d the place--what was left of it. Most of the walls were
standing. Walls built in the twelfth century do not break easily, even
with modern artillery. But the modern roof and seventeenth century inner
walls were all demolished. Not a single article of furniture or
decoration remained. But the destruction showed some of the same
freaks--similar to that little house left untouched by fire on the
summit of the hill.

For instance, the Bourbon coat of arms above the grand staircase was
untouched, while the staircase itself was just splintered bits of
marble. On another fragment of a wall there still hung a magnificent
stag's antlers. Strewed about in the corners I saw fragments of vases
that had been priceless. Even the remnants were valuable. In the ruined
music room I found a piece of fresh, clean music, (an Alsatian waltz,)
lying on the mantelpiece. I went out to the front of the building, where
the great park sweeps down to the edge of the river. An old gardener in
one of the side paths saw me. We immediately established cordial
relations with a cigarette.

He told me how, after the chasseurs retreated beyond the town, the
Germans--reduced over a thousand of their original number by the
activities of the day--swept over the barricades of the bridge and into
the town. Yes, the old woman I had talked with was right about it. They
were very angry. They were ferociously angry at being held eight hours
at that bridge by a force so ridiculously small.

The first civilians they met they killed, and then they began to fire
the houses. One young man, half witted, came out of one of the houses
near the bridge. They hanged him in the garden behind the house. Then
they called his mother to see. A mob came piling into the chateau headed
by four officers. All the furniture and valuables that were not
destroyed they piled into a wagon and sent back to Luneville. Of the
gardener who was telling me the story they demanded the keys of the wine
cellars. No; they did not injure him. They just held him by the arms
while several dozen of the soldiers spat in his face.

While the drunken crew were reeling about the place, one of them
accidentally stumbled upon the secret underground passage leading to the
famous grottoes. These grottoes and the underground connection from the
chateau were built in the fifteenth century. They are a half mile away,
situated only half above ground, the entrance looking out on a smooth
lawn that extends to th