“A Berlin!  A Berlin!  A Berlin!”

Lucy turned round.  She leaned her back against the window, and her face was very pale.

“Good God!  What’s to become of us?”

The ladies shook their heads.  They were serious and very anxious about the turn events were taking.

“For my part,” said Caroline Hequet in her decisive way, “I start for London the day after tomorrow.  Mamma’s already over there getting a house ready for me.  I’m certainly not going to let myself be massacred in Paris.”

Her mother, as became a prudent woman, had invested all her daughters’ money in foreign lands.  One never knows how a war may end!  But Maria Blond grew vexed at this.  She was a patriot and spoke of following the army.

“There’s a coward for you!  Yes, if they wanted me I should put on man’s clothes just to have a good shot at those pigs of Prussians!  And if we all die after?  What of that?  Our wretched skins aren’t so valuable!”

Blanche de Sivry was exasperated.

“Please don’t speak ill of the Prussians!  They are just like other men, and they’re not always running after the women, like your Frenchmen.  They’ve just expelled the little Prussian who was with me.  He was an awfully rich fellow and so gentle:  he couldn’t have hurt a soul.  It’s disgraceful; I’m ruined by it.  And, you know, you mustn’t say a word or I go and find him out in Germany!”

After that, while the two were at loggerheads, Gaga began murmuring in dolorous tones: 

“It’s all over with me; my luck’s always bad.  It’s only a week ago that I finished paying for my little house at Juvisy.  Ah, God knows what trouble it cost me!  I had to go to Lili for help!  And now here’s the war declared, and the Prussians’ll come and they’ll burn everything.  How am I to begin again at my time of life, I should like to know?”

“Bah!” said Clarisse.  “I don’t care a damn about it.  I shall always find what I want.”

“Certainly you will,” added Simonne.  “It’ll be a joke.  Perhaps, after all, it’ll be good biz.”

And her smile hinted what she thought.  Tatan Nene and Louise Violaine were of her opinion.  The former told them that she had enjoyed the most roaring jolly good times with soldiers.  Oh, they were good fellows and would have done any mortal thing for the girls.  But as the ladies had raised their voices unduly Rose Mignon, still sitting on the chest by the bed, silenced them with a softly whispered “Hush!” They stood quite still at this and glanced obliquely toward the dead woman, as though this request for silence had emanated from the very shadows of the curtains.  In the heavy, peaceful stillness which ensued, a void, deathly stillness which made them conscious of the stiff dead body lying stretched close by them, the cries of the mob burst forth: 

“A Berlin!  A Berlin!  A Berlin!”

But soon they forgot.  Lea de Horn, who had a political salon where former ministers of Louis Philippe were wont to indulge in delicate epigrams, shrugged her shoulders and continued the conversation in a low tone: