Life, however, was no longer possible in Paris, and I decided to go to St. Germain en Laye. I asked my mother to go with me, but she went to Switzerland with my youngest sister. The departure from Paris was not as easy as I had hoped. Communists, with gun on shoulder, stopped the trains and searched in all our bags and pockets, and even under the cushions of the railway carriages. They were afraid that the passengers were taking newspapers to Versailles. This was monstrously stupid. The installation at St. Germain was not easy. Nearly all Paris had taken refuge in this little place, which is as pretty as it is dull. From the height of the terrace, where the crowd remained morning and night, we could see the alarming progress of the Commune. On all sides of Paris the flames rose, proud and destructive. The wind often brought us burnt papers, which we took to the Council House. The Seine brought quantities along with it, and the boatmen collected these in sacks. Some days—and these were the most distressing of any—an opaque veil of smoke enveloped Paris. There was no breeze to allow the flames to pierce through. The city then burned stealthily, without our anxious eyes being able to discover what fresh homes these furious madmen had set alight. I went for a ride every day in the forest. Sometimes I would go as far as Versailles, but this was not without danger. We often came across poor starving wretches in the forest, whom we joyfully helped, but often, too, there were prisoners who had escaped from Poissy, or Communist sharp shooters trying to shoot a Versailles soldier. One day on the way back from Triel, where Captain O’Connor and I had been for a gallop over all the hills, we entered the forest rather late in the evening, as it was a shorter way. A shot wits fired from a neighboring thicket, which made my horse bound so sharply toward the left that I was thrown. Fortunately my horse was quiet. O’Connor hurried to me, but I was already up and ready to mount again. “Just a second,” he said, “I want to search that thicket.” With a short gallop he was soon at the spot, and I then heard a shot, some branches breaking under flying feet, then another shot, not at all like the two former ones, and my friend appeared again with a pistol in his hand. “It has not touched you?” I asked. “Yes, the first shot just touched my leg, but the fellow aimed too low. The second he fired haphazard. I fancy, though, that he has a bullet from my revolver in his body.” “But I heard some one running away,” I said. “Oh,” replied the elegant captain, chuckling, “he will not go far!” “Poor wretch!” I murmured. “Oh, no!” exclaimed O’Connor, “do not pity them, I beg. They kill numbers of our men every day; only yesterday five soldiers from my regiment were found on the Versailles road, not only killed, but mutilated,” and, gnashing his teeth, he finished his sentence with an oath.