One of the French biplanes that scour the sky daily in search of German _taubes_ met with sad disaster yesterday while flying over the Bois de Vincennes. The aeroplane contained a lieutenant and a corporal of the aviation corps. A violent gust of wind capsized it, and it fell to the ground, burying the occupants in a heap of debris. When extricated, both were dead. A few moments after the biplane struck the earth, either its motor, or the bombs that it had on board, exploded, and four passers-by were killed by flying fragments. Two of them were ten-year-old lads. A little girl and several other persons were more or less bruised. It so happened that I had watched this biplane from the Boulevard de Courcelles as it soared over Paris at a height of fifteen hundred meters. It was very steady in its movements and was going in an easterly direction. This must have been some ten minutes before the catastrophe. The committee of the National Society of Fine Arts held a meeting today at the Grand Palais, to render aid to painters, sculptors, and artists in need of assistance, without regard to nationality, passed resolutions of indignation at the injury of works of art in France and Belgium committed by the German armies, and at the destruction of the objects of art solicited by Germany and entrusted by France to the International Exhibition at Leipsic, and unanimously voted to strike from the list of members the names of all artists of German nationality. The art critic of the _Gil Blas_, M. Louis Vauxelles, whose scathing criticisms of the "classic" _pompier_ academic school of painting and of sculpture, and whose intelligent censure of the extreme "futurist" clique elicit the hearty approval of all true lovers of art, in the United States, as well as in France, is serving as a simple soldier in an infantry regiment, but finds time occasionally to write to the _Intransigeant_ picturesque descriptions of military life. I received a letter from a friend at Tours, where the refugees are becoming less numerous, but the hospitals on the contrary are nearly full of wounded. Comtesse Paul de Pourtales is doing splendid work there as the head of the Red Cross, and M. Gaston Menier, the popular senator, a warm personal friend of Mr. Andrew Carnegie and the owner of the great chocolate works, has turned his Chateau of Chenonceaux into a perfectly organized hospital with a corps of surgeons and professional nurses, which he maintains at his own expense. Nearly a hundred French wounded are already being cared for in the Chenonceaux hospital. As soon as they get well enough, they are sent back to rejoin their regiments. All the villas in the neighborhood of Tours are already leased to families that have gone away from Paris. In accordance with the notices of the Military Governor of Paris, I was vaccinated against smallpox to-day, together with all those now living in the house--in all twelve persons.