er letter very quickly in her pocket, and she received
them quietly, with her ordinary face, having had time to wipe her eyes.

They were laughing, all four, delighted, for they brought with them a
fine rabbit--stolen, doubtless--and they made signs to the old
woman that there was to be something good to east.

She set herself to work at once to prepare breakfast, but when it came to
killing the rabbit, her heart failed her. And yet it was not the first.
One of the soldiers struck it down with a blow of his fist behind the
ears.

The beast once dead, she skinned the red body, but the sight of the blood
which she was touching, and which covered her hands, and which she felt
cooling and coagulating, made her tremble from head to foot, and she kept
seeing her big boy cut in two, bloody, like this still palpitating
animal.

She sat down at table with the Prussians, but she could not eat, not even
a mouthful. They devoured the rabbit without bothering themselves about
her. She looked at them sideways, without speaking, her face so impassive
that they perceived nothing.

All of a sudden she said: "I don't even know your names, and here's a
whole month that we've been together." They understood, not without
difficulty, what she wanted, and told their names.

That was not sufficient; she had them written for her on a paper, with
the addresses of their families, and, resting her spectacles on her great
nose, she contemplated that strange handwriting, then folded the sheet
and put it in her pocket, on top of the letter which told her of the
death of her son.

When the meal was ended she said to the men:

"I am going to work for you."

And she began to carry up hay into the loft where they slept.

They were astonished at her taking all this trouble; she explained to
them that thus they would not be so cold; and they helped her. They
heaped the stacks of hay as high as the straw roof, and in that manner
they made a sort of great chamber with four walls of fodder, warm and
perfumed, where they should sleep splendidly.

At dinner one of them was worried to see that La Mere Sauvage still ate
nothing. She told him that she had pains in her stomach. Then she kindled
a good fire to warm herself, and the four Germans ascended to their
lodging-place by the ladder which served them every night for this
purpose.

As soon as they closed the trapdoor the old woman removed the ladder,
then opened the outside door noiselessly and