They jeered and flouted and upbraided him, those patriots who screamed against the fallen Empire in the wine-shop, but he looked them straight in the eyes, and held his peace, and did his daily work.
"If he be called, he will not be found wanting," said Reine Allix, who knew him better than did even the young wife whom he loved.
Bernadou clung to his home with a dogged devotion.
He would not go from it to fight unless compelled, but for it he would have fought like a lion. His feeling for his country was a feeling for only an indefinite, shadowy existence that was not clear to him: he could not love a land that he had never seen, a capital that was only to him as an empty name; nor could he comprehend the danger that his nation ran, nor could he desire to go forth and spend his life-blood in defence of things unknown to him. He was only a peasant, and he could not read nor greatly understand.
But affection for his birth-place was a passion with him—mute indeed, but deep-seated as an oak. For his birth-place he would have struggled as a man can only struggle when supreme love as well as duty nerves his arm. Neither he nor Reine Allix could see that a man's duty might lie from home;
