Hotel du Nord said that the Germans came there and, finding champagne in
the cellar after the maitre d'hotel had told them there wasn't any, set
fire to the hotel, and, as I recall it, shot him. How true such stories
are I cannot say, but there was no doubt that Senlis had been punished.
At least half of the old city on the banks of the wistful Nonette--it is
a much larger place than Crepy, with a cathedral of some consequence--
was smashed as utterly as it might have been by a cyclone or an
earthquake. The systematic manner in which this was done was suggested
by the fact that, in the long street running parallel to the one picked
for destruction, nearly every door still carried its chalked order to
"Schoenen." One house spared was that of a town fireman. "I've got five
little children," he told the German soldiers. "They're one, two,
three, four, five years old, and I'm expecting another." And they went
on.

These were common sights and sounds of that gracious country north of
Paris--deserted, perhaps demolished, villages; the silent countryside,
with dead horses, bits of broken shell, smashed bicycles or artillery
wagons along the road; and the tainted autumn wind. Along the level
French roads, under their arches of elms or poplars, covered carts on
tall wheels, drawn by two big farm horses harnessed one behind another,
and loaded with women, children, and household goods, were beginning to
move northward as they had moved south three weeks before. Trains,
similarly packed, were creeping up to within ear-shot of the constant
cannonading, and it was on one of these trains that we had come.

In Paris, recovered now from the dismay of three weeks before, keen
French imaginations were daily turning the war into terms of heroism and
sacrifice and military glory. Even editors and play-writers fighting at
the front were able to send back impressions now and then, and these,