e rye and barley grow somewhat sturdier here than in his country;
these are the only definite ideas that detach themselves clearly from his
seething brain. The wall of the cemetery is scaled; they are fighting now
in the ditches, killing one another on the side of the hill; at last, the
fort is taken and they begin routing the enemy. But, at this moment,
Claudet stoops to pick up a cartridge, a ball strikes him in the
forehead, and, without a sound, he drops to the ground, among the noisome
fennels which flourish in graveyards--he drops, thinking of the clock of
his native village.

......................

"I have sad news for you," said Julien to Reine, as he entered the garden
of La Thuiliere, one June afternoon.

He had received official notice the evening before, through the mayor, of
the decease of "Germain-Claudet Sejournant, volunteer in the seventeenth
battalion of light infantry, killed in an engagement with the enemy, May
20, 1859."

Reine was standing between two hedges of large peasant-roses. At the
first words that fell from M. de Buxieres's lips, she felt a presentiment
of misfortune.

"Claudet?" murmured she.

"He is dead," replied Julien, almost inaudibly, "he fought bravely and
was killed at Montebello."

The young girl remained motionless, and for a moment de Buxieres thought
she would be able to bear, with some degree of composure, this
announcement of the death in a foreign country of a man whom she had
refused as a husband. Suddenly she turned aside, took two or three steps,
then leaning her head and folded arms on the trunk of an adjacent tree,
she burst into a passion of tears. The convulsive movement of her
shoulders and stifled sobs denoted the violence of her emotion. M. de
Buxieres, alarmed at this outbreak, which he thought exaggerated, felt a
return of his old misgivings. He was jealous now of the dead man whom she
was so openly lamenting. Her continued weeping annoyed him; he tried to
arrest her tears by addressing some consolatory remarks to her; but, at
the very first word, she turned away, mounted precipitately the
kitchen-stairs, and disappeared, closing the door behind her. Some
minutes after, La Guite brought a message to de Buxieres that Reine
wished to be alone, and begged him to excuse her.

He took his departure, disconcerted, downhearted, and ready to weep
himself, over the crumbling of his hopes. As he was nearing the first
outlying houses of the village,