The division over, the men of Fougeres rejoined the little battalion of
the Blues on their way to the town.

* * * * *

Towards midnight the cottage of Galope-Chopine, hitherto the scene of
life without a care, was full of dread and horrible anxiety. Barbette
and her little boy returned at the supper-hour, one with her heavy
burden of rushes, the other carrying fodder for the cattle. Entering the
hut, they looked about in vain for Galope-Chopine; the miserable chamber
never looked to them as large, so empty was it. The fire was out, and
the darkness, the silence, seemed to tell of some disaster. Barbette
hastened to make a blaze, and to light two _oribus_, the name given to
candles made of pitch in the region between the villages of Amorique
and the Upper Loire, and still used beyond Amboise in the Vendomois
districts. Barbette did these things with the slowness of a person
absorbed in one overpowering feeling. She listened to every sound.
Deceived by the whistling of the wind she went often to the door of the
hut, returning sadly. She cleaned two beakers, filled them with cider,
and placed them on the long table. Now and again she looked at her boy,
who watched the baking of the buckwheat cakes, but did not speak to
him. The lad's eyes happened to rest on the nails which usually held his
father's duck-gun, and Barbette trembled as she noticed that the gun was
gone. The silence was broken only by the lowing of a cow or the splash
of the cider as it dropped at regular intervals from the bung of
the cask. The poor woman sighed while she poured into three brown
earthenware porringers a sort of soup made of milk, biscuit broken into
bits, and boiled chestnuts.

"They must have fought in the field next to the Berandiere," said the
boy.

"Go and see," replied his mother.

The child ran to the place where the fighting had, as he said, taken
place. In the moonlight he found the heap of bodies, but his father was
not among them, and he came back whistling joyously, having picked up
several five-franc pieces trampled in the mud and overlooked by the
victors. His mother was sitting on a stool beside the fire, employed
in spinning flax. He made a negative sign to her, and then, ten o'clock
having struck from the tower of Saint-Leonard, he went to bed, muttering
a prayer to the holy Virgin of Auray. At dawn, Barbette, who had not
closed her eyes, gave a cry of joy, as she heard in the distance a