On January 10, Madame Guérard and I were sitting up at night, on one of the lounges in the green-room, awaiting the dismal cry of “Ambulance!” There had been a fierce affray at Clamart, and we knew there would be many wounded. I was telling her of my fear that the bombs which had already reached the Museum, the Sorbonne, the Salpétrière, the Val-de- Grâce, &c., would fall on the Odéon. “Oh, but, my dear Sarah,” said the sweet woman, “the ambulance flag is waving so high above it that there could be no mistake. If it were struck it would be purposely, and that would be abominable.” “But, Guérard,” I replied, “why should you expect these execrable enemies of ours to be better than we are ourselves? Did we not behave like savages at Berlin in 1806?” “But at Paris there are such admirable public monuments,” she urged. “Well, and was not Moscow full of masterpieces? The Kremlin is one of the finest buildings in the world. That did not prevent us giving that admirable city up to pillage. Oh no, my poor _petit Dame_, do not deceive yourself. Armies may be Russian, German, French, or Spanish, but they _are_ armies—that is, they are beings which form an impersonal ‘whole,’ a ‘whole’ that is ferocious and irresponsible. The Germans will bombard the whole of Paris if the possibility of doing so should be offered them. You must make up your mind to that, my dear Guérard——” [Illustration: SARAH BERNHARDT _From the portrait in the Théâtre Français_ ] I had not finished my sentence when a terrible detonation roused the whole neighbourhood from its slumbers. Madame Guérard and I had been seated opposite each other. We found ourselves standing up close together in the middle of the room, terrified. My poor cook, her face quite white, came to me for safety. The detonations continued rather frequently. The bombarding had commenced from our side that night. I went round to the wounded men, but they did not seem to be much disturbed. Only one, a boy of fifteen, whom we had surnamed “pink baby,” was sitting up in bed. When I went to him to soothe him he showed me his little medal of the Holy Virgin. “It is thanks to her that I was not killed,” he said. “If they would put the Holy Virgin on the ramparts of Paris the bombs would not come.”