business of hotel-keeping on so large it scale with so little
assistance was beginning to tell on my strength. I opened the gate and
told George and Leon to welcome any who wished to come in, and then
repairing to the kitchen, I sat down and began helping the others
prepare vegetables. The discovery that in spite of all their good will
guests had necessarily left many traces of their passage, brought me to
my feet again, and we were all hard at work when a haggard female face
looked in at the kitchen window.

"Is there a doctor here?"

"No,--but--"

The woman burst into tears. Madame Guix and I hurried out into the
court. "My baby--I can't seem to warm her," moaned the poor mother.
"She hasn't eaten anything since yesterday."

And stretching out her arms, the woman showed us an infant that she had
been carrying in her apron. It was dead.

I had difficulty in overcoming my emotion, but Madame Guix took the poor
little corpse into her arms, and I helped the mother to an arm chair in
the refectory.

A cup of strong coffee brought back a little color to her wan cheeks and
she told us she was from Charleville. The Taubes had got in their
sinister work to good advantage among the civil population but they were
merely the forerunners of another and heavier bombardment. The
townspeople had fled in their night clothes.