It seems that the Germans had quite mistaken the amount of provisions existing in Paris. According to their calculations by the middle of December Paris ought to be feeling very hungry, on salt rations at the very best. They had not yet prepared for a bombardment with siege guns, hoping that Lady Famine would drive the Parisians to surrender. But they made no sign. Down at Argenteuil, on the north-west of Paris, there was the crackling of the chasse-pot from over the river, and yet most of the population had come back to their shops. They gossiped in the streets with French gaiety and unconcern, while the bullets sang overhead pretty freely. The steeple of their beautiful church made a good observatory, though its sides were riddled with holes made by shells. The French peasants drove their carts into the market-place below the church and sold eggs and butter full merrily; yet somehow, if a German stood at a window to gaze out, the French sharpshooters would aim at him. At Lagny there were generally 1,000 prisoners a day passing through to Germany. Some were so ravenous with hunger that they stooped to pick up turnip-tops and bones from the gutter, until the British Society organized a relief with stores of preserved meat and bread. And there was no hospital for the wounded! the poor creatures were dumped down in sheds, vans, the station-rooms, the church, the _mairie_. In one day there arrived 1,800 wounded. They were bestowed--frozen, hungry, hopeless--in the cold comfort of the church. Madame Simon, the lady superintendent of the Saxon ambulance, did noble things day and night--a most devoted woman. There were feats of quiet bravery done every day. There was a colporteur of the English Bible Society who used to drive his waggon on a road between Gonesse and Aulnay, a road exposed to shell-fire more than most. “Yes,” he said, “it is a good time for the men to read good words when they are standing with the shadow of death hanging over them.” There is a story of a boy Lieutenant, von Schramm, who found himself suddenly in a crowd of Frenchmen. He leapt from his horse and hid in a house, in the hope of escaping by the back-door; but his pursuers caught him, and were taking him towards St. Denis, which lies to the north of Paris. In going through the park of Le Bourget the officer who carried von Schramm’s sword was shot and fell. The boy made a dash for his own sword, grasped the hilt and cut down the man on his other side, rushed for the small lake, dived to avoid pursuing bullets, and swam safely across to rejoin his regiment. The strange thing was that he had been on the sick-list before his winter ducking, but now he was blessed with a boy’s appetite.