The sultry heats and cloudless nights of the wondrous and awful summer of the year 1870 passed by, and to the Berceau de Dieu it was a summer of fair promise and noble harvest, and never had the land brought forth in richer profusion for man and beast.  Some of the youngest and ablest-bodied labourers were indeed drawn away to join those swift trains that hurried thousands and tens of thousands to the frontier by the Rhine.  But most of the male population were married, and were the fathers of young children; and the village was only moved to a thrill of love and of honest pride to think how its young Louis and Jean and Andre and Valentin were gone full of high hope and high spirit, to come back, maybe,—­who could say not?—­with epaulets and ribbons of honour.  Why they were gone they knew not very clearly, but their superiors affirmed that they were gone to make greater the greatness of France; and the folk of the Berceau believed it, having in a corner of their quiet hearts a certain vague, dormant, yet deep-rooted love, on which was written the name of their country.

News came slowly and seldom to the Berceau.  Unless some one of the men rode his mule to the little town, which was but very rarely, or unless some peddler came through the village with a news-sheet or so in his pack or rumours and tidings on his lips, nothing that was done beyond its fields and woods came to it.  And the truth of what it heard it had no means of measuring or sifting.  It believed what it was told, without questioning; and as it reaped the harvests in the rich hot sun of August, its peasants laboured cheerily in the simple and firm belief that mighty things were being done for them and theirs in the far eastern provinces by their great army, and that Louis and Jean and Andre and Valentin and the rest—­though indeed no tidings had been heard of them—­were safe and well and glorious somewhere, away where the sun rose, in the sacked palaces of the German king.  Reine Allix alone of them was serious and sorrowful, she whose memories stretched back over the wide space of near a century.

“Why art thou anxious, gran’mere?” they said to her.  “There is no cause.  Our army is victorious everywhere; and they say our lads will send us all the Prussians’ corn and cattle, so that the very beggars will have their stomachs full.”

But Reine Allix shook her head, sitting knitting in the sun.  “My children, I remember the days of my youth.  Our army was victorious then; at least, they said so.  Well, all I know is that little Claudis and the boys with him never came back; and as for bread, you could not get it for love or money, and the people lay dead of famine out on the public roads.”

“But that is so long ago, gran’mere!” they urged.

Reine Allix nodded.  “Yes, it is long ago, my dears.  But I do not think that things change very much.”

They were silent out of respect for her, but among themselves they said, “She is very old.  Nothing is as it was in her time.”