Thursday, October 8th. Another Taube came today and threw bombs in the neighborhood of the Gare du Nord. These machines in flight look very much like sparrow-hawks and have a singularly sinister appearance.
Sunday, October 11th. We had a record-breaking flock of Taubes today when a number came together and dropped about twenty bombs. Their combined score was twenty-two people killed and wounded; as usual, all women, children, and old men.
CHAPTER VI
THE BATTLE OF THE AISNE
Paris, Monday, October 12th. In writing about the German, Austrian, and Hungarian subjects of whom we have had charge, I have spoken of them en masse. In reality there have been many cases in whom I have been personally interested and to whose safety I have given much time. Their history alone would fill a book. One of these is the case of the Countess X., member of an old and powerful Hungarian family.
The Count, her husband, was desperately ill in Paris when the war broke out and he was kept alive only through the devoted care of his wife. We arranged with the French authorities that the Countess might remain in Paris with her husband, although all other Hungarian people were, without exception, being shipped off to detention camps. Later the Countess twice received notice from the Prefecture that she was to be immediately imprisoned, and each time by enlisting the personal assistance of Ambassador Herrick I managed to have the decree delayed.
The children of the family, of whom there were seven under ten years of age, were living at a château on the French coast, at Paris-Plage, near Boulogne. When the German army began to sweep towards the coast in a seemingly irresistible flood, the Countess came to me to say how fearful she felt for the safety of her children, left in the care of servants and governesses. Yesterday, when the fall of Antwerp was confirmed and when even the official announcements went so far as to talk of fighting in the neighborhood of Arras, she came again. I went to Mr. Herrick and asked if I might be allowed to go to the coast and bring the children back to Paris. The permission was the more readily granted because there were several other errands to be done in the same direction, notably to carry communications to our Consular Agent in Amiens, who had remained in that city during the German occupation and from whom little had since been heard.