Only Reine Allix looked up the hill above the river, and murmured, "When we lit the bonfire there, Claudis lay dead."
And Bernadou, standing musing amongst his roses, said with a smile that was very grave,
"Margot, see here! When Picot shouted, 'à Berlin!' he trod on my Gloire de Dijon rose and killed it."
The sultry heats and cloudless nights of the wondrous and awful summer of the year eighteen hundred and seventy 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 André and Valentin were gone full of high hope and high spirit, to come back, maybe—who could say not?—with epaulettes and ribbons of honour.
Why they were gone they knew not very clearly, but their superiors affirmed that they were
