I told the head attendant to open the largest of the bottles, in which through the glass we could see an enormous piece of beef, surrounded by thick, muddy-looking water. The string, fastened round the rough paper which hid the cork, was cut and then, just as the man was about to put the corkscrew in, a deafening explosion was heard, and a rank odor filled the room. Everyone rushed away terrified. I called them all back, scared and disgusted as they were, and showed them the following words on the directions: “Do not be alarmed at the bad odor on opening the bottle.” Courageously, and with resignation, we took up our work once more, though we felt sick all the time from the abominable exhalation. I took the beef out and placed it on a dish that had been brought for the purpose. Five minutes later this meat turned blue, and then black, and the stench from it was so unbearable that I decided to throw it away. Mme. Lambquin was wiser, though, and more reasonable. “No, oh, no, my dear girl,” she said; “in these times it will not do to throw meat away, even though it may be rotten. Let us put it in the glass bottle again and send it back to the Council House.” I followed her wise advice, and it was a very good thing I did, for another _ambulance_, installed at Boulevard de Medicis, on opening these bottles of meat had been as horrified as we were and had thrown the contents into the street. A few minutes after the crowd had gathered round in a mob and, refusing to listen to anything, had yelled out insults addressed to “the aristocrats,” “the clericals,” and “the traitors,” who were throwing good meat, intended for the sick, into the street, so that the dogs were enjoying it, while the people were starving with hunger. It was with the greatest difficulty that the wretched, mad people had been prevented from invading the _ambulance_, and when one of the unfortunate nurses had gone out, later on, she had been mobbed, and beaten, until she was left half dead from fright and blows. She did not want to be carried back to her own _ambulance_, and the druggist begged me to take her in. I kept her for a few days, in one of the boxes in the second gallery of the theater, and when she was better she asked if she might stay with me as a nurse. I granted her wish, and kept her with me afterwards as a maid. She was a fair-haired girl, gentle and timid, and was predestined for misfortune. She was found dead in the Père Lachaise Cemetery after the skirmish between the Communists and the Versailles troop. A stray bullet had struck her in the back of the neck as she was praying at the grave of her little sister, who had died two days before from smallpox. I had taken her with me to St. Germain, where I had gone to stay during the horrors of the Commune. Poor girl! I had allowed her to go to Paris very much against my own will.