I cannot recall those terrible days without the deepest emotion. It was no longer the country in danger that kept my nerves strung up, but the sufferings of all her children. There were all those who were away fighting, those who were brought in to us wounded or dying; the noble women of the people, who stood for hours and hours in the _queue_ to get the necessary dole of bread, meat, and milk for their poor little ones at home. Ah, those poor women! I could see them from the theatre windows, pressing up close to each other, blue with cold, and stamping their feet on the ground to keep them from freezing—for that winter was the most cruel one we had had for twenty years. Frequently one of these poor, silent heroines was brought in to me, either in a swoon from fatigue or struck down suddenly with congestion caused by cold. On December 20 three of these unfortunate women were brought into the ambulance. One of them had her feet frozen, and she lost the big toe of her right foot. The second was an enormously stout woman, who was suckling her child, and her poor breasts were harder than wood. She simply howled with pain. The youngest of the three was a girl of sixteen to eighteen years of age. She died of cold, on the trestle on which I had had her placed to send her home. On December 24, there were fifteen degrees of cold. I often sent Guillaume, our attendant, out with a little brandy to warm the poor women. Oh! the suffering they must have endured—those heart-broken mothers, those sisters and _fiancées_—in their terrible dread. How excusable their rebellion seems during the Commune, and even their bloodthirsty madness! My ambulance was full. I had sixty beds, and was obliged to improvise ten more. The soldiers were installed in the green-room and in the general _foyer_, and the officers in a room which had been formerly the refreshment-room of the theatre. One day a young Breton, named Marie Le Gallec, was brought in. He had been struck by a bullet in the chest and another in the wrist. Dr. Duchesne bound up his chest firmly, and attended to his wrist. He then said to me very simply: “Let him have anything he likes—he is dying.” I bent over his bed, and said to him: “Tell me what would give you pleasure, Marie Le Gallec.” “Soup,” he answered promptly, in the most comic way. Madame Guérard hurried away to the kitchen, and soon returned with a bowl of broth and pieces of toast. I placed the bowl on the little four- legged wooden shelf, which was so convenient for the meals of our poor sufferers. The wounded man looked up at me and said, “Barra.” I did not understand, and he repeated, “Barra.” His poor chest caused him to hiss out the word, and he made the greatest efforts to repeat his emphatic request. I sent immediately to the Marine Office, thinking that there would surely be some Breton seamen there, and I explained my difficulty and my ignorance of the Breton dialect.