"I have two sons-in-law, of whom one is the father of this little girl here. Look at her face marked with scars."
"Yes. They burned me," said the tiny girl. She held up her hand to the scars on her face.
"My other little boy escaped from the fire. He was hidden all one day in a heap of manure. He did not wish to make me sad by telling how his brother had cried out to die."
Madame Dujon sobbed quietly and could not go on for a moment. The little girl put her chin on her little umbrella, and her eyes filled with tears. The Mayor of Lunéville, Monsieur Keller, said to us:
"Madame has not told you—the Germans finished off the poor child. Seeing that he was nearly dead, they threw him into the fire and closed the door."
VIII
MIRMAN AND "MES ENFANTS"
When I went across to France there was one man whom I wished to meet. It was the Prefect of the Meurthe-et-Moselle. I wanted to meet him because he is in charge of the region where German frightfulness reached its climax. Leon Mirman has maintained a high morale in that section of France which has suffered most, and which has cause for despair. Here it was that the Germans found nothing that is human alien to their hate. When they encountered a nun, a priest, or a church, they reacted to the sacred thing and to the religious person with desecration, violation and murder. But that was only because there were many Roman Catholics in the district. They had no race or religious prejudice. When they came to Lunéville there was a synagogue and a rabbi. They burned the synagogue and killed the rabbi. As the sun falling round a helpless thing, their hate embraced all grades of weakness in Lorraine. In Nomeny they distinguished themselves by a fury against women. In some of the villages they specialized in pillage. Others they burned with zeal. Badonviller, Nonhigny, Parux, Crevic, Nomeny, Gerbéviller—the list of the villages of Meurthe-et-Moselle is a tale of the shame of Germany and of the suffering of France.