"Well, what! There must be an end to all this."

"But the end need not be in blood."

"Nonsense ... nonsense.... There are injuries that can only be wiped out
in blood. And, when a great country like ours has received a slap in the
face like that of 1870, it can wait forty years, fifty years, but a day
comes when it returns the slap in the face ... and with both hands!"

"And suppose we are beaten?" said Philippe.

"Can't be helped! Honour comes first! Besides, we sha'n't be beaten.
Let every man do his duty and we shall see! In 1870, as a prisoner of
war, I gave my word not to serve in the French army again. I escaped, I
collected the young rapscallions of Saint-Elophe and round about, the
old men, the cripples, the women even.... We took to the woods. Three
rags served as a rallying-signal: a bit of white linen, a strip of red
flannel and a piece out of a blue apron ... the flag of the band! There
it hangs.... It shall see the light of day again, if necessary."

Jorance could not help laughing:

"Do you think that will stop the Prussians?"

"Don't laugh, my friend.... You know the view I take of my duty and what
I am doing. But it is just as well that Philippe should know, too. Sit
down, my boy."

He himself sat down, put aside the pipe which he was smoking and began,
with the obvious satisfaction of a man who is at last able to speak of
what he has most at heart:

"You know the frontier, Philippe, or rather the German side of the
frontier?... A craggy cliff, a series of peaks and ravines which make
this part of the Vosges an insuperable rampart...."

"Yes, absolutely insuperable," said Philippe.

"That's a mistake!" exclaimed Morestal. "A fatal mistake! From the
first moment when I began to think of these matters, I believed that a
day would come when the enemy would attack that rampart."

"Impossible!"

"That day has come, Philippe. For the last six months, not a week has
passed without my meeting some suspicious figure over there or knocking
up against men walking about in smocks that were hardly enough to
conceal their uniform.... It is a constant, progressive underhand work.
Everybody is helping in it. The electric factory which the Wildermann
firm has run up in that ridiculous fashion on the edge of the precipice
is only a make-believe. The road that leads to it is a military road.
From the factory to the Col du Diable is less than half a mile. One
effort and the frontier's crossed."

"By a c