“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.