But no! When the war was over, and when, towards the end of the Commune, Paris becoming untenable, we came and took refuge at Champrosay, I had the pleasant surprise of finding almost everything in its habitually peaceful condition, with the exception of a few country-houses that the marauders had searched, and where they had, from pure love of destruction, destroyed the wainscoting and broken all the windows. The German army had passed through, but never made any lengthened stay. Hidden behind a clump of acacias, Delacroix’s house had been even more protected than others, and in the garden awakening in beauty to the smile of spring, I could breathe freely for the twofold deliverance from the siege and from the winter. I was walking along the flower borders, when old Casaquet’s face peered over the garden wall, and he beamed upon me with his old wrinkled visage. Over him, too, the invasion had passed without leaving a trace. “I didn’t suffer too much . . . ” he said, twinkling his eyes, and standing on a ladder with his elbows resting on the trellis; and then he related how he had borne this period of exile and solitude. It had been a real time of feasting. There were no keepers in the forest, he cut as much wood as he liked (a treasure much coveted by the peasant); with a few poachers who had taken refuge at the Hermitage he snared roedeer and pheasants; and whenever an isolated Prussian, an orderly or straggler, was found in the vicinity of the quarries, he was quietly and quickly despatched. During four months he lived without any other news from Paris but the sound of the distant cannonading, and the occasional sight of an inflated balloon floating beneath the dark sky.