But I am wandering from my subject. As I have already said, our chief's private wish was, if possible, to get into Paris; and, with this object in view, Dr. Pratt held a long consultation with Colonel Lloyd Lindsay, R.A., president of the English Society, from whom we now awaited our orders. He declared the project impossible, and placed our contingent at the service of Prince Pless, Inspector-General of the German Ambulance Corps, who told us that we were wanted very badly indeed at Orleans, where there had been some days' severe fighting, with great loss on both sides. The town was full of wounded, and the medical staff quite insufficient to take charge of them.
Ostensibly, therefore, under the direction of Colonel Lloyd Lindsay and the English Society, but, as a matter of fact, under German orders, we had henceforth to carry on our mission. This change of control was disagreeable to us; but there was no help for it. We had been at first exclusively in the service of the French, but were always international; and we could not, in honour or conscience, refuse to enlist in the service of the Germans. As it had been rumoured about Versailles that we wanted to get into Paris, there was felt a certain amount of suspicion regarding our neutrality; and to have hesitated at this moment would have been fatal to our usefulness in the forthcoming campaigns. We made preparations to start as soon as might be. Colonel Lloyd Lindsay objected to our present Ambulance uniforms, and thought them too French. The Francs-Tireurs who had captured us, it will not be forgotten, had taken them to be Prussian. At his suggestion, we were to wear the undress uniform of the Royal Artillery while attached to the German Field Hospital Service; and a supply was ordered immediately from London. We received them, and wore them until we left Orleans. Such were the circumstances under which our transfer from the French to the Germans was effected.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PRUSSIAN HEADQUARTERS IN VERSAILLES.—A
POLISH LADY.—THE BURNING OF ST. CLOUD.—GERMAN
PRINCES.—BY ÉTAMPES AND THE
BATTLEFIELD OF CHEVILLY TO ORLEANS.
As Dr. Pratt had arrangements to make for our transit, and stores to lay in, and as our horses sorely required rest, our departure was delayed for two days, during which I had ample opportunity of seeing everything that was worth while at Versailles. My quarters were comfortable; and I ought not to pass over the circumstances which enabled me to come by them.
A Polish lady of great wealth, Madame Urbonouski, who lived in the Rue des Réservoirs, hearing that our Ambulance corps had entered Versailles, came out in person and accosted Dr. Mackellar; telling him that it would give her much pleasure if he and two others of his companions would accept the use of her house and the hospitality of her table, whilst they were staying in the city. So generous an offer could not be refused. Mackellar, Hayden, and myself were only too well pleased to accept such agreeable lodgings. Our apartments were exquisitely furnished, and provided with all manner of luxuries, to which the sorry plight wherein we had come from Rouen hardly allowed us to do justice. Nothing could exceed Madame Urbonouski's kind attention during the couple of days that we lodged under her roof. Provisions were scarce and costly; but that did not prevent her from giving us the best of everything to eat, and the choicest of wines at dinner. Before I left, my hostess, understanding that I was an Irishman, and being well aware of the sympathies which have existed between her own nation and Ireland (countries alike in their religious history and their long disasters), insisted that, if ever I returned to Versailles, I should pay a fresh visit to the Rue des Réservoirs. I promised, and should have been glad to have kept my word. But I did not see Madame Urbonouski a second time, nor do I know if she is still living.
On the day after our arrival every one was talking of the burning of St. Cloud, which occurred the previous evening. It was the unhappy result of that fighting which we had witnessed, and, thanks to the shells from Mont Valérien, had as good as shared in, on the 13th. Next morning we visited the Château of Versailles, and saw the picture galleries and the Chapel Royal. Here, too, the tokens of war made themselves conspicuous elsewhere than in the smoky battle pieces which stared at us from the walls. All the galleries on the ground floor had been turned into a Hospital, and were filled with wounded Germans. And a first-class Hospital they made,—commodious and airy, the arrangement and general organisation as nearly perfect as possible. But on the well-tended grass plots in front of the Palace, I saw numbers of the King's horses exercised, where, but a short time previously, it had been almost a crime to set foot.
I must not speak of the Grand and Little Trianon, the trim walks, or the fountain which I beheld playing into the basin of Neptune. It was all new and delightful to a raw youth, whose reading of French history had been neither extensive nor profound. Mackellar and I took a drive through the Park, out of Versailles, and enjoyed a distant view of Paris from certain heights whence now and then we could hear the booming of cannon as the forts discharged their thunder. On our homeward journey we met the old King driving in an open landau. He was accompanied by the German Chancellor. When I saw him another time, General von Moltke was in the carriage. Thus I had now set eyes on the man at Sedan who had lost one Empire, and on those who were destined, in the halls of Louis XIV., to set up another ere six months should have passed.