s. We did not remember to be
tired. We tore up our linen, and linen which others brought us. We tied
the wounded boys on to the shutters. They never groaned. Sometimes they
smiled. Ah, it was we who wept, to see them jolting off in rough country
wagons, going we knew not where, or to what fate! All night we worked,
and at dawn there were none left--except those nineteen I told you of.
And that was the morning of the 23rd of August, hot and heavy--a weight
upon our hearts and heads.

"Not only the wounded, but our defenders had gone. The army was in
retreat. We had fifty-seven chasseurs left, ordered to keep the enemy
back for five hours. They did it for _eleven_! From dawn till twilight
they held the bridge outside the town, and fought behind barriers they
had flung up in haste. Boys they were, but of a courage! They knew they
were to die to save their comrades. They asked no better than to die
hard. And they fought so well, the Germans believed there were
thousands. Not till our boys had nearly all fallen did the enemy break
through and swarm into the town. That was down at the other end from us,
below the hill, but soon we heard fearful sounds--screams and shoutings,
shots and loud explosions. They were burning the place street by street
with that method of theirs! They fired the houses with pastilles their
chemists have invented, and with petrol. The air was thick with smoke.
We shut our windows to save the wounded from coughing. Soon we might all
die together, but we would keep our boys from new sufferings while we
could!

"Then at last the hour struck for us. One of our sisters, who had run to
look at the red sky to see how near the fire came, cried out that
Germans were pouring up the hill--four officers on horseback heading a
troop of soldiers. I knew what that meant. I went quickly to the door to
meet them. My knees felt as if they had broken under my weight. My heart
was a great, cold, dead thing within me. My mouth was dry as if I had
lost myself for days in the desert. I am not a small woman, yet it
seemed that I was no bigger than a mouse under the stare of those big
men who leaped off their horses, and made as if to pass me at the door.
But I did not let them pass. I knew I could stop them long enough at
least to kill me and then the sisters, one by one, before they reached
our wounded! We backed slowly before them into the hall, the sisters and
I, to stand guard before this room.

"'You are hiding Frenc