Presently the Maire came back to the six, and said to one, Benoit Decreys, “Adieu, my poor Benoit, we shall not see each other again —­they are going to shoot me.”  He took his crucifix, his purse containing a sum of money, and some papers, out of his pocket, and asked that they should be given to his family.  Then pressing the hands held out to him, he said good-bye to them all, and went back with a firm step to the group of officers.  Two soldiers were called up, and the Maire was placed at ten paces’ distance.  The soldiers fired, and M. Odent fell without a sound.  He was hastily buried under barely a foot of earth, and his six companions were left on the spot through the night expecting the same fate, till the morning, when they were released.  Five other hostages, “gathered haphazard in the streets,” were shot the same night in the neighbourhood of Chamant.

Meanwhile the Cure, knowing nothing of what was happening to the Maire, had been thinking for his parishioners and his church.  When the bombardment began he gathered together about a hundred and twenty of them, who had apparently no cellars to take refuge in, and after sheltering them in the Presbytere for a time, he sent them with one of his vicaires out of the town.  Then—­to continue his narrative: 

“I went to the southern portal of the cathedral, and stood there trembling at every burst of shrapnel that struck the belfry and the roof, and running out into the open, at each pause, to be sure that the church was still there.  When the firing ceased, I went back to the Presbytere.

“Presently, furious sounds of blows from the place.  I went out.  I saw some enemy cyclists, armed with fragments of stone, breaking in one of the cathedral doors, another, with a hatchet, attacking the belfry door.  At the sight of me, they rushed at me with their revolvers, demanding that I should take them to the top of the belfry.  ’You have a machine gun there!’ ‘Nothing of the sort, monsieur.  See for yourselves.’  I unlocked the door, and just as I put my foot on the first step, the fusillade in the town began.  The soldiers started.  ’You are our prisoner!’ cried their chief, turning to me, as though to seize me.

“‘I know it.  You have me in your hands.’  I went up before them, as quickly as my age allowed.  They searched everywhere, and, of course, found nothing.  They ran down and disappeared.”

But that was not the end of the Abbe’s trouble.  He was presently sent for to the German Headquarters, at the Hotel du Grand Cerf, where the table spread for thirty people, by the order of M. Odent, was still waiting for its guests.  The conversation here between the Cure and the officer of high rank who spoke to him is worth repeating.  From the tenor of it, the presumption is that the officer was a Catholic—­probably a Bavarian.

“I asked leave to go back to the Presbytere.

“’Better stay here, Monsieur le Cure.  You will be safer.  The burning is going on.  To-morrow, your town will be only a heap of ruins.’