uffocated on the thresholds they had guarded all their lives. The sheep
ran bleating with the wool burning on their living bodies. The little
caged birds fluttered helpless, and then dropped, scorched to cinders.
The aged and the sick were stifled in their beds. All things perished.

The Berceau de Dieu was as one vast furnace, in which every living
creature was caught and consumed and changed to ashes. The tide of war
has rolled on, and left it a blackened waste, a smoking ruin, wherein
not so much as a mouse may creep or a bird may nestle. It is gone, and
its place can know it nevermore.

Nevermore. But who is there to care? It was but as a leaf which the
great storm swept away as it passed.

THE TRAVELLER'S STORY OF A TERRIBLY STRANGE BED, By Wilkie Collins

PROLOGUE TO THE FIRST STORY

Before I begin, by the aid of my wife's patient attention and ready pen,
to relate any of the stories which I have heard at various times from
persons whose likenesses I have been employed to take, it will not be
amiss if I try to secure the reader's interest in the following pages by
briefly explaining how I became possessed of the narrative matter which
they contain.

Of myself I have nothing to say, but that I have followed the profession
of a travelling portrait-painter for the last fifteen years. The pursuit
of my calling has not only led me all through England, but has taken
me twice to Scotland and once to Ireland. In moving from district to
district, I am never guided beforehand by any settled plan. Sometimes
the letters of recommendation which I get from persons who are satisfied
with the work I have done for them determine the direction in which I
travel. Sometimes I hear of a new neighbourhood in which there is no
resident artist of ability, and remove thither on speculation. Sometimes
my friends among the picture-dealers say a good word on my behalf to
their rich customers, and so pave the way for me in the large towns.
Sometimes my prosperous and famous brother artists, hearing of small
commissions which it is not worth their while to accept, mention my
name, and procure me introductions to pleasant country houses. Thus I
get on, now in one way and now in another, not winning a reputation or
making a fortune, but happier, perhaps, on the whole, than many men who
have got both the one and the other. So, at least, I try to think now,
though I started in my youth with as high an ambition as the best of
them