"Help me get my husband out of the fire," she cried.
"Go die with him," they answered her, and she, too, was pushed into the flames.
"They" kept coming on, playing the fife. We awaited them at the door. Only thirteen wounded French soldiers had stayed with us. They had been scattered through the different rooms. But we put them up in one room in order to simplify the service and give them a bit of "coddling."
We saw four officers on horseback approach. They dismounted in front of our town-hall, twenty meters away. They entered the building, and there they put everything upside down. They tumbled out all the waste paper, the entire office desk, determined to find the records.
They remounted and rode up in front of our house. They sat there looking at us for a moment. They had the manner guttural and hard, which is the German way. They began speaking German. When they showed signs of listening to my reply, I said to them:
"Speak French. That is the least courtesy you can show me. Speak French, I beg of you, and I will answer you."
"You have French soldiers hidden in your house with their arms," said one of them.
And he tramped hither and thither like a madman, and he sputtered and clattered. (Et il se promenait de long en large comme un fou, et il bavait et degoisait.)
I answered:
"We have no French soldiers here———"