However, as they threatened us with fire, I gave public notice that the Prussians still claimed, in the name of the King of Prussia, ten hundred-weight of oats and of barley, three thousand of straw, and as much of hay; and that if the whole was not delivered in the market square on the stroke of twelve, they would set fire to the place without compassion. And this time, too, it all came. These Germans had found out the way to compel people to strip themselves even of their very shirts! Fire! fire! There lies the true genius of the Prussians. No one had imagined _fire_--the power of _fire_, like these brigands. God alone had brought down fire hitherto upon His miserable creatures to punish heavy crimes, as at Sodom and Gomorrah; they resorted to it to rob and plunder us! It was the punishment of our folly. But let us hope that nations will not always be so wicked. God will take pity upon us. I do not say the God of the Jesuits, nor of the Prussians, who are Protestant Jesuits! But He whom, every man feels in his own heart; He who draws from us the tears of pity and compassion, which we drop upon our brothers unjustly slain; He is the God of whom I speak, and it is to Him that I cry when I say: "Look upon our sufferings! Have we deserved them? are we accountable for our ignorance? If so, then punish us! But if others are to blame: if they have refused us schools; if they have never taught us anything that we ought to know; if they have profited by our credulity to impose upon us, oh! God, pardon us, and restore to us our country, our dear country, Alsace and Lorraine! Let us not be reduced to receiving blows like the German soldiers! Degrade not our children, our poor children, to become servants and beasts of burden to the German nobles! My God! we have been verily guilty in believing our 'honest man,' who swore to Thee with full intent to break his oath: and his Ministers, who plunged into war 'with a light heart!' after having promised us peace, and who first secured their own safety and well-lined pockets! Nevertheless, we of Alsace and Lorraine, the most faithful children of the Great Revolution, have not deserved that we should become Germans and Prussians! Alas! what a calamity! ..." I have just been weeping! After such a flood of miseries and abominable acts my heart over flows! Now I pursue my sad story; and I will try never to forget that I am relating a true history, which everybody knows; which all the world has seen. That same day, toward evening, several vans full of Alsacians, returning from Blamont, passed through our village to return home. The Prussians had obliged them to walk; their horses were nothing but bags of bones; and the people, emaciated, yellow-looking, had been so battered with blows, so famished with hunger, that they staggered at every step.