They are warmly clad in uniforms by the State, and except those belonging to the marching battalions really doing duty outside, I do not pity them.

With the women and children the case is different.

The latter, owing to bad nourishment and exposure, are dying off like rotten sheep; the former have but just enough food to keep body and soul together, and to obtain even this they have to stand for hours before the doors of the butchers and bakers, waiting for their turn to be served.

And yet they make no complaints, but patiently suffer, buoyed up, poor people, by the conviction that by so doing they will prevent the Prussians from entering the town.

If one of them ventures to hint at a capitulation, she is set on by her neighbours.