In the front garden every vine was dead, cut from the wall. For the wall had served as a shelter for the German soldiers, and was pierced all along for rifle rests, and by every hole was a heap of empty cartridge cases. The greenhouse and conservatories,--who shall tell their ruin? Glass is a poor protection against artillery, and the fierce frost had completed the work. There were the plants all arranged on their stands; there stood the orange trees--all were dead and brown--not a twig was alive. I thought of my mother and her flowers, as Madame Colombier turned with a sigh from her ruined conservatory, and walked back through the melancholy garden. But she was gay enough, though her husband seemed to feel deeply the destruction of his lovely home. He had been married but five years, and had spent much money in making this a happy spot for his wife and children--and now, the wreck! But even M. Colombier laughed with us when we came to the piles of empty bottles that lay in the yard; they were all that was left of two well-filled cellars. The French soldiers had celebrated their victory at the expense of the master of the Château Renardier. In the coach-house were Madame Colombier's two broughams; they had been used in the battle as temporary fortifications, and were literally riddled with bullets. We walked to the fish pond--a piece of ornamental water in the lawn. It had been netted, and not a fish was left. I stumbled on something under the trees by its brink. It was a Prussian cavalry saddle, not a comfortable-looking thing, thought I, as I surveyed the angular hide-covered wood,--but certainly economical when it is so easily lost. But evening was coming on; so having had lunch in the Château (the strangest ruin I ever picnicked in), we bade adieu to Renardier, and drove back to Orleans. M. Colombier's house there had, like his country château, been used during the war as a little hospital; and Charlie told me, as he waited in the drawing-room before dinner, how many wounded and dying inmates that room lately had.