Chapter LXI

Another, and a sadder scene happened in the Avenue des Ternes. A funeral procession was passing along. The coffin, borne by two men, was very small, the coffin of a young child. The father, a workman in a blouse, walked behind with a little knot of other mourners. A sad sight, but the catastrophe was horrible. Suddenly a shell from Mont Valérien fell on the tiny coffin, and, bursting, scattered the remains of the dead child upon the living father. The corpse was entirely destroyed, with the trappings that had surrounded it. Massacring the dead! Truly those cannons are a wonderful, a refined invention!