The old concierge of the hunting box at Viel Salm (near MalmÉdy, Germany), who has been dying of tuberculosis for twenty years, arrived here tonight, having walked the whole distance of seventy five kilometres. This shows the faithfulness of the old servant who thought he must come to report the sacking of the villa by the German troops which occurred in the early days of August.

The poor man could not have hobbled another step, for he was at the end of his strength and his feet were just two great blisters. He told a shocking tale of the troops, who entirely pillaged the villa. While he went to complain of them at the Kommandantur of the place, others came and what they did not break up, they took off. Pictures, engravings and mirrors were broken, the leather chairs slit up with a sabre—artistically done in the shape of a cross—and porcelain smashed in the middle of the courtyard. You can see by this that pillaging and atrocities began when the troops were hardly over the frontier.

In one of the numerous pillaged chÂteaux around about, an extraordinary bit of literature, in fact a masterpiece, has been found by the chÂtelaine. A tiny scrap of paper sticking out from a book had these words scribbled on it in German: "I am only a common soldier but I ask pardon for these atrocities, committed by my superior officers."