at day to a little town
four leagues off, which was the trade-mart and the corn-exchange of the
district. He paused before the cottage of Reine Allix; he was dusty,
travel-stained, and sad. Margot ceased laughing among her flowers as she
saw her old master. None of them knew why, yet the sight of him made the
air seem cold and the night seem near.

"There is terrible news," he said, drawing a sheet of printed words from
his coat-pocket--"terrible news! We are to go to war."

"War!" The whole village clustered round him. They had heard of war,
far-off wars in Africa and Mexico, and some of their sons had been taken
off like young wheat mown before its time; but it still remained to them
a thing remote, impersonal, inconceivable, with which they had nothing
to do, nor ever would have anything.

"Read!" said the old man, stretching out his sheet. The only one there
who could do so, Picot, the tailor, took it and spelled the news out to
their wondering ears. It was the declaration of France against Prussia.

There arose a great wail from the mothers whose sons were conscripts.
The rest asked in trembling, "Will it touch us?"

"Us!" echoed Picot, the tailor, in contempt. "How should it touch us?
Our braves will be in Berlin with another fortnight. The paper says so."

The people were silent; they were not sure what he meant by Berlin, and
they were afraid to ask.

"My boy! my boy!" wailed one woman, smiting her breast. Her son was in
the army.

"Marengo!" murmured Reine Allix, thinking of that far-off time in her
dim youth when the horseman had flown through the dusky street and the
bonfire had blazed on the highest hill above the river.

"Bread will be dear," muttered Mathurin, the miller, going onward with
his foot-weary mule. Bernadou stood silent, with his roses dry and
thirsty round him.

"Why art thou sad?" whispered Margot, with wistful eyes. "Thou art
exempt from war service, my love?"

Bernadou shook his head. "The poor will suffer somehow," was all he
answered.

Yet to him, as to all the Berceau, the news was not very terrible,
because it was so vague and distant--an evil so far off and shapeless.

Monsieur Picot, the tailor, who alone could read, ran from house to
house, from group to group, breathless, gay, and triumphant, telling
them all that in two weeks more their brethren would sup in the king's
palace at Berlin; and the people believed and laughed and chattered,
and, standing outside their d