What a loss for our country! for it always fell to our share to replace anything that was lost or stolen. Of course the Prussians are too honorable to pick or steal anywhere! In that comparatively quiet time by night we could hear the bombardment of Strasbourg. About one in the morning, while the village was asleep, and all else in the distance was wrapped in silence, then those deep and loud reports were heard one by one. The citadel alone received five shells and one bomb per minute. Sometimes the fire increased in intensity; the din became terrible; the earth seemed to be trembling far away down there: it sounded like the heavy strokes of the gravedigger at the bottom of a grave. And this went on forty-two days and forty-two nights without intermission: the new Church, the Library, and hundreds of houses were burned to the ground; the Cathedral was riddled with shot; a shell even carried away the iron cross at its summit. The unhappy Strasbourgers cast longing eyes westward; none came to help. The men who have told me of these things when all was over could not refrain from tears. Of Metz we heard nothing; rumors of battles, combats in Lorraine, ran through the country: rumors of whose authenticity we knew nothing. The silence of the Germans was maintained; but one evening they burst into loud hurrahs from Wechem to Biechelberg, from Biechelberg to Quatre Vents. George and his wife came with pale faces. "Well, you know the despatch?" "No; what is it?" "The _honest man_ has just surrendered at Sedan with eighty thousand Frenchmen! From the beginning of the world the like of it has never been seen. He has given up his sword to the King of Prussia--his famous sword of the 2d December. He thought more of his own safety and his ammunition-wagons than of the honor of his name and of the honor of France! Oh, the arch-deceiver! he has deceived me even in this: I did think he was brave!" George lost all command over himself. "There," said he, "that was to be the end of it! His own army was those ten or fifteen thousand Decemberlings supplied by the Prefecture of Police, armed with loaded staves and life-preservers to break the heads of the defenders of the laws. He thought himself able to lead a French army to victory, as if they were his gang of thieves; he has let them into a sort of a sink, and there, in spite of the valor of our soldiers, he has delivered them up to the King of Prussia: in exchange for what? We shall know by and by. Our unhappy sons refused to surrender: they would have preferred to die sword in hand, trying to fight their way out; it was his Majesty who, three times, gave orders to hoist the white flag!" Thus spoke my cousin, and we, more dead than alive, could hear nothing but the shouts and rejoicings outside.