Toward nine o'clock, when all was dark without, and nothing was to be heard but the pacing of the patrols, the shouts of the sentries on the ramparts: "Sentries, attention!" and the steps of our men on their rounds up and down the great wooden stairway of the admiralty, the thought suddenly came to me that the Russians had only tried to frighten us, that it meant nothing; and that there would be no shells that night. In order to be on good terms with the men, I had asked Monborne's permission to go and get a jug full of brandy, which he at once granted. I took advantage of the opportunity to bite a crust and drink a glass of wine at home. Then I went back, and all the men at the station were very friendly; they passed the jug from one to another, and said that my brandy was very good, and that the sergeant would give me leave to go and fill it as often as I pleased. "Yes, since it is Moses," replied Monborne, "he may have leave, but nobody else." We were all on excellent terms with each other and nobody thought of bombardment, when a red flash passed along the high windows of the room. We all turned round, and in a few seconds the shell rumbled on the Bichelberg hill. At the same time a second, then a third flash passed, one after the other, through the large dark room, showing us the houses opposite. You can never have an idea, Fritz, of those first lights at night! Corporal Winter, an old soldier, who grated tobacco for Tribou, stooped down quietly and lighted his pipe, and said: "Well, the dance is beginning!" Almost instantly we heard a shell burst at the right in the infantry quarters, another at the left in the Piplinger house on the square, and another quite near us in the Hemmerle house. I can't help trembling as I think of it now after thirty years. All the women were in the casemates, except some old servants who did not want to leave their kitchens; they screamed out: "Help! Fire!" We were all sure that we were lost; only the old soldiers, crooked on their bench by the stove, with their pipes in their mouths, seemed very calm, as people might who have nothing to lose. What was worst of all, at the moment when our cannon at the arsenal and powder-house began to answer the Russians', and made every pane of glass in the old building rattle, Sergeant Monborne called out: "Somme, Chevreux, Moses, Dubourg: Forward!" To send fathers of families roaming about through the mud, in danger, at every step, of being struck by bursting shells, tiles, and whole chimneys falling on their backs, is something against nature; the very mention of it makes me perfectly furious. Somme and the big innkeeper Chevreux turned round, full of indignation also; they wanted to exclaim: "It is abominable!" But that rascal of a Monborne was sergeant, and nobody dared speak a word or even give a side-look; and as Winter, the corporal of the round, had taken down his musket, and made a signal for us to go on, we all took our arms and followed him.