We, however, gave a sign to our own ostlers outside the gate, and directed them to harness the horses and put to, which they did with as great alacrity as if they had been Prussians, the owner looking on in sullen silence. But what were his feelings, when, twenty minutes after, he saw us driving his team through the gate and out of the town, I dare not guess. This carriage and pair, I may here subjoin, we used until the end of the war, when they were returned to the Mayor of Versailles, with a request that they might be given back to the original owner at Mantes, minus, however, one of the horses, which died from overwork and hardship. Thus it is, that, during times of war, the sacred rights of property are violated, and systematic robbery is held to be justifiable by those who can successfully practise it. In this instance the property was ultimately restored to its rightful owner; but, in how many cases is that never done? To be sure, the Government is supposed to indemnify any individual who can produce the counterfoil of the requisition: yet it would be interesting to hear from such injured persons, the story of how much they asked and how little they got. We pushed on rapidly towards St. Germain, for Dr. Pratt was in haste to get there as soon as possible. Curious to relate, we had not thus far fallen in with a single German outpost; neither did we, until our entrance into the Forest of St. Germain, when we were challenged, and had to give up our papers for inspection. A few miles outside that town we passed through the village of Mézières, which had been burned to the ground a few days previously, and was now a smouldering heap of ruins. One burned village is like another, and I might have fancied myself in Bazeilles. Whole streets in the suburbs of St. Germain, through which we passed, had been plundered, and, in some cases, the soldiers had gone from house to house by means of holes, which they had picked through the partition walls. I rambled over a pile of such buildings, and certainly the wanton destruction within them was astounding. The Germans, I must say, when not watched, are rare good hands at pillage; but they were kept down by such rigid discipline, and so severely punished for every offence, how trivial soever, that they were, and are, I suppose (although not with their goodwill), the best conducted soldiers on active service in Europe. In the matter of discipline, nothing appears to have been changed, at least in the way of relaxation, among the Prussian rank and file, since the good old days of Frederick the Great and his eccentric and brutal father.