low the hospital. The
Germans, taken by surprise, lost a good many men before, at small loss
to themselves, the Chasseurs retreated. In their rage at the unexpected
check, and feeling, no doubt, already that the whole campaign was going
against them, the Germans avenged themselves on the town and its
helpless inhabitants.

Our half-hour in Soeur Julie's parlour was a wonderful experience!
Imagine a portly woman of sixty, with a shrewd humorous face, talking
with French vivacity, and with many homely turns of phrase drawn
straight from that life of the soil and the peasants amid which she
worked; a woman named in one of General Castelnau's Orders of the Day
and entitled to wear the Legion of Honour; a woman, too, who has seen
horror face to face as few women, even in war, have seen it, yet still
simple, racy, full of irony, and full of heart, talking as a mother
might talk of her "grands blesses"! but always with humorous asides, and
an utter absence of pose or pretence; flashing now into scorn and now
into tenderness, as she described the conduct of the German officers who
searched her hospital for arms, or the helplessness of the wounded men
whom she protected. I will try and put down some of her talk. It threw
much light for me on the psychology of two nations.

"During the fighting, we had always about 300 of our wounded (_nos chers
blesses_) in this hospital. As fast as we sent them off, others came in.
All our stores were soon exhausted. I was thankful we had some good wine
in the cellars--about 200 bottles. You understand, Madame, that when we
go to nurse our people in their farms, they don't pay us, but they like
to give us something--very often it is a bottle of old wine, and we put
it in the cellar, when it comes in handy often for our invalids. Ah! I
was glad of it for our _blesses_! I said to my Sisters--'Give it them!
and not by thimblefuls--give them enough!' Ah, poor things!--it made
some of them sleep. It was all we had. One day, I passed a soldier who
was lying back in his bed with a sigh of satisfaction. '_Ah, ma Soeur,
ca resusciterait un mort!_' (That would bring a dead man to life!) So I
stopped to ask what they had just given him. And it was a large glass of
Lachryma Christi!

"But then came the day when the Commandant, the French Commandant, you
understand, came to me and said--'Sister, I have sad news for you. I am
going. I am taking away the wounded--and all my stores. Those are
my orders.'