It was a large country-house standing in well-timbered grounds, evidently the home of a man of wealth and taste.  The front-door stood wide open, as if inviting us to enter, and as we passed into the large hall I could not help glancing at our friend’s face to see what he was thinking as the obvious destruction met us on the very threshold.  So thorough was it that it was impossible to believe that it had not been carried out under definite orders.  Chairs, sofas, settees lay scattered about in every conceivable attitude, and in every case as far as I can recollect minus legs and backs.  In a small room at the end of the hall a table had been overturned, and on the floor and around lay broken glass, crockery, knives and forks, mixed up in utter confusion, while the wall was freely splashed with ink.  One fact was very striking and very suggestive:  none of the pictures had been defaced, and there were many fine oil-paintings and engravings hanging on the walls of the reception-rooms.  After the destruction of the treasures of Louvain, it is absurd to imagine that the controlling motive could have been any reverence for works of art.  The explanation was obvious enough.  The pictures were of value, and were the loot of some superior officer.  A large cabinet had evidently been smashed with the butt-end of a musket, but the beautiful china it contained was intact.  The grand piano stood uninjured, presumably because it afforded entertainment.  The floor was thick with playing cards.

But it was upstairs that real chaos reigned.  Every wardrobe and receptacle had been burst open and the contents dragged out.  Piles of dresses and clothing of every kind lay heaped upon the floor, many of them torn, as though the harsh note produced by the mere act of tearing appealed to the passion for destruction which seemed to animate these fighting men.  In the housekeeper’s room a sewing-machine stood on the table, its needle threaded, and a strip of cloth in position, waiting for the stitch it was destined never to receive.  There were many other things to which one cannot refer, but it would have been better to have had one’s house occupied by a crowd of wild beasts than by these apostles of culture.

Our friend had said very little while we walked through the deserted rooms in this splendid country-house in which he had so often stayed.  Inside the house he could not speak, and it was not until we got out into the sunshine that he could relieve his overwrought feelings.  Deep and bitter were the curses which he poured upon those vandals; but I stood beside him, and I did not hear half that he said, for my eyes were fixed on the mitrailleuse standing on the garden path under the trees.  My fingers itched to pull the lever and to scatter withering death among them.  It slowly came into my mind how good it would be to kill these defilers.  I suppose that somewhere deep down in us there remains an elemental lust for blood, and though in the protected lives we live it