a bomb.  The Zeppelin was still there.  The guns again blazed away, the row was terrific.  Star shells were thrown up to try and locate the Zepp., and the sky was full of showering lights, blue, green, and pink.  Four searchlights were playing, shrapnel was bursting, and a motor machine gun let off volleys from sheer excitement, the sharp tut-tut-tut adding to the general confusion.  In the pauses the elusive Zepp. could be heard buzzing like some gigantic angry bee.  I wouldn’t have missed it for anything.  It looked like a fireworks display, and the row was increasing each minute.  Every Frenchman in the neighbourhood let off his rifle with gusto.

Just then we heard an extraordinary rushing noise in the air, like steam being let off from a railway engine.  A terrific bang ensued, and then a flare.  It was an incendiary bomb and was just outside the Hospital radius.  I was glad to be in the open, one felt it would be better to be killed outside than indoors.  If the noise was bad before, it now became deafening.  Pierre suggested the cave, a murky cellar by the gate, but it seemed safer to stay where we were, leaning in the shadow against the walls of Notre Dame.  Very foolish, I grant you, but early in 1915 the dangers of falling shrapnel, etc., were not so well known.  These events happened in a few seconds.  Suddenly Pierre pointed skywards.  “He is there, up high,” he cried excitedly.  I looked, but a blinding light seemed to fill all space, the yard was lit up and I remember wondering if the people in the Zepp. would see us in our white overalls.  The rushing sound was directly over our heads; there was a crash, the very walls against which we were leaning rocked, and to show what one’s mind does at those moments, I remember thinking that when the Cathedral toppled over it would just fit nicely into the Hospital square.  Instinctively I put my head down sheltering it as best I could with my arms, while bricks, mortar, and slates rained on, and all around, us.  There was a heavy thud just in front of us, and when the dust had cleared away I saw it was a coping from the Cathedral, 2 feet by 4!  Notre Dame had remained standing, but the bomb had completely smashed in the roof of the chapel, against the walls of which we were leaning!  It was only due to their extreme thickness that we were saved, and also to the fact that we were under the protection of the wall.  Had we been further out the coping would assuredly have landed on us or else we should have been hit by the shrapnel contained in the bombs, for the wall opposite was pitted with it.  The dust was suffocating, and I heard Pierre saying, “Come away, Mademoiselle.”  Though it takes so long to describe, only a few minutes had elapsed since leaving to cross the yard.  The beautiful East window of the Cathedral was shivered to atoms, and likewise every window in the Hospital.  All our watches had stopped.