambulance!” we then heard, and Madame GuÉrard and I went down. “Here,” said the sergeant, “take this man. He is losing all his blood, and if I take him any farther he will not arrive living.” The wounded man was put on the litter, but as he was German, I asked the sub-officer to take all his papers and hand them in at the Ministry. We gave the man the place of one of the convalescents, whom I installed elsewhere. I asked him his name, and he told me that it was Frantz Mayer, and that he was a soldier of the Silesian Landwehr. He then fainted from weakness caused by loss of blood. But he soon came to himself again with our care, and I then asked him whether he wanted anything, but he did not answer a word. I supposed that he did not speak French, and, as there was no one at the ambulance who spoke German, I waited until the next day to send for some one who knew his language. I must own that the poor man was not welcomed by his dormitory companions. A soldier named Fortin, who was twenty-three years of age and a veritable child of Paris, a comical fellow, mischievous, droll, and good-natured, never ceased railing against the young German, who on his side never flinched. I went several times to Fortin and begged him to be quiet, but it was all in vain. Every fresh outbreak of his was greeted with wild laughter, and his success put him into the gayest of humours, so that he continued, getting more and more excited. The others were prevented from sleeping, and he moved about wildly in his bed, bursting out into abusive language when too abrupt a movement intensified his suffering. The unfortunate fellow had had his sciatic nerve torn by a bullet, and he had to endure the most atrocious pain.

After my third fruitless appeal for silence I ordered the two men attendants to carry him into a room where he would be alone. He sent for me, and when I went to him promised to behave well all night long. I therefore countermanded the order I had given, and he kept his word. The following day I had Frantz Mayer carried into a room where there was a young Breton who had had his skull fractured by the bursting of a shell, and therefore needed the utmost tranquillity.

One of my friends, who spoke German very well, came to see whether the Silesian wanted anything. The wounded man’s face lighted up on hearing his own language, and then, turning to me, he said:

“I understand French quite well, Madame, and if I listened calmly to the horrors poured forth by your French soldier it was because I know that you cannot hold out two days longer, and I can understand his exasperation.”

“And why do you think that we cannot hold out?”

“Because I know that you are reduced to eating rats.”

Dr. Duchesne had just arrived, and he was dressing the horrible wound which the patient had in his thigh.

“Well,” he said, “my friend, as soon as your fever has decreased you shall eat an excellent wing of chicken.” The German shrugged his shoulders, and the doctor continued, “Meanwhile drink this, and tell me what you think of it.”

Dr. Duchesne gave him a glass of water, with a little of the excellent cognac which the Prefect had sent me. That was the only tisane that my soldiers took. The Silesian said no more, but he put on the reserved, circumspect manner of people who know and will not speak.

The bombardment continued, and the ambulance flag certainly served as a target for our enemies, for they fired with surprising exactitude, and altered their firing directly a bomb fell any distance from the neighbourhood of the Luxembourg. Thanks to this, we had more than twelve bombs one night. These dismal shells, when they burst in the air, were like the fireworks at a fÊte. The shining splinters then fell down, black and deadly. Georges Boyer, who at that time was a young journalist, came to call on me at the ambulance, and I told him about the terrifying splendours of the night.

“Oh, how much I should like to see all that!” he said.

“Come this evening, towards nine or ten o’clock, and you will see,” I replied.

We spent several hours at the little round window of my dressing—room, which looked out towards Chatillon. It was from there that the Germans fired the most.

We listened, in the silence of the night, to the muffled sounds coming from yonder; there would be a light, a formidable noise in the distance, and the bomb arrived, falling in front of us or behind, bursting either in the air or on reaching its goal. Once we had only just time to draw back quickly, and even then the disturbance in the atmosphere affected us so violently that for a second we were under the impression that we had been struck.

The shell had fallen just underneath my dressing-room, grazing the cornice, which it dragged down in its fall to the ground, where it burst feebly. But what was our amazement to see a little crowd of children swoop down on the burning pieces, just like a lot of sparrows on fresh manure when the carriage has passed! The little vagabonds were quarrelling over the dÉbris of these engines of warfare. I wondered what they could possibly do with them.

“Oh, there is not much mystery about it,” said Boyer; “these little starving urchins will sell them.”

This proved to be true. One of the men attendants, whom I sent to find out, brought back with him a child of about ten years old.

“What are you going to do with that, my little man?” I asked him, picking up the piece of shell, which was warm and still dangerous, on the edge where it had burst.

“I am going to sell it,” he replied.

“What for?”

“To buy my turn in the queue when the meat is being distributed.”

“But you risk your life, my poor child. Sometimes the shells come quickly, one after the other. Where were you when this one fell?”

“Lying down on the stone of the wall that supports the iron railings.” He pointed across to the Luxembourg Gardens, opposite the stage entrance to the OdÉon.

We bought up all the dÉbris that the child had, without attempting to give him advice which might have sounded wise. What was the use of preaching wisdom to this poor little creature, who heard of nothing but massacres, fire, revenge, retaliation, and all the rest of it, for the sake of honour, for the sake of religion, for the sake of right? Besides, how was it possible to keep out of the way? All the people living in the Faubourg St. Germain were liable to be blown to pieces, as the enemy very luckily could only bombard Paris on that side, and not at every point. No; we were certainly in the most dangerous neighbourhood.

One day Baron Larrey came to see Frantz Mayer, who was very ill. He wrote a prescription which a young errand boy was told to wait for and bring back very, very quickly. As the boy was rather given to loitering, I went to the window. His name was Victor, but we called him “Toto.” The druggist lived at the corner of the Place Medicis. It was then six o’clock in the evening. Toto looked up, and on seeing me he began to laugh and jump as he hurried to the druggist’s. He had only five or six more yards to go, and as he turned round to look up at my window I clapped my hands and called out, “Good! Be quick back!” Alas! Before the poor boy could open his mouth to reply he was cut in two by a shell which had just fallen. It did not burst, but bounced a yard high, and then struck poor Toto right in the middle of the chest. I uttered such a shriek that every one came rushing to me. I could not speak, but pushed every one aside and rushed downstairs, beckoning for some one to come with me. “A litter”—“the boy”—“the druggist”—I managed to articulate. Ah, what a horror, what an awful horror! When we reached the poor child his intestines were all over the ground, his chest and his poor little red chubby face had the flesh entirely taken off. He had neither eyes, nose, nor mouth; nothing, nothing but some hair at the end of a shapeless, bleeding mass, a yard away from his head. It was as though a tiger had torn open the body with its claws and emptied it with fury and a refinement of cruelty, leaving nothing but the poor little skeleton.

Baron Larrey, who was the best of men, turned slightly pale at this sight. He saw plenty such, certainly, but this poor little fellow was a quite useless holocaust. Ah, the injustice, the infamy of war! Will the much dreamed of time never come when wars are no longer possible; when the monarch who wants war will be dethroned and imprisoned as a malefactor? Will the time never come when there will be a cosmopolitan council, where a wise man of every country will represent his nation, and where the rights of humanity will be discussed and respected? So many men think as I do, so many women talk as I do, and yet nothing is done. The pusillanimity of an Oriental, the ill-humour of a sovereign, may still bring thousands of men face to face. And there will still be men who are so learned, chemists who spend their time in dreaming about, and inventing a powder to blow everything up, bombs that will wound twenty or thirty men, guns repeating their deadly task until the bullets fall, spent themselves, after having torn open ten or twelve human breasts.

A man whom I liked very much was busy experimenting how to steer balloons. To achieve that means a realisation of my dream, namely, to fly in the air, to approach the sky, and have under one’s feet the moist, down-like clouds. Ah, how interested I was in my friend’s researches! One day, though, he came to me very much excited with a new discovery.

“I have discovered something about which I am wild with delight!” he said. He then began to explain to me that his balloon would be able to carry inflammable matter without the least danger, thanks to this and thanks to that.

“But what for?” I asked, bewildered by his explanations and half crazy with so many technical words.

“What for?” he repeated; “why, for war!” he replied. “We shall be able to fire and to throw terrible bombs to a distance of a thousand, twelve hundred, and even fifteen hundred yards, and it would be impossible for us to be harmed at such a distance. My balloons, thanks to a substance which is my invention, with which the covering would be coated, would have nothing to fear from fire nor yet from gas.”

“I do not want to know anything more about you or your invention,” I said, interrupting him brusquely. “I thought you were a humane savant, and you are a wild beast. Your researches were in connection with the most beautiful manifestation of human genius, with those evolutions in the sky which I loved so dearly. You want now to transform these into cowardly attacks turned against the earth. You horrify me! Do go!”

With this I left my friend to himself and his cruel invention, ashamed for a moment. His efforts have not succeeded, though, according to his wishes.

The remains of the poor lad were put into a small coffin, and Madame GuÉrard and I followed the pauper’s hearse to the grave. The morning was so cold that the driver had to stop and take a glass of hot wine, as otherwise he might have died of congestion. We were alone in the carriage, for the boy had been brought up by his grandmother, who could not walk at all, and who knitted vests and stockings. It was through going to order some vests and socks for my men that I had made the acquaintance of MÈre Tricottin, as she was called. At her request I had engaged her grandson, Victor Durieux, as an errand boy, and the poor old woman had been so grateful that I dared not go now to tell her of his death.

Madame GuÉrard went for me to the Rue de Vaugirard, where the old woman lived. As soon as she arrived the poor grandmother could see by her sad face that something had happened.

“Bon Dieu, my dear Madame, is the poor little thin lady dead?” This referred to me. Madame GuÉrard then told her, as gently as possible, the sad news. The old woman took off her spectacles, looked at her visitor, wiped them, and put them on her nose again. She then began to grumble violently about her son, the father of the dead boy. He had taken up with some low girl, by whom he had had this child, and she had always foreseen that misfortune would come upon them through it.

She continued in this strain, not sorrowing for the poor boy, but abusing her son, who was a soldier in the Army of the Loire.

Although the grandmother seemed to feel so little grief, I went to see her after the funeral.

“It is all over, Madame Durieux,” I said. “But I have secured the grave for a period of five years for the poor boy.”

She turned towards me, quite comic in her vexation.

“What madness!” she exclaimed. “Now that he’s with the bon Dieu he won’t want for anything. It would have been better to have taken a bit of land that would have brought something in. Dead folks don’t make vegetables grow.”

This outburst was so terribly logical that, in spite of the odious brutality of it, I yielded to MÈre Tricottin’s desire, and gave her the same present I had given to the boy. They should each have their bit of land. The child, who had had a right to a longer life, should sleep his eternal sleep in his, whilst the old woman could wrest from hers the remainder of her life, for which death was lying in wait.

I returned to the ambulance, sad and unnerved. A joyful surprise was awaiting me. A friend of mine was there, holding in his hand a very small piece of tissue paper, on which were the following two lines in my mother’s handwriting: “We are all very well, and at Homburg.” I was furious on reading this. At Homburg? All my family at Homburg, settling down tranquilly in the enemy’s country. I racked my brains to think by what extraordinary combination my mother had gone to Homburg. I knew that my pretty Aunt Rosine had a lady friend there, with whom she stayed every year, for she always spent two months at Homburg, two at Baden-Baden, and one month at Spa, as she was the greatest gambler that the bon Dieu ever created. Anyhow, those who were so dear to me were all well, and that was the important point. But I was nevertheless annoyed with my mother for going to Homburg.

I heartily thanked the friend who had brought me the little slip of paper. It was sent to me by the American Minister, who had put himself to no end of trouble in order to give help and consolation to the Parisians. I then gave him a few lines for my mother, in case he might be able to send them to her.

The bombardment of Paris continued. One night the brothers from the Ecole ChrÉtienne came to ask us for conveyances and help, in order to collect the dead on the ChÂtillon Plateau. I let them have my two conveyances, and I went with them to the battle-field. Ah, what a terrible memory! It was like a scene from Dante! It was an icy-cold night, and we could scarcely move along. Finally, by the light of torches and lanterns, we saw that we had arrived. I got out of the vehicle with the infirmary attendant and his assistant. We had to move slowly, as at every step we trod upon the dying or the dead. We passed along murmuring, “Ambulance! Ambulance!” When we heard a groan we turned our steps in the direction whence it came. Ah, the first man that I found in this way! He was half lying down, his body supported by a heap of dead. I raised my lantern to look at his face, and found that his ear and part of his jaw had been blown off. Great clots of blood, coagulated by the cold, hung from his lower jaw. There was a wild look in his eyes. I took a wisp of straw, dipped it in my flask, drew up a few drops of brandy, and blew them into the poor fellow’s mouth between his teeth. I repeated this three or four times. A little life then came back to him, and we took him away in one of the vehicles. The same thing was done for the others. Some of them could drink from the flask, which made our work shorter. One of these unfortunate men was frightful to look at. A shell had taken all the clothes from the upper part of his body, with the exception of two ragged sleeves, which hung from the arms at the shoulders. There was no trace of a wound, but his poor body was marked all over with great black patches, and the blood was oozing slowly from the corners of his mouth. I went nearer to him, for it seemed to me that he was breathing. I had a few drops of the vivifying cordial given to him, and he then half opened his eyes and said, “Thank you.” He was lifted into the conveyance, but the poor fellow died from an attack of haemorrhage, covering all the other wounded men with a stream of dark blood.

Daylight gradually began to appear, a misty, dull dawn. The lanterns had burnt out, but we could now distinguish each other. There were about a hundred persons there: sisters of charity, military and civil male hospital attendants, the brothers from the Ecole ChrÉtienne, other priests, and a few ladies who, like myself, had given themselves up heart and soul to the service of the wounded.

The sight was still more dismal by daylight, for all that the night had hidden in the shadows appeared then in the tardy, wan light of that January morning.

There were so many wounded that it was impossible to transport them all, and I sobbed at the thought of my helplessness. Other vehicles kept arriving, but there were so many wounded, so very many. A number of those who had only slight wounds had died of cold.

On returning to the ambulance I met one of my friends at the door. He was a naval officer, and he had brought me a sailor who had been wounded at the fort of Ivry. He had been shot below the right eye. He was entered as DÉsirÉ Bloas, boatswain’s mate, age 27. He was a magnificent fellow, very frank looking, and a man of few words. As soon as he was in bed, Dr. Duchesne sent for a barber to shave him, as his bushy whiskers had been ravaged by a bullet that had lodged itself in the salivary gland, carrying with it hair and flesh into the wound. The surgeon took up his pincers to extract the pieces of flesh which had stopped up the opening of the wound. He then had to take some very fine pincers to extract the hairs which had been forced in. When the barber laid his razor very gently near the wound, the unfortunate man turned livid and an oath escaped his lips. He immediately glanced at me and muttered, “Pardon, Mademoiselle.” I was very young, but I appeared much younger than my age; I looked like a very young girl, in fact. I was holding the poor fellow’s hand in mine and trying to comfort him with the hundreds of consoling words that spring from a woman’s heart to her lips when she has to soothe moral or physical suffering.

“Ah, Mademoiselle,” said poor Bloas, when the wound was finally dressed, “you gave me courage.”

When he was more at his ease I asked him if he would like something to eat.

“Yes,” he replied.

“Well, my boy, would you like cheese, soup, or sweets?” asked Madame Lambquin.

“Sweets,” replied the powerful-looking fellow, smiling.

DÉsirÉ Bloas often talked to me about his mother, who lived near Brest. He had a veritable adoration for this mother, but he seemed to have a terrible grudge against his father, for one day, when I asked him whether his father was still living, he looked up with his fearless eyes and appeared to fix them on a being only visible to himself, as though challenging him, with an expression of the most pitiful contempt. Alas! the brave fellow was destined to a cruel end, but I will return to that later.

The sufferings endured through the siege began to have their effect on the morale of the Parisians. Bread had just been rationed out: there were to be 300 grammes for adults and 150 grammes for children. A silent fury took possession of the people at this news. Women were the most courageous, the men were excited. Quarrels grew bitter, for some wanted war to the very death, and others wanted peace.

One day when I entered Frantz Mayer’s room to take him his meal, he went into the most ridiculous rage. He threw his piece of chicken down on the ground, and declared that he would not eat anything, nothing more at all, for they had deceived him by telling him that the Parisians had not enough food to last two days before surrendering, and he had been in the ambulance seventeen days now, and was having chicken. What the poor fellow did not know was that I had bought about forty chickens and six geese at the beginning of the siege, and I was feeding them up in my dressing-room in the Rue de Rome. Oh, my dressing-room was very pretty just then; but I let Frantz believe that all Paris was full of chickens, ducks, geese, and other domestic bipeds.

The bombardment continued, and one night I had to have all my patients transported to the OdÉon cellars, for when Madame GuÉrard was helping one of the sick men to get back into bed, a shell fell on the bed itself, between her and the officer. It makes me shudder even now to think that three minutes sooner the unfortunate man would have been killed as he lay in bed, although the shell did not burst.

We could not stay long in the cellars. The water was getting deeper in them, and rats tormented us. I therefore decided that the ambulance must be moved, and I had the worst of the patients conveyed to the Val-de-GrÂce Hospital. I kept about twenty men who were on the road to convalescence. I rented an immense empty flat for them at 58 Rue Taitbout, and it was there that we awaited the armistice.

I was half dead with anxiety, as I had had no news from my own family for a long time. I could not sleep, and had become the very shadow of my former self.

Jules Favre was entrusted with the negotiations with Bismarck. Oh, those two days of preliminaries! They were the most unnerving days of any for the besieged. False reports were spread. We were told of the maddest and most exorbitant demands on the part of the Germans, who certainly were not tender to the vanquished.

There was a moment of stupor when we heard that we had to pay two hundred million francs in cash immediately, for our finances were in such a pitiful state that we shuddered at the idea that we might not be able to make up the sum of two hundred millions.

Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, who was shut up in Paris with his wife and brothers, gave his signature for the two hundred millions. This fine deed was soon forgotten, and there are even people who gainsay it.

Ah, the ingratitude of the masses is a disgrace to civilised humanity! “Ingratitude is the evil peculiar to the white races,” said a Red-skin, and he was right.

When we heard in Paris that the armistice was signed for twenty days, a frightful sadness took possession of us all, even of those who most ardently wished for peace.

Every Parisian felt on his cheek the hand of the conqueror. It was the brand of shame, the blow given by the abominable treaty of peace.

Oh, that 31st of January 1871! I remember so well that I was anaemic from privation, undermined by grief, tortured with anxiety about my family, and I went out with Madame GuÉrard and two friends towards the Parc Monceau. Suddenly one of my friends, M. de Plancy, turned as pale as death. I looked to see what was the matter, and noticed a soldier passing by. He had no weapons. Two others passed, and they also had no weapons. And they were so pale too, these poor disarmed soldiers, these humble heroes; there was such evident grief and hopelessness in their very gait; and their eyes, as they looked at us women, seemed to say, “It is not our fault!” It was all so pitiful, so touching. I burst out sobbing, and went back home at once, for I did not want to meet any more disarmed French soldiers.

I decided to set off now as quickly as possible in search of my family. I asked Paul de RÉmusat to get me an audience with M. Thiers, in order to obtain from him a passport for leaving Paris. But I could not go alone. I felt that the journey I was about to undertake was a very dangerous one. M. Thiers and Paul de RÉmusat had warned me of this. I could see, therefore, that I should be constantly in the society of my travelling companion, and on this account I decided not to take a servant with me, but a friend. I very naturally went at once to Madame GuÉrard. Her husband, gentle though he was, refused absolutely to let her go with me, as he considered this expedition mad and dangerous. Mad it certainly was, and dangerous too.

I did not insist, but I sent for my son’s governess, Mlle. Soubise. I asked her whether she would go with me, and did not attempt to conceal from her any of the dangers of the journey. She jumped with joy, and said she would be ready within twelve hours. This girl is at present the wife of Commandant Monfils Chesneau. And how strange life is, for she is now teaching the two daughters of my son, her former pupil.

Mlle. Soubise was then very young, and in appearance like a Creole. She had very beautiful dark eyes, with a gentle, timid expression, and the voice of a child. Her head, however, was full of adventure, romance, and day-dreams. In appearance we might both have been taken for quite young girls, for, although I was older than she was, my slenderness and my face made me look younger. It would have been absurd to try to take a trunk with us, so I took a bag for us both. We only had a change of linen and some stockings. I had my revolver, and I offered one to Mlle. Soubise, but she refused it with horror, and showed me an enormous pair of scissors in an enormous case.

“But what are you going to do with them?” I asked.

“I shall kill myself if we are attacked,” she replied.

I was surprised at the difference in our characters. I was taking a revolver, determined to protect myself by killing others; she was determined to protect herself by killing herself.