country; stray news-sheets brought in by carriers, or hawkers, and hucksters,—all these by degrees told them of the peril of their country—vaguely, indeed, and seldom truthfully, but so that by mutilated rumours they came at last to know the awful facts of the fate of Sedan, the fall of the Empire, the siege of Paris.
It did not alter their daily lives: it was still too far off, and too impalpable. But a foreboding, a dread, an unspeakable woe settled down on them.
Already their lands and cattle had been harassed to yield provision for the army and large towns; already their best horses had been taken for the siege-trains and the forage-waggons; already their ploughshares were perforce idle, and their children cried because of the scarcity of nourishment; already the iron of war had entered into their souls.
The little street at evening was mournful and very silent: the few who talked spoke in whispers, lest a spy should hear them, and the young ones had no strength to play: they wanted food.
"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
