"I can't do it," answered Leonard.
He was forced to write his deposition. When he had finished it, he presented it to the chief.
"Sign it, and follow me. I am sure that I saw bullets come from that part of the street. Certainly men were there who fired on our chiefs."
They also said to him that our chasseurs had fired on them from the chateau of Madame de Lambertye, and they themselves went to get a statement at the spot to see if it was possible to hit a man from the chateau and kill him.
I had seen the turrets of the chateau of Lambertye burning about half-past nine in the morning and all the upper part. That was by incendiary bombs. The day after the fires we saw empty cans, about sixty of them, the kind used for motor-car gasoline, lying about in the garden of the chateau.
Besides all that, there are still the bodily indignities which must not be passed over in silence. The twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth, "they" used fire and blood. The following days "they" amused themselves by teasing everybody. The poor Monsieur Jacob, who makes lemonade, was struck and thrown to the ground. Then they spit in his face, and threatened to shoot him, without any reason.
They were drunk with the wine of Gerbéviller, if one is to judge from their helmets, which had lost their lightning conductors.
The sacred images of the church were not respected. It was the evening of the twenty-ninth. A soldier-priest, Monsieur the Abbé Bernard, went to see a tiny bit of what was taking place.
"Do you know, my sister, what has been done to the ciborium (sacred vessel for the sacrament)?"