id you ever hear of such a thing? I caught one big
fellow devouring the soap. But the cellar was the place where they did
most mischief; we could hear them from upstairs smashing the bottles and
yelling like demons, and they drew the spigots of the casks, so that
the place was flooded with wine; when they came out their hands were red
with the good wine they had spilled. And to show what happens, men when
they make such brutes of themselves: a soldier found a large bottle of
laudanum and drank it all down, in spite of Monsieur Dalichamp's efforts
to prevent him. The poor wretch was in horrible agony when I came away;
he must be dead by this time."

A great shudder ran through her, and she put her hand to her eyes to
shut out the horrid sight.

"No, no! I cannot bear it; I saw too much!"

Father Fouchard had crossed the road and stationed himself at the open
window where he could hear, and the tale of pillage made him uneasy; he
had been told that the Prussians paid for all they took; were they going
to start out as robbers at that late day? Maurice and Jean, too, were
deeply interested in those details about an enemy whom the girl had
seen, and whom they had not succeeded in setting eyes on in their whole
month's campaigning, while Honore, pensive and with dry, parched lips,
was conscious only of the sound of _her_ voice; he could think of
nothing save her and the misfortune that had parted them.

Just then the door of the adjoining room was opened, and little Charlot
appeared. He had heard his mother's voice, and came trotting into the
apartment in his nightgown to give her a kiss. He was a chubby, pink
little urchin, large and strong for his age, with a thatch of curling,
straw-colored hair and big blue eyes. Silvine shivered at his sudden
appearance, as if the sight of him had recalled to her mind the image of
someone else that affected her disagreeably. Did she no longer recognize
him, then, her darling child, that she looked at him thus, as if he were
some evocation of that horrid nightmare! She burst into tears.

"My poor, poor child!" she exclaimed, and clasped him wildly to her
breast, while Honore, ghastly pale, noted how strikingly like the little
one was to Goliah; the same broad, pink face, the true Teutonic type, in
all the health and strength of rosy, smiling childhood. The son of the
Prussian, _the Prussian_, as the pothouse wits of Remilly had styled
him! And the French mother, who sat there, pressin