Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III M. LE MAIRE BY rights, Canizy belongs with three other hamlets, to the commune of Hombleux. The mayor of Hombleux is therefore in reality also the mayor of Canizy. But each of the hamlets has an acting mayor besides. And, to complicate this matter of mayors still further, the real mayor of the commune has left his post to reside in his mansion in the Boulevard Haussmann in Paris. Inquiring into the reason of his non-residence, I was told that he was broken in health, and belonged to a political party which, at the moment, was no longer in power. Hence the so-called mayors, with whom rests the welfare of our villages. Before the war, the present mayor of Hombleux was one of the grands cultivateurs. With Mme. la Baronne, Mme. Desmarchezand M. Gomart, he owned most of the rich acres encircling the town. Hombleux itself contained then about 1200 inhabitants, and was an industrial as well as an agricultural centre, having a distillery and two refineries for sugar-beets. Of the factories, practically nothing now remains, and of the inhabitants, 250 have survived the German deportations. Zelie, the kitchen maid, has told me of these last. "The first deportation," she said, "was one of five hundred. The officers came to the doors at seven o'clock with the names, and told us to be ready to start at dawn. O Mademoiselle, the night! All the neighbours ran to and fro; all night we washed and sewed and ironed, and in the morning, each with a sack of fresh linen, my father, my sister, M. le Cure,—the flower of our village,—were marched away. And after, what weeping!" Zelie put down her broom to wring her hands, as if still dry- eyed from too much suffering. "The next time," she continued, "the Boches gave us no warning. They came at midnight, anddragged us from our beds. "D...