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Updated: June 22, 2025
Silvine!" Since he found the window open to him it must be that she had thought better of the matter and changed her mind. It gave him great pleasure to have it so, although he would rather she had been there to welcome him and reassure his fears. Doubtless Father Fouchard had summoned her away; some odds and ends of work to finish up. He raised his voice a little: "Silvine! Silvine!"
What were they to do? were they to be forced to abandon their undertaking? Silvine was in despair, when all at once she thought of M. Dubreuil, Father Fouchard's relative, with whom she had some slight acquaintance and whose place, the Hermitage, was only a few hundred yards distant, on the summit of the eminence that overlooked the faubourg.
But before he could lay hands on the child Silvine, all a-quiver with excitement, had thrown her arms about it and clasped it to her bosom. "He, a Prussian, never! He's French, was born in France!" "You say he's French! Look at him, and look at me; he's my very image. Can you say he resembles you in any one of his features?"
Honore drew his chair nearer to Silvine, and in the shuddering darkness, alive with all those sounds of menace, gently whispered: "You are unhappy?" "Oh! yes; so unhappy!" She was conscious of the subject on which he was about to speak, and her head sank sorrowfully on her bosom. "Tell me, how did it happen? I wish to know." But she could not find words to answer him.
When Silvine crossed the Meuse by the railroad bridge, that ill-starred bridge that the French had failed to destroy and which, moreover, had been the cause of such slaughter among the Bavarians, she beheld the corpse of an artilleryman floating lazily down with the sluggish current.
"Listen, Silvine; if those beasts of Prussians let me live, you shall yet be mine, yes, as soon as I have served my time out we will be married." She rose and stood erect upon her feet, gave a cry of joy, and threw herself upon the young man's bosom. She could not speak a word; every drop of blood in her veins was in her cheeks. He seated himself upon the chair and drew her down upon his lap.
Many another has died as well; it is the fortune of war. And then it seemed to me that once he was dead there would no longer be a barrier between us, and let me remind you, Silvine, that after all I was never brutal toward you " But he stopped short at sight of her agitation; she seemed as if about to tear her own flesh in her horror and distress.
A deathlike stillness lay on the deserted fields, the minutes lagged interminably. Then, when at last the deadened sound was heard of footsteps drawing near, Silvine withdrew and returned to the kitchen, where she seated herself and waited, motionless as a corpse, her great eyes fixed on the flickering flame of the solitary candle.
It was seven o'clock; they had dined at six, not waiting for Father Fouchard, who they supposed had been detained at Raucourt, where there was a scarcity of meat, and Henriette, whose turn it was to watch that night at the hospital, had just left the house, after cautioning Silvine to be sure to replenish Jean's stove with coal before she went to bed.
The name made the artilleryman start as if he had been shot; he strained his blazing eyes to follow the receding shape. Goliah Steinberg, the journeyman butcher, the man who had set him and his father by the ears, who had stolen from him his Silvine; the whole base, dirty, miserable story, from which he had not yet ceased to suffer!
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