st. The latter replied, "I made signs." L'Abbe Marchal gave him a
little bread and went away; but he had scarcely gone thirty paces when
he heard the sound of a volley. The two prisoners had just been
executed. The next day an officer who spoke our language perfectly,
and said that for eight years he had been attached to the German
Embassy in Paris, told L'Abbe Marchal that the cure of Deuxville had
made signs and had admitted it. "As for the Mayor," he added, "I do
not believe the poor devil had done anything."

At Maixe the Germans burned thirty-six houses and murdered MM. Gaucon,
Demange, Jacques, Thomas, Marchal, Chaudre, Grand, Simonin, Vaconet,
and Mme. Beurton on the pretext that they had been firing at them.
Gaucon was dragged from his own house and thrown on a dunghill where a
soldier killed him with a rifle shot in the stomach. Demange, who was
wounded in both knees while in his cellar, succeeded in dragging
himself as far as the kitchen. The Germans set fire to the house and
prevented Mme. Demange from rescuing her husband, and left their
victims to be burned in the blazing house.

Mme. Beurton was also in her cellar with her family when two soldiers
came down into it; one of them carried a lantern and the other a
rifle. The latter fired haphazard on to the group and hit the unhappy
woman. Vaconet was struck by a bullet in the side at the foot of M.
Rediger's staircase; as for Simonin, he was taken away in the
direction of Drouville. A few days afterward a German officer handed
to M. Thouvenin, Municipal Councilor of the commune, a note stating
that Simonin had been shot and that his last wishes were expressed in
a document which was in the hands of the General commanding the Third
Bavarian Division. On this document, of which a copy has been sent to
us, appears the signature of an officer of the Third Regiment of the
Chevauxlegers. The other victims at Maixe met their deaths under
conditions which we have been unable to ascertain.

In the same village, Mlle. X., aged 23 years, was raped by nine
Germans during the night of Aug. 23-24. An officer was sleeping in the
room above that in which this revolting scene was being enacted, but
he did not consider it necessary to intervene, though he must
certainly have heard the cries of the young girl and the noise made
by the German soldiers.

The Chateau of Beauzemont was broken into on the 22d of August. On the
fifteenth day of its occupation, the wives of sever