shelling the hill on which I was, and I scampered down to the open
square where the wagons were. It was not long, however, till another
German battery got to throwing shells into this square, each discharge
bringing them nearer and nearer to us. Suddenly a shell struck the
corner house in front of us. The door opened in a very deliberate
way, and out came a man in a blouse, smoking a pipe, and followed by
a woman with a baby in her arms. He leisurely locked the door behind
him, and put the key into his pocket. Then he started slowly across
the square, with his wife and baby still behind him. As he passed us I
exclaimed, "For Heaven's sake, what are you doing here with that baby?
Don't you see they are shelling all around us?"

"Yes, I see, I see: one of them struck our house just now. I've got
another one up here, and we're moving to it." And without taking his
hands out of his pockets or his pipe out of his mouth, he strolled on
across the open square, followed by his wife, who seemed absorbed
only in hushing the baby as it wailed in fright at the sound of the
bursting shells.

The French line was soon thrown back, and we filled our wagons
with wounded and started for the city, the shells still falling
unpleasantly thick and near. One of them struck right under our
coffee-pot, and, exploding, sent it in a hundred directions. The
horses which drew it did not happen to be hit, but they took fright
and dashed off, wrecking what was left of the coffee-pot wagon. We got
back to town as fast as we knew how that day. We tried to go out
again at night, but could make no headway against the crowd of wagons,
artillery and the retreating army on the roads. It was an utterly
demoralized mob. We barely escaped massacre by a regiment of
Belleville National Guards, who were mad, raving mad, accusing