But the Germans were not content without wreaking the instinct--which is the savage instinct--to break and crush and ill-treat something which has thwarted you, on the women of Vareddes also. They gathered them out of the farmyard to which they had come, in the hopes of being allowed to stay with the men, and shut them up in a room of the farm. And there, with fixed bayonets, the soldiers amused themselves with terrifying these trembling creatures during a great part of the night. They made them all kneel down, facing a file of soldiers, and the women thought their last hour had come. One was seventy-seven years old, three sixty-seven, the two others just under sixty. The eldest, Madame Barthélemy, said to the others--"We are going to die. Make your 'contrition' if you can." (The Town Librarian of Meaux, from whose account I take these facts, heard these details from the lips of poor Madame Barthélemy herself.) The cruel scene shapes itself as we think of it--the half-lit room--the row of kneeling and weeping women, the grinning soldiers, bayonet in hand, and the old men waiting in the yard outside. But with the morning, the French mitrailleuses are heard. The soldiers disappear. The poor old women are free; they are able to leave their prison. But their husbands are gone--carried off as hostages by the Germans. There were nineteen hostages in all. Three of them were taken off in a north-westerly direction, and found some German officers quartered in a château, who, after a short interrogation, released them. Of the other sixteen, fifteen were old men, and the sixteenth a child. The Curé is with them, and finds great difficulty, owing to his age, the exhaustion of the night, and lack of food, in keeping up with the column. It was now Thursday the 10th, the day following that on which, as is generally believed, the Kaiser signed the order for the general retreat of the German armies in France. But the hostages are told that the French Army has been repulsed, and the Germans will be in Paris directly.