In Charleville notices were posted directing the inhabitants
not to go out on the streets after, I think, eight o'clock in
the evening, and also notices informing the population that they
would be allowed a small quantity of their own land for the purpose
of growing potatoes.
After visiting the factory building where the distribution of
rations was taking place, we motored to Sedan, stopping on the
way at the hamlet of Bazeilles, and visiting the cottage where
Bismarck and Emperor Napoleon the Third had their historic interview
after the battle of Sedan.
The old lady who owns this house received us and showed us bullet
marks made on her house in the war of 1870, as well as in the
present war. She apologised because she had had the window-pane,
broken by a rifle shot in this war, replaced on account of the
cold. As a girl, she had received Bismarck and Napoleon and had
shown them to the room upstairs where they had held their
consultation. I asked her which chair in this room Bismarck had
sat in, and sat in it myself, for luck.
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