completely trodden down. Just by the _etoile_ formed by the meeting of the roads, we found Dick Jones encamped with his corps (about 500) of Flemish waggoners with their horses and waggons--a motley and not unpicturesque crew, with their blue smock-frocks and _bonnets de nuit_, wooden shoes, &c., as they sat in groups cooking, or smoking their short pipes. As it was yet early, we did not relish returning immediately to Garges and therefore made a detour to the left through the vineyards, plantations of artichokes, rose-bushes, &c. It was quite refreshing to find this part of the country untouched, everything uninjured and thriving. But there were no vine-dressers, no inhabitants of any kind--not a soul; field and houses all alike deserted. Philosophising as we went on the horrors of war and the beauty of the scenery we were passing through, which contrasted so strongly with that about Garges and every other place where the army halted, we rather unexpectedly entered a pretty village--that is, it had been once so; now devastation had visited it, and the forlorn deserted street was everywhere encumbered as usual with broken glass and fragments of furniture, &c.; every window in the place was destroyed. In front of the church was a small open space, whence a handsome lodge and _grille_ gave a view of a long avenue terminated by a chateau. In this place about twenty or thirty hussar horses were standing linked together under charge of one hussar. I believe these people were Prussians, but I can’t say. From this man we learned that his comrades were at the chateau, and thither we went, curious to ascertain what they did there. We were certainly not quite so much shocked at the scene of ruin and havoc which presented itself as we went down the avenue as we should have been a week ago; they are becoming familiar now. The fragments of sofas, chairs, tables, &c., lying about the grass, bespoke a richly-furnished house, and the nearer we drew to the house the thicker became these signs of vengeance. Large pieces of painted paper torn from the walls, remnants of superb silk window-curtains, with their deep rich fringe, hung amongst the bushes; broken mirrors and costly lustres covered the ground in such a manner as to render it difficult to avoid hurting our horses’ feet--the brilliant drops of these last, scattered amongst the grass, might, with a little stretch of imagination, have induced us to believe ourselves traversing Sinbad’s valley of diamonds; slabs of the rarest marble, torn from the chimney-pieces, lay shattered to atoms; even the beds had been ripped open, and the contents given to the winds, and conveyed by them to all parts of the park, covering in some places the ground like newly-fallen snow. The trees of the avenue were cut and hacked, and large patches of bark torn off--many were blackened and scorched by fires made at the foot of them, with the mahogany furniture for fuel; the shrubs cut down or torn up by the roots; the very turf