Numerous crimes against the person have also been committed. In the majority of the communes hostages have been taken away; many of them have not returned. At Sermaize-les-Bains, the Germans carried off about 150 people, some of whom were decked out with helmets and coats and compelled, thus equipped, to mount guard over the bridges. At Bignicourt-sur-Saulx thirty men and forty-five women and children were obliged to leave with a detachment. One of the men--a certain Emile Pierre--has not returned nor sent any news of himself. At Corfelix, M. Jacquet, who was carried off on the 7th of September with eleven of his fellow-citizens, was found five hundred meters from the village with a bullet in his head. At Champuis the cure, his maid-servant, and four other inhabitants, who were taken away the same day as the hostages of Corfelix, had not returned at the time of our visit to the place. At the same place an old man of 70, named Jacquemin, was tied down in his bed by an officer and left in this state without food for three days. He died a little time after. At Vert-la-Gravelle a farm-hand was killed. He was struck on the head with a bottle and his chest was run through with a lance. The garde champetre Brulefer of le Gault-la-Foret was murdered at Maclaunay, where he had been taken by the Germans. His body was found with his head shattered and a wound on his chest. At Champguyon, a commune which has been fired, a certain Verdier was killed in his father-in-law's house. The latter was not present at the execution, but he heard a shot and next day an officer said to him, "Son shot. He is under the ruins." In spite of the search made the body has not been found among them. It must have been consumed in the fire. At Sermaize, the roadmaker Brocard was placed among a number of hostages. Just at the moment when he was being arrested with his son, his wife and his daughter-in-law in a state of panic rushed to throw themselves into the Saulx. The old man was able to free himself for a moment and ran in all haste after them and made several attempts to save them, but the Germans dragged him away pitilessly, leaving the two wretched women struggling in the river. When Brocard and his son were restored to liberty, four days afterward, and found the bodies, they discovered that their wives had both received bullet wounds in the head. At Montmirail a scene of real savagery was enacted. On the 5th of September a non-commissioned officer flung himself almost naked on the widow Naude, on whom he was billeted, and carried her into his room. This woman's father, Francois Fontaine, rushed up on hearing his daughter's cry. At once fifteen or twenty Germans broke through the door of the house, pushed the old man into the street, and shot him without mercy. Little Juliette Naude opened the window at this moment and was struck in the stomach by a bullet, which went through her body. The poor child died after twenty-four hours of most dreadful suffering.