lbarrows. When the sun awoke this miserable band
they gathered themselves together with heavy step, still stiffened by
the night. Many were going toward the station in the hope of a train
which never came, thinking that, perhaps, they might have better luck
during the day that was just dawning. Some were continuing their way
down the track, hoping that fate might be more propitious in some other
place.

Don Marcelo walked all the morning long. The white, rectilinear ribbon
of roadway was spotted with approaching groups that on the horizon line
looked like a file of ants. He did not see a single person going in his
direction. All were fleeing toward the South, and on meeting this city
gentleman, well-shod, with walking stick and straw hat, going on alone
toward the country which they were abandoning in terror, they showed the
greatest astonishment. They concluded that he must be some functionary,
some celebrity from the Government.

At midday he was able to get a bit of bread, a little cheese and a
bottle of white wine from a tavern near the road. The proprietor was at
the front, his wife sick and moaning in her bed. The mother, a rather
deaf old woman surrounded by her grandchildren, was watching from the
doorway the procession of fugitives which had been filing by for the
last three days. "Monsieur, why do they flee?" she said to Desnoyers.
"War only concerns the soldiers. We countryfolk have done no wrong to
anybody, and we ought not to be afraid."

Four hours later, on descending one of the hills that bounded the valley
of the Marne, he saw afar the roofs of Villeblanche clustered around the
church, and further on, beyond a little grove, the slatey points of the
round towers of his castle.

The streets of the village were deserted. Only on the outer edges of the
square did he see some old women sitting as in the placid evenings
of bygone summers. Half of the neighborhood had fled; the others were
staying by their firesides through sedentary routine, or deceiving
themselves with a blind optimism. If the Prussians should approach,
what could they do to them? . . . They would obey their orders without
attempting any resistance, and it is impossible to punish people who
obey. . . . Anything would be preferable to losing the homes built by
their forefathers which they had never left.

In the square he saw the mayor and the principal inhabitants grouped
together. Like the women, they all stared in astonishment at the