For instance, the Bourbon coat of arms above the grand staircase was untouched, while the staircase itself was just splintered bits of marble.  On another fragment of a wall there still hung a magnificent stag’s antlers.  Strewed about in the corners I saw fragments of vases that had been priceless.  Even the remnants were valuable.  In the ruined music room I found a piece of fresh, clean music, (an Alsatian waltz,) lying on the mantelpiece.  I went out to the front of the building, where the great park sweeps down to the edge of the river.  An old gardener in one of the side paths saw me.  We immediately established cordial relations with a cigarette.

He told me how, after the chasseurs retreated beyond the town, the Germans—­reduced over a thousand of their original number by the activities of the day—­swept over the barricades of the bridge and into the town.  Yes, the old woman I had talked with was right about it.  They were very angry.  They were ferociously angry at being held eight hours at that bridge by a force so ridiculously small.

The first civilians they met they killed, and then they began to fire the houses.  One young man, half witted, came out of one of the houses near the bridge.  They hanged him in the garden behind the house.  Then they called his mother to see.  A mob came piling into the chateau headed by four officers.  All the furniture and valuables that were not destroyed they piled into a wagon and sent back to Luneville.  Of the gardener who was telling me the story they demanded the keys of the wine cellars.  No; they did not injure him.  They just held him by the arms while several dozen of the soldiers spat in his face.

While the drunken crew were reeling about the place, one of them accidentally stumbled upon the secret underground passage leading to the famous grottoes.  These grottoes and the underground connection from the chateau were built in the fifteenth century.  They are a half mile away, situated only half above ground, the entrance looking out on a smooth lawn that extends to the edge of the river.  Several giant trees, the trunks of which are covered with vines, semi-shelter the entrance, which is also obscured by climbing ivy.  The interior was one of the treasures of France.  The vaulted ceilings were done in wonderful mosaic.  The walls decorated with marbles and rare sea shells.  In every nook were marble pedestals and antique statuary, while the fountain in the centre, supplied from an underground stream, was of porphyry inlaid with mosaic.

The Germans looked upon it with appreciative eyes and cultured minds.  But it did not please them.  They were still very angry.  Its destruction was a necessity of war.  It could not be destroyed by artillery because it was half underground and screened by the giant trees.  But it could be destroyed by picks and axes.  A squad of soldiers was detailed to the job.  They did it thoroughly.  The gardener took me there to see.  Not a scrap of the mosaic remained.  The fountain was smashed to bits.  A headless Venus and a smashed and battered Adonis were lying prone upon the ground.