t, began to show some
signs of life. Finally, astonished at what he heard, he arose to a
sitting posture.

"What is the matter, youngster? Are you ill?" Then, with a glimmering
perception of how matters stood, he adopted a more paternal tone. "Come,
tell me what the matter is. You must not let yourself be worried by such
a little thing as this, you know."

"Ah!" exclaimed Maurice, "it is all up with us, _va_! we are Prussians
now, and we may as well make up our mind to it."

As the peasant, with the hard-headedness of the uneducated, expressed
surprise to hear him talk thus, he endeavored to make it clear to him
that, the race being degenerate and exhausted, it must disappear and
make room for a newer and more vigorous strain. But the other, with an
obstinate shake of the head, would not listen to the explanation.

"What! would you try to make me believe that my bit of land is no longer
mine? that I would permit the Prussians to take it from me while I am
alive and my two arms are left to me? Come, come!"

Then painfully, in such terms as he could command, he went on to tell
how affairs looked to him. They had received an all-fired good basting,
that was sure as sure could be! but they were not all dead yet, he
didn't believe; there were some left, and those would suffice to rebuild
the house if they only behaved themselves, working hard and not drinking
up what they earned. When a family has trouble, if its members work and
put by a little something, they will pull through, in spite of all the
bad luck in the world. And further, it is not such a bad thing to get a
good cuffing once in a way; it sets one thinking. And, great heavens! if
a man has something rotten about him, if he has gangrene in his arms or
legs that is spreading all the time, isn't it better to take a hatchet
and lop them off rather than die as he would from cholera?

"All up, all up! Ah, no, no! no, no!" he repeated several times. "It is
not all up with me, I know very well it is not."

And notwithstanding his seedy condition and demoralized appearance, his
hair all matted and pasted to his head by the blood that had flowed from
his wound, he drew himself up defiantly, animated by a keen desire to
live, to take up the tools of his trade or put his hand to the plow, in
order, to use his own expression, to "rebuild the house." He was of the
old soil where reason and obstinacy grow side by side, of the land of
toil and thrift.

"All the same, th