"Quick!--Quick!" She gave us a wonderful
sense of the despairing haste in which the night retreat had to be
effected. All night their work went on. The wounded never made a
sound--"they let us do what we would without a word. And as for us, my
Sisters bound these big fellows (_ces gros et grands messieurs_) on to
the improvised stretchers, like a mother who fastens her child in its
cot. Ah! Jesus! the poverty and the misery of that time!"
By the early morning all the French wounded were gone except the
nineteen helpless cases, and all the French soldiers had cleared out of
the village except the 57 Chasseurs, whose orders were to hold the place
as long as they could, to cover the retreat of the rest.
Then, when the Chasseurs finally withdrew, the Bavarian troops rushed up
the town in a state of furious excitement, burning it systematically as
they advanced, and treating the inhabitants as M. Mirman has described.
Soon Soeur Julie knew that they were coming up the hill towards the
hospital. I will quote the very language--homely, Biblical, direct--in
which she described her feelings.
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