the German military authorities, I rode out in search of Mr. Russell, whom I found in some anxiety, and not fully appreciating the advantage of an Uhlan escort in a forest infested by Francstireurs. I brought him safely into Sedan.

ment, in the shape of preserved meats, corting the post had been fired on by soups, and wine, by the aid of which the Francs-tireurs between Bouillon and Sefamine fever was gradually subdued. dan, the portion of the forest with which The stars were shining brilliantly as II was best acquainted. At the request of crossed the bridge over the moat and drove under the archway leading up to the Chateau de Mont Dieu an ideal retreat from the pleasures and cares of life. The chateau, which was a monastery previous to the Revolution, is deeply embowered in picturesque woods, clothing all the sheltering heights. Outside, its sober grey walls rise sheer out of its surrounding moat. Within, dark oak panelling and furniture meet you at every turn.

It was already after nightfall on Christmas day when, having at length completed my correspondence, I set out from Mont Dieu for Rethel, about twenty-five miles M. Camus, the proprietor, who was distant. It was freezing harder than ever, himself absent, most readily put the cha- and the stars if possible were more brilteau at my disposal, reckoning that my liant than the night before. I never felt Occupation of it for relief purposes would more intense cold, and the open dog-cart have a tendency to keep the Germans at in which I was performing the journey arm's length. exposed me to its full violence. The exAn ancient serviteur, and his grey-citement, however, of driving through a haired wife Antoinette, who had a gra- very broken country after dark in warcious old-French manner about her, re-time, prevented the blood from stagnatceived me with friendly welcome. While ing in one's veins, and my plucky little the husband attended to my horse and horse got briskly over the ground. servant, the wife ushered me into an oakpanelled apartment, where a huge log was blazing on the capacious heartb. Half frozen by my cold evening drive, I keenly relished the bright comfort of the fire and the meal, which was promptly served. The silence of the whole place was absolute, and not even an owl's or any cry broke in upon the night air.

It was freezing hard when I rose on Christmas morning and looked down on the frozen moat and filigree frosted foliage. The scene was exquisitely beautiful, but I had little time to regard it, as I had still arrears of accounts and correspondence to clear off before breaking off from my communications with Sedan and England.

It was after nine when I reached Rethel, having met with no kind of interference. At Rethel, which was occupied by a slender German garrison, I was lucky enough to find a clean bed, in a fair country inn. The cold, however, was almost as biting within my chamber as outside.

Leaving Rethel early on the morning of December 26th, I soon changed the broken, picturesque scenery of the Ardennes for the comparatively monotonous plains of Champagne, where only a few inches of soil overlie a hungry kind of chalk. With the view of creating some humus, an enterprising person- Monsieur St. Denis-has planted vast tracts with Scotch fir, which when cleared away, after a period of years, are found to impart some agricultural value to an otherwise worthless soil.

For into France beyond Sedan in those war times there were no postal or railway communications, other than such as were fitfully afforded by the German military For many miles before reaching Reims, authorities, whose own communications the twin towers of its magnificent cathebetween the frontier and Versailles were dral loomed in view across the great sweep occasionally interrupted by bands of of plain, suggestive of St. Peter's standing Francs-tireurs. Between northern Europe out in the desolation of the Roman Camand Versailles the main line of communi-pagna. Of the thirty-two factory chim. cations for several months lay through neys which I counted as I approached Libramont in Belgium and the whole nearer, only twelve were sending out any width of the forest of the Ardennes. This route had to be followed by the late Lord Ampthill, then Mr. Odo Russell, who, it will be remembered, was sent as special ambassador to the German headquarters at Versailles.

The day before Mr. Odo Russell's passage through the forest, the Uhlans es

smoke, giving proof of the large extent of suffering entailed by the cessation of employment. Either from want of confidence or the impossibility of procuring fuel in war time to keep the woollen factories going, the merchants of Reims all through the autumn had been despatching immense wagon-loads of wool across the

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frontier into Belgium, convoys of which I | umph was short-lived, for I jumped down
frequently met on the road.
and recovered it within a very few min-
As I entered Reims early in the after-utes, the officer in command directing it to
noon and was whipping up my horse in a be handed back to me. The offending
rather narrow thoroughfare, I unfortu- private was a student from Stuttgart, who
nately flipped a German officer in the seemed to be a frolicsome but harmless
face ! Instead of losing his temper, which young fellow, not very well up in his bay-
might very naturally have occurred, the onet exercise, with which at first he made
officer unconditionally accepted the apol- some show of keeping me at bay.
ogy which I made for my awkwardness.

closed, and many of them broken through, presenting yawning apertures, and affording very mitigated shelter against the bitter cold.

too much for General Ducrot, on the occa- | during the latter half of the journey.from sion of his famous sortie eastwards on Coulommiers onwards. The doors and November 30 and December 1, from which | shutters of the houses were very generally he declared he would return either victorieux or not at all. (He did, as a matter of fact, return in robust health and beaten.) Having crossed the Marne near the fortifications of Paris, General Ducrot thought he would have no more trouble with that river. Marching eastwards, he, some hours later, found himself unexpectedly confronted with another river, and inquired of his staff, "Qu'est ce donc, que cette rivière ?" "C'est la Marne, mon général," was the reply. "Mais nous venons de traverser la Marne." 'Oui, mon général, mais c'est la Marne encore." And so it was; but geography is not a strong point with French officers of any grade.

Had they anticipated wintering before Paris, I can hardly conceive that the Ger man troops would have committed such wanton universal havoc on houses and garden shelters as I subsequently wit nessed with my own eyes all round Paris. I could understand, in the desperate cold of that terrible winter, their smashing up indiscriminately pianos, bookcases, garden-gates, fences, etc., to make a blaze, and that they should have protected their lower limbs with strips of drawing-room carpets sewn up as leg-wraps, as I saw them, but I should have thought that in the interests of self-preservation they would have abstained from door and win

In the valley of the Marne la petite culture is seen to great advantage. You find a happy blending of corn-growing with vineyards, pasturage, and fruit and vege-dow smashing. table growing, each peasant devoting a few acres to a variety of crops, thus avoiding having all his eggs in one basket. It is his inherited skill and versatility, as much as the climate, which gives the French peasant that advantage over ours which enables him to beat us in our own market. As far as climate is concerned, our own is certainly superior to the French for the production of such important items as butter and cheese, and most kinds of bush-fruits.

Possibly much of this latter was done in the early autumn by the French Francs. tireurs, who swarmed about the suburbs of Paris, and may have purposely half wrecked the houses, with the distinct object of rendering them uninhabitable. However, a German Hauptmann remarked to me subsequently in the drawing-room of Madame Du Barry's villa, near Versailles, "The German soldier is not naturally inclined to plundering and acts of wanton destruction, but the disposition At Charly, a village near Chateau Thier- thereto inevitably arises out of the state ry, I halted for my midday meal, which I of war, especially when carried on in a took in a restaurant swarming with blue- rich country like France. In the Bohebloused peasants. My arrival in my dog-mian campaign of 1866 it was different, cart, flying a flag quite unknown to them, created considerable excitement, and all my movements were watched with the greatest attention, not unmixed with scowls and suspicion. It was no small relief to find myself en route again.

for we were mostly quartered in miserable hovels, where there was little temptation to pillage. We officers are powerless to prevent it, regrettable as it is. The fellows have broken loose from us."

These words, taken down at the time, At Ferté-sous-Jouarre, where I slept the profoundly impressed me, and threw much fifth night out from Sedan, I struck south-light on the necessarily demoralizing ef ward out of the Marne valley, climbing|fects of war even on a highly disciplined the steep ascent to Jouarre, situate on the edge of a high table-land extending from the valley of the Marne to that of the Morin. I adopted this route in order to avoid the crush of convoys of every description which at that time, when Lagny was the terminus of the eastern railway, were blocking up the lower end of the Marne valley towards Paris.

During my thirty-mile drive from Ferté to Brie-Comte Robert, I met with comparatively few troops, and found even the villages half deserted of their inhabitants

army, such as that of Germany was in the main. I am, however, bound to add that the villages in the second line of German occupation seemed to be held by a lower type of German soldiery, drawn from the smaller German States, than I ever beheld under arms on German soil.

Of the greater offences of outrages on women, or breaking into and committing acts of violence in occupied houses, the German army, as far as I could gather, may be completely acquitted. How dif ferent the case would have been had the

French soldiery invaded Germany, seems | by Longjumeau and Paliseau, I reached
too probable from their historical ante- Jouy-en-Josas just as night was falling.
cedents, borne out by the remark made to My friends at Essommes having recom-
me by a French cure at the sight of Mac- mended me to their acquaintance, M. La-
Mahon's disorderly army on the march to bouchere, who possessed a charming villa
Sedan: "I trembled when I reflected what at Jouy, I was only too thankful for the
outrages this soldiery might have perpe- chance of getting a night's lodging in a
trated on a foreign soil."
quiet country house.

From Brie-Comte Robert to Versailles,
the road was lined with endless strings of
every kind of wagon and cart, and the
roadside with not a few carcasses of
horses, which had succumbed from over-
press of work. One poor beast, near
Longjumeau, had its head and neck raised
up from the frozen ground, and piteously
turned towards the passer-by.

As I entered M. Labouchere's hall, I was amused to observe a broad-backed German officer, quartered on him, in the act of mounting the back stairs, bent nearly double under the load of a roebuck, the legs of which he wore round his neck, and which met under his chin. The officer had evidently been doing a little poaching, unbeknown to his host.

Poaching was, indeed, during the war, quite the order of the day, the imperial preserves at Versailles, St. Cloud, St.

In consequence of the havoc which the ice had wrought on the pontoon-bridges over the Seine at Villeneuve St. George, all the heavy traffic, including the Feld-Germain, and everywhere else being apPost fourgons, had to be sent round by Corbeil to Lagny, making a détour as considerable as if in getting from Berdmondsey to Islington you were compelled to cross the Thames at Kingston instead of by London Bridge.

It was very strange, on a French highroad, to encounter a long string of those cumbrous yellow Eilwägen and their antiquated postilions, with the look of which every traveller in Germany used to be so familiar. In the rear of the Eilwägen followed a batch of draggled, undersized French prisoners, escorted by a few stalwart German dragoons, who looked gigantic by comparison.

At Corbeil, where the bridge was intact, the rugged surface of the ice-bound Seine was flashing in the sun, which had at last shown himself again after total disappear ance for several days. The dazzling white villas lining the river-banks, and gleaming out of dark clumps of trees, presented a most cheerful appearance-the only cheerful sight that had met my eyes of late. For the wanton destruction of suburban property had happily not extended quite so far south as Corbeil.

Having letters of introduction to a French family resident at Essommes, adjoining Corbeil, I there enjoyed the first hospitality it was my lot to meet with during my wintry drive, during which I had completely fallen out of the comforts of civilized life. The only return I could make for my hospitable reception was the gift of a box of matches - an article which was almost priceless in the neighborhood of Paris during the siege, as my hostess informed me.

Proceeding in a north-westerly direction

parently open to all comers. At the Versailles restaurants pheasants and hares were considerably below the price one is charged for them ordinarily in Paris. In fact, supplies of all kinds, which were kept out of Paris by the siege, found their way to Versailles and other suburbs, where the officers of the besieging army, and every one else who had money about him, could live on the fat of the land. Not even seafish was wanting.

In M. Labouchere's drawing-room, where the German officers and the family assembled before dinner, my friend of the roebuck presented Madame Labouchere with a quarter-pound packet of best tea, which had just arrived by the military post.

Leaving Jouy immediately after an early breakfast, I drove quietly into Versailles, about four miles distant, reaching the Hotel des Reservoirs before to A.M. on New Year's eve the eighth day out from Sedan. I had accomplished about one hundred and sixty miles with the same horse, who had great difficulty in keeping on his legs at times, owing to the highly slippery state of the roads. That night, as midnight struck, the New Year was ushered in by a cannonade from Mont Valérien.

As luck would have it, the first person whom I encountered in the precincts of the hotel was Mr. John Furley, of the Red Cross Society, to whom I immediately handed the 100 in gold which Colonel Lloyd Lindsay (now Lord Wantage) had confided to me in London. The gold reached Mr. Furley, who was just starting for the army of La Loire, in the nick of time.