FRANCE: The Secret

Workmen digging drains in the village of Buxiéres-les-Froncles, a hundred-odd miles from Paris, last week uncovered the bones of five men, each with his skull cracked, each wrapped in the shreds of a long-outmoded uniform. The mayor, the local schoolteacher and five policemen investigated the strange discovery, got a thorough explanation from the village's oldest inhabitant, 91-year-old Emilie Guillaumot. Her story:

"It was in the summer of 1871, during the Prussian occupation. Five Prussian Uhlans were billeted in our house. One night the five went down to my father's wine cellar and got roaring drunk. I was sent to bed—I was only ten—but from my room I heard everything. My father and my uncle went out to the woodshed and got two axes. Then they went to the cellar and killed every one of the drunken soldiers. They buried them that night outside the village and my father made me swear to keep the secret which would have cost the lives of our whole family."

Emilie Guillaumot had kept the secret for 81 years.