was arriving, rolling its battalions that made the pavements ring
under their heavy and well measured steps.

Orders shouted in an unknown and guttural voice, rose along the
houses which seemed dead and deserted, while behind the closed
shutters, eyes watched these victorious men, masters of the City,
of property and life by the right of war. The inhabitants, in
their darkened rooms, felt the bewilderment caused by cataclysms,
the great bloody upheavals of the earth against which all human
wisdom and force are of no avail. For the same feeling reappears
whenever the established order of things is upset, when security
ceases to exist, when all that is protected by the laws of men
or those of protected nature, is at the mercy of unreasoning and
ferocious brutality. The earthquake crushing a whole nation under
crumbling houses; the overflowing river swirling the bodies of
drowned peasants along with the dead oxen and the beams torn away
from the roofs, or the glorious army massacring those who defend
themselves, taking away the others as prisoners, pillaging in the
name of the sword and offering thanks to God to the thunder of the
guns, are as many appalling scourges which disconcert any belief
in eternal justice, all the trust we were taught to place in the
protection of heaven and the reason of man.

Small detachments knocked at each door and then disappeared in the
houses. It was occupation after invasion. Now the vanquished had
to show themselves nice to their conquerors.

After a while, once the first terror had abated, a new tranquility
settled down. In many houses the Prussian Officer took his meals
with the family. Some were well bred, and out of politeness, showed