It is
pretty certain that mill will never grind grist again.
On its upper floor, which is now a sieve, the Germans--so they
themselves told us--found, after the fighting, the seventy-year-old
miller, dead, with a gun in his hands and a hole in his head. He had
elected to help the French defend the place; and it was as well for him
that he fell fighting, because, had he been taken alive, the Prussians,
following their grim rule for all civilians caught with weapons, would
have stood him up against a wall with a firing squad before him.
The houses round about have fared better, in the main, than the mill,
though none of them has come scatheless out of the fight. Hardly a
windowpane is whole; hardly a wall but is pocked by bullets or rent by
larger missiles. Some houses have lost roofs; some have lost side
walls, so that one can gaze straight into them and see the cluttered
furnishings, half buried in shattered masonry and crumbled plaster.
One small cottage has been blown clear away in a blast of artillery
fire; only the chimney remains, pointing upward like a stubby finger.
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