Granting that civilians did fire after hostages had been given, there remains the question of reprisal. It was the German commander's idea that Senlis should be taught a lesson, and this consisted of shooting the mayor and the hostages, and sacking and burning the main street--a half mile, perhaps--from end to end. The idea was carried out with thoroughness, and men ran along from house to house feeding the flames with petroleum and even burning a handsome new country house which stood apart at one end. A nice-looking, elderly gentleman whom we met in front of the ruined Hotel du Nord said that the Germans came there and, finding champagne in the cellar after the maitre d'hotel had told them there wasn't any, set fire to the hotel, and, as I recall it, shot him. How true such stories are I cannot say, but there was no doubt that Senlis had been punished. At least half of the old city on the banks of the wistful Nonette--it is a much larger place than Crepy, with a cathedral of some consequence-- was smashed as utterly as it might have been by a cyclone or an earthquake. The systematic manner in which this was done was suggested by the fact that, in the long street running parallel to the one picked for destruction, nearly every door still carried its chalked order to "Schoenen." One house spared was that of a town fireman. "I've got five little children," he told the German soldiers. "They're one, two, three, four, five years old, and I'm expecting another." And they went on. These were common sights and sounds of that gracious country north of Paris--deserted, perhaps demolished, villages; the silent countryside, with dead horses, bits of broken shell, smashed bicycles or artillery wagons along the road; and the tainted autumn wind. Along the level French roads, under their arches of elms or poplars, covered carts on tall wheels, drawn by two big farm horses harnessed one behind another, and loaded with women, children, and household goods, were beginning to move northward as they had moved south three weeks before. Trains, similarly packed, were creeping up to within ear-shot of the constant cannonading, and it was on one of these trains that we had come.