Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/255

248 -night and the sixteenth birthday of her life—how a horseman had flashed through the startled street like a comet, and had called aloud, in a voice of fire, "Gloire! gloire! gloire!—Marengo! Marengo! Marengo!" And how the village had dimly understood that something marvellous for France had happened afar off, and how her brothers, and her cousins, and her betrothed, and she with them, had all gone up to the high slope over the river, and had piled up a great pyramid of pine-wood and straw and dried mosses, and had set flame to it, till it had glowed in its scarlet triumph all through that wondrous night of the sultry summer of victory.

These and the like memories she would sometimes relate to the children at evening, when they gathered round her begging for a story.

Otherwise, no memories of the Revolution or the Empire disturbed the tranquillity of the Berceau; and even she, after she had told them, would add:

"I am not sure now what Marengo was. A battle no doubt, but I am not sure where nor why. But we heard later that little Claudis, my aunt's youngest born, a volunteer, not nineteen, died at it. If we had known, we should not have gone up and lit the bonfire."

This woman, who had been born in that time