.
She went out to meet them. Here she tried to imitate the extraordinary
arrogance of the German manner.

"They told me they would have to burn the hospital, as they were
informed men had been shooting from it at their troops.

"I replied that if anyone had been shooting, it was the French
Chasseurs, who were posted in a street close by, and had every right
to shoot!"

At last they agreed to let the hospital alone, and burn no more houses,
if she would take in the German wounded. So presently the wards of the
little hospital were full again to overflowing. But while the German
wounded were coming in the German officers insisted on searching the
nineteen French wounded for arms.

"I had to make way for them--I _had_ to say, '_Entrez, Messieurs!_'"

Then she dropped her voice, and said between her teeth--"Think how hard
that was for a Lorrainer!"

So two German officers went to the ward where the nineteen Frenchmen
lay, all helpless cases, and a scene followed very like that in the
hospital at Senlis. One drew his revolver and covered the beds, the
other walked round, poniard in hand, throwing back the bedclothes to
look for arms. But they found nothing--"_only blood_! For we had had
neither time enough nor dressings enough to treat the wounds properly
that night."

A frightful moment!--the cowering patients--the officers in a state of
almost frenzied excitement, searching bed after bed. At the last bed,
occupied by a badly wounded and quite helpless youth, the officer
carrying the dagger brought the blade of it so near to the boy's throat
that Soeur Julie rushed forward, and placed her two hands in front of
the poor bare neck. The officer dropped both arms to his side, she said,
"as if he had been shot," and stood staring at her, quivering all over.
But from that moment she had conquered them.

For the German wounded, Soeur Julie declared she had done her best, and
the officer in charge of them afterwards wrote her a letter of thanks.
Then her mouth twisted a little. "But I wasn't--well, I didn't _spoil_
them! (_Je n'etais pas trop tendre_); I didn't give them our best wine!"
And one officer whose wounds she dressed, a Prussian colonel who never
deigned to speak to a Bavarian captain near him, was obliged to accept a
good many home truths from her. He was convinced that she would poison
his leg unless he put on the dressings himself. But he allowed her to
bandage him afterwards. During this operation--which she