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 hamiet which was not 
in the “ path of war.” 
Fanuary 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 sceurs” (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 toa 
heap 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 
still 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. 
