gone to make greater the greatness of France; and the folk of the Berceau believed it, having in a corner of their quiet hearts a certain vague, dormant, yet deep-rooted love, on which was written the name of their country.
News came slowly and seldom to the Berceau.
Unless some one of the men rode his mule to the little town, which was but very rarely, or unless some peddler came through the village with a news sheet or so in his pack, or rumours and tidings on his lips, nothing that was done beyond its fields and woods came to it. And the truth of what it heard it had no means of measuring or sifting.
It believed what it was told, without questioning; and as it reaped the harvests in the rich hot sun of August, its peasants laboured cheerily in the simple and firm belief that mighty things were being done for them and theirs in the far eastern provinces by their great army, and that Louis and Jean and André and Valentin and the rest—though, indeed, no tidings had been heard of them—were safe and well and glorious somewhere, away where the sun rose, in the sacked palaces of the German king.
Reine Allix alone of them was serious and sorrowful—she whose memories stretched back over the wide space of near a century.
"Why art thou anxious, gran'mère?" they said
