longer any sound of musketry in the direction of the meadows. The
Bavarians had gained possession of a narrow stream, fringed with
willows and poplars, and were making preparations for storming the
houses, or rather fortresses, in the Place de l'Eglise. Their
skirmishers had fallen back with the same caution that characterized
their advance, and the wide grassy plain, dotted here and there with a
black form where some poor fellow had laid down his life, lay spread
in the mellow, slumbrous sunshine like a great cloth of gold. The
lieutenant, knowing that the street was now to be the scene of action,
had evacuated the courtyard of the dyehouse, leaving there only one
man as guard. He rapidly posted his men along the sidewalk with
instructions, should the enemy carry the position, to withdraw into
the building, barricade the first floor, and defend themselves there
as long as they had a cartridge left. The men fired at will, lying
prone upon the ground, and sheltering themselves as best they might
behind posts and every little projection of the walls, and the storm
of lead, interspersed with tongues of flame and puffs of smoke, that
tore through that broad, deserted, sunny avenue was like a downpour of
hail beaten level by the fierce blast of winter. A woman was seen to
cross the roadway, running with wild, uncertain steps, and she escaped
uninjured. Next, an old man, a peasant, in his blouse, who would not
be satisfied until he saw his worthless nag stabled, received a bullet
square in his forehead, and the violence of the impact was such that
it hurled him into the middle of the street. A shell had gone crashing
through the roof of the church; two others fell and set fire to
houses, which burned with a pale flame in the intense daylight, with a
loud snapping and crackling of their timbers. And that poor woman, who
lay crushed and bleeding in the doorway of the house where her sick
boy was, that old man with a bullet in his brain, all that work of
ruin and devastation, maddened the few inhabitants who had chosen to