"It is as it was in my youth," said Reine Allix, eating her piece of black bread and putting aside the better food prepared for her, that she might save it, unseen, for the "child." It was horrible to her and to all of them to live in that continual terror of an unknown foe, that perpetual expectation of some ghastly, shapeless misery. They were quiet,--so quiet!--but by all they heard they knew that any night, as they went to their beds, the thunder of cannon might awaken them; any morning, as they looked on their beloved fields, they knew that ere sunset the flames of war might have devoured them. They knew so little too; all they were told was so indefinite and garbled that sometimes they thought the whole was some horrid dream-- thought so, at least, until they looked at their empty stables, their untilled land, their children who cried from hunger, their mothers who wept for the conscripts. But as yet it was not so very much worse than it had been in times of bad harvest and of dire distress; and the storm which raged over the land had as yet spared this little green nest among the woods on the Seine. November came. "It is a cold night, Bernadou; put on some more wood," said Reine Allix. Fuel at the least was plentiful in that district, and Bernadou obeyed. He sat at the table, working at a new churn for his wife; he had some skill at turnery and at invention in such matters. The child slept soundly in its cradle by the hearth, smiling while it dreamed. Margot spun at her wheel. Reine Allix sat by the fire, seldom lifting her head from her long knitting-needles, except to cast a look on her grandson or at the sleeping child. The little wooden shutter of the house was closed. Some winter roses bloomed in a pot beneath the little crucifix. Bernadou's flute lay on a shelf; he had not had heart enough to play it since the news of the war had come. Suddenly a great sobbing cry rose without--the cry of many voices, all raised in woe together. Bernadou rose, took his musket in his hand, undid his door, and looked out. All the people were turned out into the street, and the women, loudly lamenting, beat their breasts and strained their children to their bosoms. There was a sullen red light in the sky to the eastward, and on the wind a low, hollow roar stole to them.
"What is it?" he asked.
"The Prussians are on us!" answered twenty voices in one accord. "That red glare is the town burning." Then they were all still--a stillness that was more horrible than their lamentations. Reine Allix came and stood by her grandson. "If we must die, let us die /here/," she said, in a voice that was low and soft and grave. He took her hand and kissed it. She was content with his answer. Margot stole forth too, and crouched behind them, holding her child to her breast. "What can they do to us?" she asked, trembling, with the rich colours of her face blanched white. Bernadou smiled on her. "I do not know, my dear. I think even they can hardly bring death upon women and children."
"They can, and they will," said a voice from the crowd. None answered. The street was very quiet in the darkness. Far away in the east the red glare glowed. On the wind was still that faint, distant, ravening roar, like the roar of famished wolves; it was the roar of fire and of war. In the silence Reine Allix spoke: "God is good. Shall we not trust in Him?" With one great choking sob the people answered; their hearts were breaking. All night long they watched in the street--they who had done no more to bring this curse upon them than the flower-roots that slept beneath the snow. They dared not go to their beds; they knew not when the enemy might be upon them. They dared not flee; even in their own woods the foe might lurk for them. One man indeed did cry aloud, "Shall we stay here in our houses to be smoked out like bees from their hives? Let us fly!" But the calm, firm voice of Reine Allix rebuked him: "Let who will, run like a hare from the hounds. For me and mine, we abide by our homestead." And they were ashamed to be outdone by a woman, and a woman of ninety years old, and no man spoke any more of flight. All the night long they watched in the cold and the wind, the children shivering beneath their mothers' skirts, the men sullenly watching the light of the flames in the dark, starless sky. All night long they were left alone, though far off they heard the dropping shots of scattered firing, and in the leafless woods around them the swift flight of woodland beasts startled from their sleep, and the hurrying feet of sheep terrified from their folds in the outlying fields. The daybreak came, gray, cheerless, very cold. A dense fog, white and raw, hung over the river; in the east, where the sun, they knew, was rising, they could only see the livid light of the still towering flames and pillars of black smoke against the leaden clouds.
