The besieged, not thinking that we had troops on that side, and not foreseeing this assault, had left the southern ramparts unprotected; we did not lose for waiting: the garrison armed a double battery, which penetrated our epaulements and dismounted two of our guns. The sky was aflame; we were shrouded in torrents of smoke. I behaved like a little Alexander: weakened by fatigue, I fell sound asleep, almost under the wheels of the gun-carriage where I was on guard. A shell, bursting six inches off the ground, sent a splinter into my right thigh. I awoke with the shock, but felt no pain, and perceived only by my blood that I was wounded. I bound up my thigh with my hand-kerchief. In the affair on the plain, two bullets had struck my knapsack during a wheeling movement. _Atala_, like a devoted daughter, placed herself between her father and the lead of the enemy: she had still to withstand the fire of the Abbé Morellet[111]. At four o'clock in the morning, the Prince of Waldeck's fire ceased: we thought the town had surrendered; but the gates were not opened, and we had to think of retiring. We returned to our positions, after a tiring march of three days. The Prince of Waldeck had gone as far as the edge of the ditches, which he had tried to cross, hoping to bring about a surrender by means of the simultaneous attack: divisions were still supposed to exist in the town, and we flattered ourselves that the Royalist party would bring the keys to the Princes. The Austrians, having fired in barbette, lost a considerable number of men; the Prince of Waldeck had an arm shot off. While a few drops of blood flowed under the walls of Thionville, blood was flowing in torrents in the prisons of Paris: my wife and sisters were in greater danger than I. * We raised the siege of Thionville and set out for Verdun, which had been restored to the Allies on the 2nd of September. Longwy, the birthplace of François de Mercy[112], had fallen on the 23rd of August. Wreaths and festoons of flowers bore evidence on every side of the passage of Frederic William. Among the peaceful trophies, I observed the Prussian Eagle affixed to Vauban's[113] fortifications: it was not to stay there long; as to the flowers, they were soon to see the innocent creatures who had gathered them fade away like themselves. One of the most atrocious murders of the Terror was that of the young girls of Verdun. "Fourteen young girls of Verdun," says Riouffe[114], "of unexampled purity, who had the air of young virgins decked for a public festival, were led together to the scaffold. They disappeared suddenly and were gathered in their springtime; the 'Court of Women,' on the morrow of their death, looked like a garden-plot stripped of its flowers by a storm. Never have I witnessed such despair as that which this act of barbarity excited among us."