islodge were holding themselves erect, while the surrounding
walls, three feet thick, had been crumpled into rubbish.

In some houses a shell had removed one room only, and as neatly
as though it were the work of masons and carpenters. It was as
though the shell had a grievance against the lodger in that particular
room. The waste was appalling.

Among the ruins I saw good paintings in rags and in gardens statues
covered with the moss of centuries smashed. In many places, still on
the pedestal, you would see a headless Venus, or a flying Mercury
chopped off at the waist.

Long streamers of ivy that during a century had crept higher and
higher up the wall of some noble mansion, until they were part of it,
still clung to it, although it was divided into a thousand fragments. Of
one house all that was left standing was a slice of the front wall just
wide enough to bear a sign reading: "This house is for sale; elegantly
furnished." Nothing else of that house remained.

In some streets of the destroyed area I met not one living person.
The noise made by my feet kicking the broken glass was the only
sound. The silence, the gaping holes in the sidewalk, the ghastly
tributes to the power of the shells, and the complete desolation, made
more desolate by the bright sunshine, gave you a curious feeling that
the end of the world had come and you were the only survivor.

This-impression was aided by the sight of many rare and valuable
articles with no one guarding them. They were things of price that one
may not carry into the next world but which in this are kept under lock
and key.

In the Rue de l'Universite, at my leisure, I could have ransacked shop
after shop or from the shattered drawing-rooms filled my pockets.
Shopkeepers had gone without waiting to lock their doors, and in
houses the fronts of which were down you could see that, in order to
save their lives, the inmates had fled at a moment's warning.

In one street a high wall extended an entire block, but in the centre a
howitzer shell had made a breach as large as a barn door. Through
this I had a view of an old and beautiful garden, on which oasis
nothing had been disturbed. Hanging from the walls, on diamond-
shaped lattices, roses were still in bloom, and along the gravel walks
flowers of every color raised their petals to the sunshine. On the
terrace was spread a tea-service of silver and on the grass were
children's toys--hoops, tennis-balls, and flat on it