Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/278

 "My boy! my boy!" wailed one woman, smiting her breast. Her son was in the army.

"Marengo!" murmured Reine Allix, thinking of that far-off time in her dim youth when the horseman had flown through the dusky street and the bonfire blazed on the highest hill above the river.

"Bread will be dear," muttered Mathias the miller, going onward with his foot-weary mule.

Bernadou stood silent, with his roses dry and thirsty round him.

"Why art thou sad?" whispered Margot, with wistful eyes. "Thou art exempt from war-service, my love?"

Bernadou shook his head.

"The poor will suffer somehow," was all he answered.

Yet to him, as to all in the Berceau, the news was not very terrible, because it was so vague and distant—an evil so far off and shapeless.

Picot the tailor, who alone could read, ran from house to house, from group to group, breathless, gay and triumphant, telling them all that in two weeks more their brethren would sup in the king's palace at Berlin; and the people believed and laughed and chattered, and, standing outside their doors in the cool nights, thought that some good had come to them and theirs.