to the others—­“We are going to die.  Make your ‘contrition’ if you can.” (The Town Librarian of Meaux, from whose account I take these facts, heard these details from the lips of poor Madame Barthelemy herself.) The cruel scene shapes itself as we think of it—­the half-lit room—­the row of kneeling and weeping women, the grinning soldiers, bayonet in hand, and the old men waiting in the yard outside.

But with the morning, the French mitrailleuses are heard.  The soldiers disappear.

The poor old women are free; they are able to leave their prison.

But their husbands are gone—­carried off as hostages by the Germans.  There were nineteen hostages in all.  Three of them were taken off in a north-westerly direction, and found some German officers quartered in a chateau, who, after a short interrogation, released them.  Of the other sixteen, fifteen were old men, and the sixteenth a child.  The Cure is with them, and finds great difficulty, owing to his age, the exhaustion of the night, and lack of food, in keeping up with the column.  It was now Thursday the 10th, the day following that on which, as is generally believed, the Kaiser signed the order for the general retreat of the German armies in France.  But the hostages are told that the French Army has been repulsed, and the Germans will be in Paris directly.

At last the poor Cure could walk no farther.  He gave his watch to a companion.  “Give it to my family when you can.  I am sure they mean to shoot me.”  Then he dropped exhausted.  The Germans hailed a passing vehicle, and made him and another old man, who had fallen out, follow in it.  Presently they arrive at Lizy-sur-Ourcq, through which thousands of German troops are now passing, bound not for Paris, but for Soissons and the Aisne, and in the blackest of tempers.  Here, after twenty-four more hours of suffering and starvation, the Cure is brought before a court-martial of German officers sitting in a barn.  He is once more charged with signalling from the church to the French Army.  He again denies the charge, and reminds his judges of what he had done for the German wounded, to whose gratitude he appeals.  Then four German soldiers give some sort of evidence, founded either on malice or mistake.  There are no witnesses for the defence, no further inquiry.  The president of the court-martial says, in bad French, to the other hostages who stand by:  “The Cure has lied—­he is a spy—­il sera juge.”

What did he mean—­and what happened afterwards?  The French witnesses of the scene who survived understood the officer’s words to mean that the Cure would be shot.  With tears, they bade him farewell, as he sat crouched in a corner of the barn guarded by two German soldiers.  He was never seen again by French eyes; and the probability is that he was shot immediately after the scene in the barn.