and, as some of them broke through the gates of the mansion,
the concierge fled across the lawn with bullets buzzing about his ears
and shouts of laughter pursuing him as he ran. In and out among the elms
he doubled like a frightened hare, the bullets zip-zipping against the
tree-trunks, till he crawled into a disused culvert and lay there
panting and exhausted. From his hiding-place he heard the crash of
furniture, more shots, and the loud, ribald laughter of the soldiers.
And then a crackle of flame and a thick smell of smoke. And after that
silence. At dusk he crawled forth from his culvert, trembling, his hands
and face all mottled with stinging-nettles and scratched with thistles;
he found his master's house a smouldering ruin, and a thick pall of
smoke lay over the town of Senlis like a fog. Somewhere a woman shrieked
and then was still. About the hour of nine in the evening the concierge
heard voices in disputation outside the lodge-gates, and as he hid
himself among the shrubberies more men entered, and, being dissatisfied
with their work, threw hand-grenades into the mansion and applied a
lighted torch to the concierge's humble dwelling. They were very merry
and sang lustily--the concierge thought they had been drinking; they
sang thus, "_comme ca!_" and the concierge mournfully hummed a tune, a
tune he had never heard before, but which he would remember all his
life. I recognised it. It was Luther's hymn:

Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott.

Thus had passed the day. Meanwhile the _maire_, M. Odent, a good man and
greatly beloved, had been arrested at the Hotel de Ville. His secretary
proposed to call his deputies. "No, no," replied the _maire_ tranquilly,
"one victim is enough." He was dragged along the streets to the suburb
of Chammont, the headquarters of von Kluck, and his guards buffeted him
and spat upon him as he went. Arrived there, he was condemned to death.
He took his companions in captivity by the hand, embraced them--"tres
dignement," the concierge had been told--handed them his papers, and
bade them adieu. Two minutes later he was shot, and his body thrown into
a shallow trench with a sprinkling of earth. The concierge had seen it
the next day; the feet were protruding.

All this the concierge told us in a dull, apathetic voice, and always as
he told his body twitched and the muscles of his face worked. And he
spoke like a man in a soliloquy as though we were not there. He seemed
to be loo