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Updated: August 8, 2024
Bernadou, who had gone out to hear his news, returned into the house and sat down and hid his face within his hands. "If I resist you are all lost," he muttered. "And yet to yield like a cur!"
How are the terror and suffering of the people indicated? Notice the effectiveness of the author's use of details. Have you read any prose or poetry in which war is made to seem glorious? How does it seem here? Does the author make the scene of the arrival of the Prussians vivid? How is this done? How has the author drawn the character of Bernadou?
But as yet it was not so very much worse than it had been in times of bad harvest and of dire distress; and the storm which raged over the land had as yet spared this little green nest among the woods on the Seine. November came. "It is a cold night, Bernadou; put on some more wood," said Reine Allix. Fuel at the least was plentiful in that district, and Bernadou obeyed.
Reine Allix softly led her grandson across his own threshold, and drew his head down to hers, and kissed him between the eyes. "You did what you could, Bernadou," she said to him; "let the rest come as it will." Then she turned from him, and flung her cloak over her head, and sank down, weeping bitterly; for she had lived through ninety-three years only to see this agony at the last.
"What can they do to us?" she asked, trembling, with the rich colours of her face blanched white. Bernadou smiled on her. "I do not know, my dear. I think even they can hardly bring death upon women and children." "They can, and they will," said a voice from the crowd. None answered. The street was very quiet in the darkness. Far away in the east the red glare glowed.
"If we do otherwise," they said, "the soldiers will surely slay us, and what can a miserable little hamlet like this achieve against cannon and steel and fire?" Bernadou alone raised his voice in opposition. His eye kindled, his cheek flushed, his words for once sprang from his lips like fire.
Under the porch of the cottage, by the sycamores, one group stood and looked, silent and very still: Bernadou, erect, pale, calm, with a fierce scorn burning in his eyes; Margot, quiet because he wished her so, holding to her the rosy and golden beauty of her son; Reine Allix, with a patient horror on her face, her figure drawn to its full height, and her hands holding to her breast the crucifix.
But a strong, muscular, well-built youth like you should not wait to be called; you should volunteer to serve France." "I will serve France when my time comes," said Bernadou, simply, in answer. But he would not leave his fields barren, and his orchard uncared for, and his wife to sicken and starve, and his grandmother to perish alone in her ninety-third year.
She went in out of the dewy air, into the little low, square room of her cottage, and went up to Bernadou and laid her hands on his shoulders. "Be it well with thee, my grandson, and with thy sons' sons after thee," she said solemnly. "Margot will be thy wife. May thy days and hers be long in thy birthplace!" A month later they were married. It was then May.
They jeered and flouted and upbraided him, those patriots who screamed against the fallen Empire in the wine-shop; but he looked them straight in the eyes, and held his peace, and did his daily work. "If he is called, he will not be found wanting," said Reine Allix, who knew him better than did even the young wife whom he loved. Bernadou clung to his home with a dogged devotion.
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