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The escadrille had just been sent to a quiet part of the front for two weeks' repos, but the day after my arrival orders came to fly to Belfort, for special duty. Belfort! On the other side of the Vosges Mountains, with the Rhine Valley, the Alps, within view, within easy flying distance! And for special duty. It is a vague order which may mean anything.

If there had been a wreck the storm had done its work thoroughly. Belfort climbed to the summit of a rock, and looked back towards Fecamp. Then he turned and searched the shore towards Yport. "There is one," he cried, "half in, half out, as I said. We shall cheat the crabs at all events, my father."

Belfort is well worth seeing, and the "Territoire de Belfort" is to all intents and purposes a new department, formed from that remnant of the Haut Rhin saved to France after the war of 1870-71. The "Territoire de Belfort" comprises upwards of sixty thousand hectares, and a population, chiefly industrial, of nearly seventy thousand inhabitants, spread over many communes and hamlets.

The elder girl has just returned from Belfort with her first diploma, and is to be sent to Germany to learn German.

When Von Moltke had conquered France, his first care for the future was to protect Germany, by the seizure of the French frontier fortresses, from all danger of successful attack in time to come; yet at Belfort one gap in the line has been left in the keeping of France possibly, like the heel of Achilles, the point at which a hostile shaft may one day wound the German empire.

Coudert immediately asked his friends in Paris to collect funds, and started with M. Cruppi for Belfort. There they found not eighty but two hundred and five children, shelterless, hungry, some of them half imbecile from shock, and all physically disordered. To leave any of these wretched waifs behind, when Belfort itself might fall at any moment, was out of the question, and M. Cruppi and Mr.

Sometimes also, when a town has a bad record, the popular club of a sounder-minded city sends its delegates there, to bring it into line; thus, four deputies of the Metz club arrive without notice in Belfort, catechize their brethren, associate with them on the local Revolutionary Committee, and, suddenly, without consulting the municipality, or any other legal authority, draw up a list of "moderates, fanatics and egoists," on whom they impose an extraordinary tax of one hundred and thirty-six thousand six hundred and seventeen livres; in like manner, sixty delegates from the club of Cote-d'Or, Haute-Marne, Vosges, Moselle, Saone-et-Loire and Mont-Terrible, all "tempered by the white heat of Pere Duchesne," proceed to Strasbourg at the summons of the representatives, where, under the title of "propagandists," they are to regenerate the town.

"Perhaps Bourbaki has gone to meet General von Werder. If he is victorious, the road to Paris by the valley of the Seine will be open to him, or the road to Southern Germany by Besançon and Belfort, and the bridge of Bâle, the neutrality of which we are not obliged to respect any more than that of Belgium, since Europe has allowed Bismarck to violate that of Luxemburg.

Numerous human bones were found in the Cravanche Cave near Belfort, which probably dates from the close of the Neolithic period, judging from the total absence of metal and the shape of the flint and bone implements picked up. Here too the bodies were bent almost double, the head drooping forward and the knees drawn up nearly to the chin.

The Duke's plan was to unite with the one hundred and fifty thousand Prussians under Marshal Blücher who were advancing on the Lower Rhine, and to enter France by Mons and Namur while the forces of Austria and Russia closed in upon Paris by way of Belfort and Elsass. But Napoleon had thrown aside all thought of a merely defensive warfare.