As the invaders, although subjecting the City to their inflexible discipline, had committed none of the horrors which rumor credited them with having perpetrated all along their triumphal march, people became bolder, and desire to do business belabored again the hearts of the local merchants. Some of them had large interest in Havre, which was occupied by the French Army, and they tried to reach that sea port in going by land to Dieppe and proceeding from there by boat. They used the influence of the German Officers, with whom they had become acquainted, and a special permit was secured from the General in Chief. Now then, a large four-horse coach having been engaged for this trip, and ten persons having had their names booked with the driver, it was decided to leave on a Tuesday morning, before daybreak, to avoid attracting any crowd. For some time past the frost had hardened the ground, and on that particular Monday, at about three o'clock, big black clouds coming from the North brought the snow which fell without interruption all that evening and during the whole night. At half past four in the morning, the travelers met in the courtyard of the Hôtel de Normandie, where they were to take the coach. They were still half asleep, and shivered with cold under their wraps. They could not see each other well in the darkness, and bundled in their heavy winter clothing, their bodies looked like fat priests in their long cassocks. Two men recognized each other; a third joined them; they talked:--"I am taking my wife with me--" said one;--"So am I"--"And I too"--The first speaker continued, "We shall not come back to Rouen, and if the Prussians should threaten Havre, we shall cross over to England"--They all had the same plans, being of similar disposition. However, the horses were not yet harnessed. A small lantern, carried by a stable boy, came now and then out of a dark doorway, and immediately disappeared in another. Horses were stamping the ground, but their hooves being covered with dung and straw, the noise of the stamping was deadened; a man's voice talking to the animals and swearing at them was heard from the rear of the building. A faint tickle grew soon into a clear and continuous jingling, rhythmical with the movements of the horses, now stopping, now resuming in a sudden peal accompanied by the deadened noise of an iron-shod hoof, pawing the ground. The door closed suddenly. All the noise ceased. The frozen passengers stopped talking: they stood motionless and stiff. An uninterrupted curtain of white, glistening flakes ceaselessly fell on the ground; it obliterated the forms of things and powdered them with an icy foam; and in the great silence of the quiet City, buried under the winter, one could hear nothing save that vague, nameless rustle of the falling snow--a sensation rather than a sound--an intermingling of light atoms which seemed to fill the space and cover the whole world.