all answer with your life for the lives of my soldiers.'

"Two men with revolvers were set to guard him. The officer himself
presently took him outside the town, and left him under guard, at the
little village of Poteau, at the edge of a wood."

* * * * *

What had happened? Unluckily for Senlis and M. Odent, some of the French
rear-guard--infantry stragglers, and a small party of Senegalese
troops--were still in the southern quarter of the town when the Germans
entered. They opened fire from a barrack near the Paris entrance and a
sharp engagement followed which lasted several hours, with casualties on
both sides. The Germans got the better, and were then free to wreak
their fury on the town.

They broke into the houses, plundered the wine shops, first of all, and
took fifty hostages, of whom twenty-six perished. And at half-past five,
while the fighting was still going on, the punitive burning of the town
began, by a cyclist section told off for the work and furnished with
every means for doing it effectively. These men, according to an
eyewitness, did their work with wild shouts--"_cris sauvages_."

A hundred and seventeen houses were soon burning fiercely. On that hot
September evening, the air was like a furnace. Before long the streets
were full of blazing debris. Two persons who had hidden themselves in
their cellars died of suffocation; yet to appear in the streets was to
risk death at the hands of some drunk or maddened soldier.

At the opening of the French attack, a German officer rushed to the
hospital, which was full of wounded, in search of francs-tireurs.
Arrived there, he saw an old man, a chronic patient of the hospital and
half idiotic, standing on the steps of the building. He blew the old
man's brains out. He then forced his way into the hospital, pointing his
revolver at the French wounded, who thought their last hour had come. He
himself was wounded, and at last appeared to yield to the remonstrances
of the Sister in charge, and allowed his wound to be dressed. But in the
middle of the dressing, he broke away without his tunic, and helmetless,
in a state of mad excitement, and presently reappeared with a file of
soldiers. Placing them in the street opposite the rooms occupied by the
French wounded, he ordered them to fire a volley. No one was hurt,
though several beds were struck. Then the women's wards were searched.
Two sick men, _eclopes_ without visible wound