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Updated: June 24, 2025
He turned an amused yellow eye on Jack, but his face sobered the next moment, and he continued: "I heard the fusillade on the Saint-Lys highway; I did not go to inquire if they were amusing themselves. Ma foi! I myself keep away from Uhlans when God permits. And so these Uhlan wolves got old Tricasse at last. Zut! C'est embêtant! And poor old Passerat, too and Brun, and all the rest!
Interminable trains of wagons creaked along the sandy Saint-Avold road; the whistle of the locomotive was heard again at Saint-Lys, where the Bavarians had established a base of supplies and were sending their endless, multicoloured trains puffing away towards Saarbrück for provisions and munitions of war that had arrived there from Cologne.
She passed the orchestra, trudging back to Saint-Lys along the gravel drive, the two fat violinists stolidly smoking their Alsacian pipes, the harp-player muttering to the aged piper, the little biniou man from the Côte-d'Or, excited, mercurial, gesticulating at every step. War! war! war!
"Yes, dear." "When the cannon cease, I shall fall asleep. Listen! what is that?" "A blackbird singing in the pear-tree." "And what is that that sound of galloping? Look out and see, Helen." "It is a gendarme riding fast towards the Rhine." That evening Dorothy Marche stood on the terrace in the moonlight waving her plumed fan and listening to the orchestra from the hamlet of Saint-Lys.
The village life, the daily duties, the dull routine from the vineyard to the grain-field, and from the étang to the forest had not changed in Saint-Lys. There might be war somewhere; it would never come to Saint-Lys. There might be death, yonder towards the Rhine probably beyond it, far beyond it. What of it?
And, even as he looked, holding her there almost in his arms, the Prussian trumpets clanged from the dim meadows and the drums thundered on the hills, and the invading army roused itself at the dawn of another day. For two days and nights the German army passed through Morteyn and Saint-Lys, on the march towards Metz.
But these warlike ebullitions simmered away peacefully in the sunshine, and the tranquil current of life flowed as smoothly through Saint-Lys as the river Lisse itself, limpid, noiseless, under the village bridge. Only one man had left the village, and that was Brun, the furtive-eyed young peasant, the sole representative in Saint-Lys of the conscript class of 1871.
"Are you going to inform the mayor of Saint-Lys?" asked Jack. "Of course," muttered Passerat, gathering up his reins; "heu! da-da! heu! cocotte! en route!" and he rattled sulkily away, perhaps a little uncertain himself as to the concreteness of his recent vision. Jack looked after him. "There might be something in it," he mused, "but, dear me! his nose is unpleasantly sunburned."
For he had decided that at Forbach was his chance to beat the other correspondents, and he took the chance, knowing that in case the telegraph there was also occupied he could still get back to Morteyn, and from there to Saint-Lys, before the others had wired to their respective journals.
"Dorrie," said Jack, "Sir Thorald and Lady Hesketh think that we all should start for Paris by the early train. They have already sent some of our trunks to Saint-Lys; Mademoiselle de Nesville" he turned with a gesture almost caressing to Lorraine "Mademoiselle de Nesville has generously offered her carriage to help transport the luggage, and she is going to wait until it returns."
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