dine's parents, though of good birth and education, were not rich;
they lived on the third story. They had only one old servant. Claudine's
mother was her daughter's nurse and governess. Till the German army
marched on Paris they had a peaceful, refined, and happy home.

At the moment of which I am about to write, the siege had ceased, and
the terrible days of the Commune were almost over. The little family
began to breathe more freely--only in a certain sense, however, for they
were all gathered together in a little close room, which would have
looked into the court-yard of their house had not its windows been
blocked up by pillows, mattresses, and furniture. They dared not look
into the street, they dared not go into their own sitting-room, for the
Versailles troops were entering Paris, bomb-shells were bursting in all
directions, and volleys of musketry were being fired round every street
corner. Paris was like a city expecting to be sacked, with the
additional horror that each man's foes might be those of his own
household.

Of a sudden they began to feel a stifling heat. Thick smoke rose all
around them. There was the sickening and suggestive smell of coal-oil in
the air. Claudine's father felt that he must know what was going on. To
look out of the windows might be death to all of them; still he ran into
the sitting-room, tore down the beds and pillows from a window, and
looked out on the Rue de Rivoli.

The palace before him was in flames. As he looked, the fire swept over
the venerable gray pile. Forked tongues of flame darted higher than the
Mansard roofs of its tall towers, and threatened the stores and
dwelling-houses across the way. Claudine's father looked below into the
street: there was no safety there. The men and women of the
neighborhood, driven from their rooms by falling fiery flakes from the
high roofs of the old palace, clustered together under shelter of the
great _porte cocheres_--by which carriages drive into the court-yards of
French houses under the rooms of the first story. Muskets, rifles, and
mitrailleuses swept the street. To venture into it seemed sure
destruction. To stay beneath their blazing roof would expose them all to
perish in the flames. Bomb-shells were falling constantly to right and
left, knocking off pieces of the cornices of lofty, stately houses,
tearing off their iron balconies, and scattering shattered fragments of
wood, window-glass, iron, and plaster on the pavement.