Amélie Rigard, whose religious name is Sister Julie, is a peasant woman, sixty-two years old, belonging to the Order of Saint Charles of Nancy. She is of the solid peasant type, with square chin and wide brown eyes. Everything about her is compact, deep-centered, close-growing; the fingers are stubby, the arms held closely to the body, and when the gesture comes it is a strong pushing out from the frame, as if pushing away a weight. Whenever she puts out power, she seems to be delivering a straight blow with the full weight of the body. With Sister Julie it is not only a genius of simple goodness. She carries a native shrewdness, with a salient tang. She knows life. This is no meek person, easily deceived by people, thinking every one good and harmless. She reads motives. Power is what I feel in her--direct, sheer power. The wonder is not that she rose to one of the supreme crises of history, and did a work which has passed into the consciousness of France. The wonder is that she remained hidden in a country village for sixty-two years. Her gift of language, her strength of nature, had vitality enough to burn through obscurity. The person she made me think of was that great man whom I once knew, Dwight Moody. Here was the same breadth of beam, the simplicity, the knowledge of human nature, the same native instinct for the fitting word that comes from being fed on the greatest literature in the world, and from using the speech of powerful, uneducated persons. When she entered the room, the room was filled. When she left, there was a vacancy. Here follows the account in her own words, of the last days of Gerbéviller. The phrase that speaks through all her recital is "_feu et sang_," "fire and blood." The Germans said on entering that they would give "fire and blood" to the village. The reason was this: A handful of French chasseurs, about sixty in number, had held up the German Army for several hours, in order to give the French Army time to retreat. This battle had taken place at the bridge outside the village. When at last the Germans broke through, they were irritated by the firm resistance which had delayed their plans. So they vented their ill-will by burning the houses and murdering the peasants. SISTER JULIE'S STORY The Germans reached the Lunéville road at the entrance of Gerbéviller at 10 minutes after seven in the morning. They saw the barricades, for our troops had built a barricade, and they said to a woman, Madame Barthélemy: "Madame, remove the barricades." As she waited undecided for a few seconds, they said: "You refuse. Then fire and blood."