“One lady to whom I carried a fowl was prostrate in bed, her physical powers reduced by starvation to an extremely low ebb. When I told her that she was simply dying from want of food, her reply was that she really had no appetite; she could not eat anything. Yet when I gave her some savoury morsel to be taken at once, and then the fowl to be cooked later on, her face brightened; she half raised herself in bed, and pressed the little articles I had brought to her as a child presses a doll. I was told also that the nurses in an ambulance which I had aided with the British supplies danced round the tables, and invoked blessings on our heads. As regards myself, what I most craved for was fried fat, bacon, and fruit, and, above all, apples.” Besides the wild animals of the French Zoological Gardens, most of the domestic pets had been eaten. A story is told of one French lady who carefully guarded her little dog Fido, feeding him from her own plate with great self-sacrifice. One day the family had the rare treat of a hot joint, and in the middle of dinner the lady took up a small bone to carry to Fido in the next room. She returned in trouble, saying: “Fido is not in the house; he would so have enjoyed this bone. I hope he has not got out. They will kill him--the brutes!--and eat him.” The members of that starving family exchanged uneasy glances; they were even now engaged upon a salmi, or hash, formed from a portion of the lady’s pet! “From Memoirs of Dr. Gordon.” By kind permission of Messrs. Swan Sonnenschein and Co. CHAPTER XIX METZ (1870) Metz surrounded--Taken for a spy--Work with an ambulance--Fierce Prussians rob an old woman--Attempt to leave Metz--Refusing an honour--The _cantinière’s_ horse--The grey pet of the regiment--Deserters abound--A village fired for punishment--Sad scenes at the end. One Englishman, the Special Correspondent of the _Manchester Guardian_, contrived to enter Metz shortly before it was besieged. But he had not been there long before a disagreeable experience befell him. He was riding quietly outside the city towards the French camps which were pitched all round it, when suddenly a soldier stepped across the road, and cried, “Halt!” Two men seized his reins, asking, “Have you any papers?” “Yes; here is my passport,” he replied confidently. The passport puzzled them; it was taken to a superior officer, who knew that it was English, but looked suspiciously at the German visé which it bears. The Englishman was taken to a General across the road, who shook his head and remanded him to another officer of the staff, a mile back towards Metz. It begins to look serious; this man may be shot as a spy.