He thereupon
cancelled his previous order, and decided that, as dusk was already
falling, we might remain at Mantes that night, and resume our journey on
the morrow at 5.45 a.m., in the charge of a cavalry escort.
Having secured a couple of beds, and ordered some dinner at one of the
inns, my father and I strolled about the town, which was full of Uhlans
and Hussars. The old stone bridge across the Seine had been blown up by
the French before their evacuation of the town, and a part of the railway
line had also been destroyed by them. But the Germans were responsible for
the awful appearance of the railway-station. Never since have I seen
anything resembling it. A thousand panes of glass belonging to windows or
roofing had been shivered to atoms. Every mirror in either waiting or
refreshment-rooms had been pounded to pieces; every gilt frame broken into
little bits. The clocks lay about in small fragments; account-books and
printed forms had been torn to scraps; partitions, chairs, tables,
benches, boxes, nests of drawers, had been hacked, split, broken, reduced
to mere strips of wood. The large stoves were overturned and broken, and
the marble refreshment counter--some thirty feet long, and previously one
of the features of the station--now strewed the floor in particles,
suggesting gravel.
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