“When we were crossing a particularly high wall,” states another victim,[242] “my wife was on the top of the wall and I was helping her to get down, when a party of 15 Germans came up with rifles and revolvers. They told us to come down. My wife did not follow as quickly as they wished. One of them made a lunge at her with his bayonet. I seized the blade of the bayonet and stopped the lunge. The German soldier then tried to stab me in the face with his bayonet.... “They kept hitting us with the butt-ends of their rifles--the women and children as well as the men. They struck us on the elbows because they said our arms were not raised high enough.... “We were driven in this way through a burning house to the _Place de la Station_. There were a number of prisoners already there. In front of the station entrance there were the corpses of three civilians killed by rifle fire. The women and the children were separated. The women were put on one side and the men on the other. One of the German soldiers pushed my wife with the butt-end of his rifle, so that she was compelled to walk on the three corpses. Her shoes were full of blood.... “Other prisoners were being continually brought in. I saw one prisoner with a bayonet-wound behind his ear. A boy of fifteen had a bayonet-wound in his throat in front.... The priests were treated more brutally than the rest. I saw one belaboured with the butt-ends of rifles. Some German soldiers came up to me sniggering, and said that all the women were going to be raped.... They explained themselves by gestures.... The streets were full of empty wine bottles.... “An officer told me that he was merely executing orders, and that he himself would be shot if he did not execute them....” The battue of civilians through the streets was the final horror of that night. The massacre began with the murder of M. David-Fischbach. He was a man of property, a benefactor of the University and the town. Since the outbreak of war he had given 10,000 francs to the Red Cross. Since the German occupation he had entertained German officers in his house, which stood in the _Rue de la Station_ opposite the _Statue of Juste-Lipse_, and about 9.0 o’clock that evening he had gone to bed.