By degrees the women crept timidly back into their houses, hiding their eyes so that they should not see that horrid light against the sky, while the starving children clung to their breasts or to their skirts, wailing aloud in terror.  The few men there were left, for the most part of them very old or else mere striplings, gathered together in a hurried council.  Old Mathurin, the miller, and the patriots of the wine-shop were agreed that there should be no resistance, whatever might befall them; that it would be best to hide such weapons as they had and any provisions that still remained to them, and yield up themselves and their homes with humble grace to the dire foe.  “If we do otherwise,” they said, “the soldiers will surely slay us, and what can a miserable little hamlet like this achieve against cannon and steel and fire?”

Bernadou alone raised his voice in opposition.  His eye kindled, his cheek flushed, his words for once sprang from his lips like fire.  “What!” he said to them, “shall we yield up our homes and our wives and our infants without a single blow?  Shall we be so vile as to truckle to the enemies of France and show that we can fear them?  It were a shame, a foul shame; we were not worthy of the name of men.  Let us prove to them that there are people in France who are not afraid to die.  Let us hold our own so long as we can.  Our muskets are good, our walls strong, our woods in this weather morasses that will suck in and swallow them if only we have tact to drive them there.  Let us do what we can.  The camp of the francs-tireurs is but three leagues form us.  They will be certain to come to our aid.  At any rate, let us die bravely.  We can do little, that may be; but if every man in France does that little that he can, that little will be great enough to drive the invaders off the soil.”

Mathurin and the others screamed at him and hooted.  “You are a fool!” they shouted.  “You will be the undoing of us all.  Do you not know that one shot fired, nay, only one musket found, and the enemy puts a torch to the whole place?”

“I know,” said Bernadou, with a dark radiance in his azure eyes.  “But then it is a choice between disgrace and the flames; let us only take heed to be clear of the first—­the last must rage as God wills.”

But they screamed and mouthed and hissed at him:  “Oh yes! fine talk, fine talk!  See your own roof in flames if you will; you shall not ruin ours.  Do what you will with your own neck; keep it erect or hang by it, as you choose.  But you have no right to give your neighbours over to death, whether they will or no.”

He strove, he pleaded, he conjured, he struggled with them half the night, with the salt tears running down his cheeks, and all his gentle blood burning with righteous wrath and loathing shame, stirred for the first time in all his life to a rude, simple, passionate eloquence.  But they were not persuaded.  Their few gold pieces hidden in the rafters, their few feeble sheep starving in the folds, their own miserable lives, all hungry, woe-begone, and spent in daily terrors—­these were still dear to them, and they would not imperil them.  They called him a madman; they denounced him as one who would be their murderer; they threw themselves on him and demanded his musket, to bury it with the rest under the altar in the old chapel on the hill.