74 RAMBLES OF A NATURALIST. 



It is not necessary to describe all the villages we visited. 

 It was the same sad spectacle of beggary, dirt, and disease, 

 the same affecting complaints made by men in their earnest 

 dialect at most of them ; but now and then, in happy con- 

 trast, one came across some peaceful hamlet which was not 

 in the " path of war." 



Jamiary 6th, 1870. No place that I saw was more 

 thoroughly given over to the flames and despoiled than the 

 once well-to-do Peltre. I should say about three-fourths of 

 this large village was blackened and roofless. The rights 

 of the story will probably never be known, but the Prussians 

 are accredited with having set fire to it when they evacuated 

 it. Thus the poor inhabitants were forced to look on while 

 their homes were flaming, if indeed their ruthless masters 

 did not make them assist in firing them. It was pitiable to 

 hear the " chers soeurs " (nuns) tell their tale of woe. They 

 were turned out of their convent at an hour's notice, where 

 they had been sedulously tending the wounded of both 

 nations, with scarce time as they said " to put a clean collar 

 on," their habitual love of neatness asserting itself at that 

 dreadful moment. This building was very large for a 

 country village, with a children's school and a substantial 

 chapel at the back. The railway station was reduced to a 

 lieap of ashes ; so was the church. The carved images had 

 dropped from their pedestals, and the cross of the tower had 

 fallen. The clock likewise had dropped in, leaving one hand 

 etill sticking on the wall, and a chaos of its wheels and works 

 was lying on the ground. The wooden pews were burnt, the 

 iron was bent, the lead melted, the windows fallen in, the 

 altar rails broken. But the wasteful ruin had not stopped 

 here. In the village all was havoc and confusion. Burning 

 shutters had left their marks upon the houses, chimneys 

 stood by themselves, cellars were exposed. Everything 

 had stamped upon it in characters only too intelligible the 

 progress of a devouring and implacable fire. 



