en, the flash of steel
through the gloom. Bernadou sprang to his feet, his face pale, his blue
eyes dark as night. "They are come!" he said, under his breath. It was
not fear that he felt, nor horror; it was rather a passion of love for
his birthplace and his nation--a passion of longing to struggle and to
die for both. And he had no weapon!

He drew his house-door open with a steady hand, and stood on his own
threshold and faced these his enemies. The street was full of them, some
mounted, some on foot; crowds of them swarmed in the woods and on the
roads. They had settled on the village as vultures on a dead lamb's
body. It was a little, lowly place; it might well have been left in
peace. It had had no more share in the war than a child still unborn,
but it came in the victors' way, and their mailed heel crushed it as
they passed. They had heard that arms were hidden and francs-tireurs
sheltered there, and they had swooped down on it and held it hard and
fast. Some were told off to search the chapel; some to ransack the
dwellings; some to seize such food and bring such cattle as there might
be left; some to seek out the devious paths that crossed and recrossed
the fields; and yet there remained in the little street hundreds of
armed men, force enough to awe a citadel or storm a breach.

The people did not attempt to resist. They stood passive, dry-eyed in
misery, looking on while the little treasures of their household lives
were swept away for ever, and ignorant what fate by fire or iron might
be their portion ere the night was done. They saw the corn that was
their winter store to save their offspring from famine poured out like
ditch-water. They saw oats and wheat flung down to be trodden into a
slough of mud and filth. They saw the walnut presses in their kitchens
broken open, and their old heirlooms of silver, centuries old, borne
away as booty. They saw the oak cupboards in their wives' bed-chambers
ransacked, and the homespun linen and the quaint bits of plate that had
formed their nuptial dowers cast aside in derision or trampled into
a battered heap. They saw the pet lamb of their infants, the silver
ear-rings of their brides, the brave tankards they had drunk their
marriage wine in, the tame bird that flew to their whistle, all seized
for food or seized for spoil. They saw all this, and had to stand by
with mute tongues and passive hands, lest any glance of wrath or gesture
of revenge should bring the leade