Speaking of houses, some had been destroyed with an art and a refinement which made them look like builder’s models. One was standing, of which the only thing wanting was the outside wall facing the street, and one could see the section of the gaping interior. The pictures were hanging on the walls, and on the piano were photographs and nick-nacks. The drawing-room, the dining-room and the bedroom were intact; but the flooring of the attics had given way and everything had fallen through to the floor below. Another house was almost comical in appearance, for, against a wall on the lowest story, stood a fine bamboo rack, on which two statuettes of sham Saxe ware smiled an eternal and idiotic smile and seemed to jeer at the bombardment. Other houses, and these were the most numerous, were lamentable rubbish heaps, fallen in, blackened, broken up in every sense, blocking the streets and forming a hideous lamentable chaos. Even when no shell fell—and there were long moments of calm—the houses dropped to pieces of themselves. This one might lose the remainder of its tiles, which fell into the street with a din; the next one might drop, let us say, a stove, or a small billiard-table, from one floor to another. I arrived at last at the end of my journey, having asked myself a thousand times whether I should not be pulverised on the way there. The worst bit was when I reached the last cross-roads. For the second time I asked an orderly whether this was the house—pardon, the cellar—of Captain Mahot, and for the second time I heard an irritated voice reply, “Don’t stay there in the middle of the street”; but this time I lost the end of the phrase, being blinded and deafened. The heavens seemed to fall on me. I heard, “Get under cover,” and I felt my tympanum shattered. A house twenty mètres from me, a large two-storied house, seemed to be transformed into a volcano. A shell had entered its middle, through the roof, and _the whole house collapsed into the street_, accompanied by a formidable fall of rafters, bricks and furniture. “You see that,” said the orderly in a severe tone; “get into the cellar.” I felt just like a little boy. Five marines had been buried under the ruins. A little later I saw their bodies on stretchers. What a lamentable death for a sailor or soldier! Captain Mahot said to me, “The billeting area of the 22nd Dragoons? Very good, there it is,” and he showed me the butt-end of “the shepstraat.” I looked at it in astonishment, saying to myself, “That?” Messina after the earthquake would have offered more comfort. Nevertheless I inspected the cellars and apportioned them amongst the troops, and, by myself this time, I returned through the town to my point of departure, to meet and conduct Captain Vigoureux, whom I found three hundred mètres beyond the gates.