ghing at him for his pains, a hand touched my arm, and upon
turning round I saw Francois Derblay with his wife and Henri and
Louise. A year's illness could not have aged them more than the night
they had just spent: they all seemed completely worn out, and when the
old man tried to speak his voice was so hollow and harsh that it
frightened me. "Look at Louise, sir," he said at last, slowly shaking
his white head: "she and Madeleine there have been sitting up all
night praying to God."

"'Cast thy bread upon the waters,'" I answered, "'and thou shalt find
it after many days.'"

"Yes, sir," said Louise: "our curate tells us that prayers are like
letters--when properly stamped with faith they always reach their
address."

"Ay," exclaimed Henri, "but does God always answer them?"

Francois drew a mass-book from his pocket and finding the Lord's
Prayer, "Look," he said as he pointed to the words, _Fiat voluntas tua
in terra ut in coelo._

A few minutes after the church-clock struck nine, and by a common
impulse all the population of the market-place hurried simultaneously
toward the town-hall. The door and ground-floor windows of this
building opened at the same time, and we could see the mayor of St.
Valery, with the commissioner of police and a captain of infantry in
full uniform, seated at a table upon which stood a cylindrical box
horizontally between two pivots. This was the urn. Two gendarmes, one
upon each side, stood watching over it with their arms folded. A man
came to the window and shouted something which I could not catch, and
at the same moment half a dozen mayors of districts, girt with their
tri-color sashes, ran up the steps of the Hotel de Ville to draw for
the order in which their respective communes were to present
themselves. This formality occupied five minutes, and the mayors then
came out again to marshal their people into separate groups. The
district in which the Derblays lived was to go up third, and as he
came to tell us this the mayor of N---- patted Francois on the back
and told him that _three_ was an odd number and therefore lucky. Poor
Madeleine was so weak that she could hardly stand up: Louise and I
were obliged to support her.

At half-past nine, punctually, the conscription began, and amidst a
breathless silence one of the mayor's assistants came to the window
and called out the first name: "Adolphe Monnier, of the commune of
S----;" and a tall country-boy, elbowing his way throug