elves
to hasten their flight. They who had been so confident only a short
half month ago, those men and women of Alsace, who smiled when war
was mentioned, certain that it would be fought out in Germany! And now
France was invaded, and it was among them, above their abodes, in
their fields, that the tempest was to burst, like one of those dread
cataclysms that lay waste a province in an hour when the lightnings
flash and the gates of heaven are opened! Carts were backed up against
doors and men tumbled their furniture into them in wild confusion,
careless of what they broke. From the upper windows the women threw out
a last mattress, or handed down the child's cradle, that they had been
near forgetting, whereon baby would be tucked in securely and hoisted to
the top of the load, where he reposed serenely among a grove of legs of
chairs and upturned tables. At the back of another cart was the decrepit
old grandfather tied with cords to a wardrobe, and he was hauled away
for all the world as if he had been one of the family chattels.
Then there were those who did not own a vehicle, so they piled their
household goods haphazard on a wheelbarrow, while others carried an
armful of clothing, and others still had thought only of saving the
clock, which they went off pressing to their bosom as if it had been a
darling child. They found they could not remove everything, and there
were chairs and tables, and bundles of linen too heavy to carry, lying
abandoned in the gutter, Some before leaving had carefully locked their
dwellings, and the houses had a deathlike appearance, with their barred
doors and windows, but the greater number, in their haste to get away
and with the sorrowful conviction that nothing would escape destruction,
had left their poor abodes open, and the yawning apertures displayed the
nakedness of the dismantled rooms; and those were the saddest to behold,
with the horrible sadness of a city upon which some great dread has
fallen, depopulating it, those poor houses opened to the winds of
heaven, whence the very cats had fled as if forewarned of the impending
doom. At every village the pitiful spectacle became more heartrending,
the number of the fugitives was greater, as they clove their way through
the ever thickening press, with hands upraised, amid oaths and tears.

But in the open country as they drew near Belfort, Maurice's heart
was still more sorely wrung, for there the homeless fugitives were
in greater