"'Curé, save my father.' 'My child is in the flames.' 'They are killing my children.'
"The shooting went on. The fire spread and made a hot cauldron of two streets. Cattle and crops and houses burned.
"Then a strange thing happened. Some Germans aided in saving clothing and furniture from two or three of the houses. But most of them watched the destruction, standing silent and showing neither pleasure nor regret. I could tell it was no new sight for them. In two hours, there was nothing left of the thirty-five houses on two streets.
"Our people ran out, chased by angry Germans who fired on them as if they were hunter's game. Jules Gand, 58 years old, was shot down at the threshold of his door. A seventeen-year-old boy named Georges Lecourtier, taking refuge with me, was shot. Alfred Lallemand hid himself in a kitchen. His body was riddled with bullets. We found it burned and lying in the rubbish, eight days later. He was 54 years old. Men, women and children fled into the gardens and the fields. They forded the river without using the bridge which was right there. They ran as far as Brizeaux and Senard. My cook ran. She had a packet of my bonds, which I had given her for safe-keeping, and she had a basket of her own valuables. In her fear she threw away her basket, and kept my bonds.
"The daughter of one of our women, shot in this panic, came to me and said:
"'My mother had fifty thousand francs, somewhere about her.'
"The body had been buried in haste, with none of the usual rites paid the dead, of washing and undressing. So no examination had been made. We dug the body up and found a bag.
"'Is that the bag?' I asked the daughter.
"'It looks like it,' she replied. It was empty.