be silent, my little ones,’ said the poor woman; ’be silent; we will go to M. le Maire—­he will not leave us without a friend.’  It was then that I saw what my duty was.  But it was with a pang—­bon Dieu!—­when I turned my back upon my Martin, when I went away to shelter, to peace, leaving my son thus in face of an offended Heaven and all the invisible powers, do you suppose it was a whole heart I carried in my breast?  But no! it was nothing save a great ache—­a struggle as of death.  But what of that?  I had my duty to do, as he had—­and as he did not flinch, so did not I; otherwise he would have been ashamed of his mother—­and I?  I should have felt that the blood was not mine which ran in his veins.

No one can tell what it was, that march to La Clairiere.  Agnes at first was like an angel.  I hope I always do Madame Martin justice.  She is a saint.  She is good to the bottom of her heart.  Nevertheless, with those natures which are enthusiast—­which are upborne by excitement—­there is also a weakness.  Though she was brave as the holy Pucelle when we set out, after a while she flagged like another.  The colour went out of her face, and though she smiled still, yet the tears came to her eyes, and she would have wept with the other women, and with the wail of the weary children, and all the agitation, and the weariness, and the length of the way, had not I recalled her to herself.  ‘Courage!’ I said to her.  ’Courage, ma fille! We will throw open all the chambers.  I will give up even that one in which my Martin Dupin, the father of thy husband, died.’ ‘Ma mere,’ she said, holding my hand to her bosom, ’he is not dead—­he is in Semur.’  Forgive me, dear Lord!  It gave me a pang that she could see him and not I.  ‘For me,’ I cried, ’it is enough to know that my good man is in heaven:  his room, which I have kept sacred, shall be given up to the poor.’  But oh! the confusion of the stumbling, weary feet; the little children that dropped by the way, and caught at our skirts, and wailed and sobbed; the poor mothers with babes upon each arm, with sick hearts and failing limbs.  One cry seemed to rise round us as we went, each infant moving the others to sympathy, till it rose like one breath, a wail of ‘Maman!  Maman!’ a cry that had no meaning, through having so much meaning.  It was difficult not to cry out too in the excitement, in the labouring of the long, long, confused, and tedious way.  ‘Maman!  Maman!’ The Holy Mother could not but hear it.  It is not possible but that she must have looked out upon us, and heard us, so helpless as we were, where she sits in heaven.