“Do you think the bombs were purposely so directed?” I asked.

“Don’t talk to me of stray shots!” said the burgher, hotly enough.  “The enemy was better acquainted with the city than we were ourselves, and his fire was of a precision that extorted our admiration more than once.  Cannons planted in Kehl sent their shells high over the citadel, like blows from a friend.  An artillery that, after the third shot, found the proper curve and bent the cross on the cathedral, cannot plead extenuating circumstances and stray shots.”

“Was the greatest damage done on that first night?”

[Illustration:  Church of saint Thomas.]

“Ah no!  The bombardment was addressed to us as an argument, proceeding by degrees, and always in a crescendo:  after the 15th there was silence until the 18th; after the 18th, silence up to the 23d.  The grand victim of the 23d, you know, was the city library, where lay the accumulations of centuries of patient learning—­the mediaeval manuscripts, the Hortus deliciarum of Herrade of Landsberg, the monuments of early printing, the collections of Sturm.  Ah! when we gathered around our precious reliquary the next day and saw its contents in ashes, amid a scene of silence, of people hurrying away with infants and valuable objects, of firemen hopelessly playing on the burned masterpieces, there was one thought that came into every mind—­one parallel!  It was Omar the caliph and the library of Alexandria.”

“And you imagine that this offence to civilization was quite voluntary?” I argued with some doubt.

“It is said that General Werder acted under superior orders.  But, sir, you must perceive that in these discretionary situations there is no such dangerous man as the innocent executant, the martinet, the person of routine, the soldier stifled in his uniform.  I saw Werder after the capitulation.  A little man, lean and bilious.  Such was the opponent who reversed for us successively, like the premisses of an argument, the bank, the library, the art-museum, the theatre, the prefecture, the arsenal, the palace of justice, not to speak of our churches.  A man like that was quite capable of replying, as he did, to a request that he would allow a safe-conduct for non-combatants, that the presence of women and children was an element of weakness to the fortress of which he did not intend to deprive it.’  The night illuminated by our burning manuscripts was followed by the day which witnessed the conflagration of the cathedral.  Look at that noble front, sir, contemplating us with the hoary firmness of six hundred years!  You would think it a sad experience to see it, as I have seen it, crowned with flames which leaped up and licked the spire, while the copper on the roof curled up like paper in the heat; and to hear, as I heard, the poor beadles and guards, from the height of yonder platform, calling the city to the aid of its cathedral.  The next day the mighty church,