"Well, the German general said to him roughly: "'Is your town quiet? Can we circulate safely?' "M. Odent said, 'Yes. There is no quieter town in France than Senlis.' "'Are there still any soldiers here?' "M. Odent had seen the French troops defiling through the town all the morning. The bombardment had made it impossible to go about the streets. As far as he knew there were none left. He answered, 'No.' "He was taken off, practically under arrest, to the Hôtel, and told to order a dinner for thirty, with ice and champagne. Then his secretary joined him and proposed that the _adjoints_, or Mayor's assistants, should be sent for. "'No,' said M. Odent, 'one victim is enough.' You see he foresaw everything. We all knew what had happened in Belgium and the Ardennes. "The German officer questioned him again. "'Why have your people gone?--why are these houses, these shops, shut? There must be lights _everywhere_--all through the night!' "Suddenly--shots!--in the Rue de la République. In a few seconds there was a furious fusillade, accompanied by the rattle of machine guns. The officer sprang up. "'So this is your quiet town, Monsieur le Maire! I arrest you, and you shall answer with your life for the lives of my soldiers.' "Two men with revolvers were set to guard him. The officer himself presently took him outside the town, and left him under guard, at the little village of Poteau, at the edge of a wood." * * * * * What had happened? Unluckily for Senlis and M. Odent, some of the French rear-guard--infantry stragglers, and a small party of Senegalese troops--were still in the southern quarter of the town when the Germans entered. They opened fire from a barrack near the Paris entrance and a sharp engagement followed which lasted several hours, with casualties on both sides. The Germans got the better, and were then free to wreak their fury on the town. They broke into the houses, plundered the wine shops, first of all, and took fifty hostages, of whom twenty-six perished. And at half-past five, while the fighting was still going on, the punitive burning of the town began, by a cyclist section told off for the work and furnished with every means for doing it effectively. These men, according to an eyewitness, did their work with wild shouts--"_cris sauvages_." A hundred and seventeen houses were soon burning fiercely. On that hot September evening, the air was like a furnace. Before long the streets were full of blazing débris. Two persons who had hidden themselves in their cellars died of suffocation; yet to appear in the streets was to risk death at the hands of some drunk or maddened soldier.