We bought up all the _débris_ that the child had, without attempting to give him advice which might have sounded wise. What was the use of preaching wisdom to this poor little creature who heard of nothing but massacres, fire, revenge, retaliation and all the rest of it, for the sake of honor, for the sake of religion, for the sake of right! And then, too, how was it possible to keep out of the way? All the people living in the Faubourg St. Germain were liable to be blown to pieces, as the enemy, very luckily, could only bombard Paris on that side and not everywhere even there. No, we were certainly in the most dangerous neighborhood. One day Baron Larrey came to see Frantz Mayer, who was very ill. He wrote a prescription, which a young errand boy was told to wait for, and bring back very, very quickly. As the boy was rather given to loitering, I went to the window. His name was Victor, but we called him Toto. The druggist lived at the corner of the Place Medicis. It was then six o’clock in the evening. Toto looked up, and on seeing me, he began to laugh and jump as he hurried to the druggist’s. He had only five or six more yards to go, and as he turned round to look up at my window, I clapped my hands and called out: “Good, be back soon!” Alas! Before the poor boy could open his mouth to reply, he was cut in two by a shell which had just fallen. It did not burst, but bounced a yard high, and then struck poor Toto right in the middle of the chest. I uttered such a shriek that everyone came rushing to me. I could not speak, but pushed everyone aside and rushed downstairs, beckoning for some one to come with me. “A litter—the boy—the druggist’s,” I managed to articulate. Ah, what a horror, what an awful horror! When we reached the poor child, his intestines were all over the ground, his chest, and his poor little red, chubby face had the flesh entirely taken off. He had neither eyes, nose, nor mouth, nothing, nothing but some hair, at the end of a shapeless bleeding mass, a yard away from his body. And it was as though a tiger’s two claws had opened the body and emptied it with fury and a refinement of cruelty, leaving nothing but the poor little skeleton. Baron Larrey, who was the best of men, turned slightly pale at this sight. He saw many such sights certainly, but this poor little fellow was a holocaust which had been terribly mutilated. Ah, the injustice, the infamy of war! Will the much dreamed-of time never come, when wars are no longer possible, when the monarch who wants war will be dethroned and imprisoned as a malefactor? Will the time never come when there will be a cosmopolitan council, where the wise man of every country will represent his nation, and where the rights of humanity will be discussed and respected! So many men think as I do. So many women talk as I do, and yet nothing is done.