from the windows of the cars as they rushed onward
across the darkling fields. The soldiers of a Prussian detachment,
moreover, that had been sent to occupy the station, went through the
train and compelled the passengers to leave it, while two of their
number, stationed on the platform, shouted in guttural French:

"Paris is burning. All out here! this train goes no further. Paris is
burning, Paris is burning!"

Henriette experienced a terrible shock. _Mon Dieu!_ was she too late,
then? Receiving no reply from Maurice to her two last letters, the
alarming news from Paris had filled her with such mortal terror that she
determined to leave Remilly and come and try to find her brother in
the great city. For months past her life at Uncle Fouchard's had been
a melancholy one; the troops occupying the village and the surrounding
country had become harsher and more exacting as the resistance of Paris
was protracted, and now that peace was declared and the regiments were
stringing along the roads, one by one, on their way home to Germany,
the country and the cities through which they passed were taxed to
their utmost to feed the hungry soldiers. The morning when she arose
at daybreak to go and take the train at Sedan, looking out into the
courtyard of the farmhouse she had seen a body of cavalry who had slept
there all night, scattered promiscuously on the bare ground, wrapped in
their long cloaks. They were so numerous that the earth was hidden by
them. Then, at the shrill summons of a trumpet call, all had risen to
their feet, silent, draped in the folds of those long mantles, and in
such serried, close array that she involuntarily thought of the graves
of a battlefield opening and giving up their dead at the call of the
last trump. And here again at Saint-Denis she encountered the Prussians,
and it was from Prussian lips that came that cry which caused her such
distress:

"All out here! this train goes no further. Paris is burning!"

Henriette, her little satchel in her hand, rushed distractedly up to the
men in quest of information. There had been heavy fighting in Paris for
the last two days, they told her, the railway had been destroyed, the
Germans were watching the course of events. But she insisted on pursuing
her journey at every risk, and catching sight upon the platform of the
officer in command of the detachment detailed to guard the station, she
hurried up to him.

"Sir, I am terribly distressed about my bro