which are threatened at every moment by the foulest invader that the
world has ever borne.

All the others--so quaint or so beautiful, so bright, so serene, happy
to be there, so inoffensive--jewels in the crown of Peace, models of
pure and upright family life, homes of loyal and dutiful industry, of
ready, ever-smiling geniality, with the natural welcome, the
ever-proffered hand and the ever-open heart: all the others are dead
cities, of which not one stone is left upon another; and the very
country-side, one of the fairest in this world, with its gentle
pastures, is now no more than one vast field of horror.

Treasures have perished that were numbered among the noblest and
dearest possessions of mankind; monuments have disappeared which
nothing can replace; and the half of a nation, among all nations the
most attached to its old simple habits, its humble homes, is at
present wandering along the roads of Europe. Thousands of innocent
people have been massacred; and of those who remain nearly all are
doomed to poverty and hunger.

But that remainder has but one soul, which has taken refuge in the
spacious soul of its king. Not a murmur, not a word of reproach! But
yesterday a town of thirty thousand inhabitants received the order to
forsake its white houses, its churches, its ancient streets and
squares, the scene of a light-hearted and industrious life. The thirty
thousand inhabitants, women and children and old men, set forth to
seek an uncertain refuge in a neighbouring city, which is threatened
almost as directly as their own and which to-morrow, it may be, must
in its turn set forth, but whither none can say, for the country is so
small that its boundaries are quickly reached, its shelter soon