I made my way cautiously through
the streets towards the cathedral, for I owed a duty to the poor
soldier who had died in my arms, through whose death I had been
able to enter the town.
Disarray and ruin met my sight at every hand. Shot and shell had
made wicked havoc. Houses where, as a hostage, I had dined, were
battered and broken; public buildings were shapeless masses,
and dogs and thieves prowled among the ruins. Drunken soldiers
staggered past me; hags begged for sous or bread at corners; and
devoted priests and long-robed Recollet monks, cowled and alert,
hurried past, silent, and worn with labours, watchings, and
prayers. A number of officers in white uniforms rode by, going
towards the chateau, and a company of coureurs de bois came up
from Mountain Street, singing:
"Giron, giran! le canon grand--
Commencez-vous, commencez-vous!"
Here and there were fires lighted in the streets, though it was
not cold, and beside them peasants and soldiers drank and quarreled
over food--for starvation was abroad in the land.
By one of these fires, in a secluded street--for I had come a
roundabout way--were a number of soldiers of Languedoc's regiment
(I knew them by their trick of headgear and their stoutness), and
with them reckless girls, who, in their abandonment, seemed to me
like those revellers in Herculaneum, who danced their way into the
Cimmerian darkness.
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