At last I dropped off to sleep, with my head upon my knees; but scarcely had daylight appeared when the house was filled with the ringing of spurs and steel scabbards, and above all rose the loud voice of the aide-de-camp: "Where are you, you scoundrel! will you come, ass! fool! brute! come this way, will you!" This is the way he called his servant! This is exactly the way they treat their soldiers, who listen to them gravely, the hand raised beside the ear, eyes looking right before them, without uttering a sound! He is lucky, too, if the speech finishes without a smart box on the ears or a kick in the rear! This is what they hope to see us coming to some day; this is what they call "instructing us in the noble virtues of the Germans." The colonel breakfasted at about five in the morning; a company came for the flag, and the regiments marched off. We were rejoicing, when about seven, the bombardment opened with an awful crashing noise. Sixty guns at Wechem were firing at the same time. The town replied; but at half-past eight a heavy cloud of smoke was already overhanging Phalsbourg; the heavy guns of the fortress only replied with the more spirit; the shells whizzed, the bombs burst upon the hill-side, and the thunders of the bastion of Wilsenberg roared and rolled in echoing claps to the remotest ends of Alsace. My wife and Gredel, seated opposite each other, looked silently in each other's faces; I paced up and down with my head bowed, thinking of Jacob, and of all those good people who at that moment had before their eyes the spectacle of their burning houses and furniture, the fruit of their fifty years of labor. At ten I came out; the dense column of smoke had spread wider and wider; it extended toward the hospital and the church; it seemed like a vast black flag which drooped low from time to time and rose again to meet the clouds. A squadron of cuirassiers, and behind them another of hussars, dashed past up the face of the hill; but they came down again with lightning speed in the direction of Metting, where the Prussian prince had his head-quarters. The shells of the sixty guns went on their way rising through the air and falling into the smoke; the bombs and the shells from the town dropped behind the Prussian batteries, and exploded in the fields. The echoes could be heard from the Luetzelbourg, thundering from one moment to another. The old castle down below must have shaken and trembled upon its rock.