Suddenly came along the road between the trees an old man and a mule; it was Mathurin, the miller, who had been that day to a little town four leagues off, which was the trade-mart and the corn-exchange of the district.  He paused before the cottage of Reine Allix; he was dusty, travel-stained, and sad.  Margot ceased laughing among her flowers as she saw her old master.  None of them knew why, yet the sight of him made the air seem cold and the night seem near.

“There is terrible news,” he said, drawing a sheet of printed words from his coat-pocket—­“terrible news!  We are to go to war.”

“War!” The whole village clustered round him.  They had heard of war, far-off wars in Africa and Mexico, and some of their sons had been taken off like young wheat mown before its time; but it still remained to them a thing remote, impersonal, inconceivable, with which they had nothing to do, nor ever would have anything.

“Read!” said the old man, stretching out his sheet.  The only one there who could do so, Picot, the tailor, took it and spelled the news out to their wondering ears.  It was the declaration of France against Prussia.

There arose a great wail from the mothers whose sons were conscripts.  The rest asked in trembling, “Will it touch us?”

“Us!” echoed Picot, the tailor, in contempt.  “How should it touch us?  Our braves will be in Berlin with another fortnight.  The paper says so.”

The people were silent; they were not sure what he meant by Berlin, and they were afraid to ask.

“My boy! my boy!” wailed one woman, smiting her breast.  Her son was in the army.

“Marengo!” murmured Reine Allix, thinking of that far-off time in her dim youth when the horseman had flown through the dusky street and the bonfire had blazed on the highest hill above the river.

“Bread will be dear,” muttered Mathurin, the miller, going onward with his foot-weary mule.  Bernadou stood silent, with his roses dry and thirsty round him.

“Why art thou sad?” whispered Margot, with wistful eyes.  “Thou art exempt from war service, my love?”

Bernadou shook his head.  “The poor will suffer somehow,” was all he answered.

Yet to him, as to all the Berceau, the news was not very terrible, because it was so vague and distant—­an evil so far off and shapeless.

Monsieur Picot, the tailor, who alone could read, ran from house to house, from group to group, breathless, gay, and triumphant, telling them all that in two weeks more their brethren would sup in the king’s palace at Berlin; and the people believed and laughed and chattered, and, standing outside their doors in the cool nights, thought that some good had come to them and theirs.

Only Reine Allix looked up to the hill above the river and murmured, “When we lit the bonfire there, Claudis lay dead;” and Bernadou, standing musing among his roses, said, with a smile that was very grave, “Margot, see here!  When Picot shouted, ‘A Berlin!’ he trod on my Gloire de Dijon rose and killed it.”