CHAPTER IX
Thus ground down and sunk in grief we reached the end of the year. You must not think that we were as yet urged to desperation. The courageous inhabitants who, after hours' waiting, got a passport to go to Laon always came back with the most comforting information.
"The news is very good ... very good. I should not be astonished if the Germans went away in a short time."
The farmer's wife of the "Huchettes" who daily took milk to Laon—so many bottles were requisitioned for the Red Cross—mysteriously said with her forefinger lifted up:
"I have good hope, good hope, that 'our French' will be back before the 1st of January."
And the cannon was ever booming; its voice cheered us; we never got weary of listening to it and studying it. Once we even believed that it promised our deliverance. It was the 21st of December, at about eleven in the evening. Geneviève and I were gloomily reading books held quite close to the light, when Colette knocked at our door and appeared in her nightgown:
"Come, come, a battle is being fought just now, don't you hear the cannon? It is roaring louder than ever."
On tiptoe, for fear we should arouse Mme. Valaine from her sleep, we went upstairs. Colette's window was wide open; we squeezed together in the narrow space. Both Geneviève and I got upon the window-sill and leaned against the frame, whilst the others pressed against the rail in front. And there, half-dressed, unconscious of the cold, we eagerly watched the horizon. The action took place in the direction of Vailly. In fact, the cannon was roaring with a rage never yet heard. Its near or distant rumbling never ceased for a second, and the bursting shells succeeded one another uninterruptedly. When certain pieces of ordnance were firing off full volleys, we felt a quivering all about us, and on the writing-table the penholder jingled against the crystal of the inkstand. Our bodies, our souls thrilled with enthusiasm, and the battle awoke an inward echo. With our minds' eyes we eagerly watched the place where great things happened. Our hearts flew onward to meet those who seemed to approach us!... Oh, come, come!
Our eyes were riveted on the horizon in flames, where ever-renewed flashes showed a red undulation marked with blue spots, or streaked with the lights of five turning beacons. We saw the shells burst, above, below, to the right, to the left. The cannonade seemed to slacken. Listen! listen! A soft breeze brought us the thrilling sounds of sharp firing, the crackling of machine-guns. Then the hollow voice began again, and drowned the others.
"Oh," Colette cried out, wringing her hands, "to think that our brothers, our hearts' blood, are over there! They are fighting ... they sink to the ground ... they are wounded ... they are dying...."
We trembled, we bit our lips, we said in a murmur:
"If only they were going to break through, if only they came back...."
"Oh, come, come!..."
The whole village was wide awake. Through attic windows anxious faces were peeping; restless people stood at their garden walls. From house to house they exchanged impressions.
A young woman of the neighbourhood had rushed to her coffee-mill at the beginning of the action, and by the time her old father went to the garden to unearth a precious bottle of marc, she had ground all her small reserve, so that "our French" might have hot coffee on reaching the village!
Alas, our hopes were once more hoped in vain! Little by little the firing grew fainter, the cannon less audible; the flames and the lights died away; and suddenly silence and peace fell upon the village. The extinguisher was dropped on us again. Speechless and gloomy we went to bed at two o'clock in the morning, with limbs and souls chilled, and we did not even try to seek sleep.
The civilians were not the only ones who thought the French likely to come back. The hussars had spent the whole night on horseback, ready, if their brothers-in-arms withdrew, to go at full speed to the north: such were the orders in case of an alarm—at least they said so. Officers, under-officers, and soldiers were all the more grieved with the disturbance as they were going to feast and make merry all night in order to keep Christmas, and were looking forward to such a junketing as they had never dreamed of in the Marches of Brandenburg. The lieutenant had visited all the farms of the village, felt a hundred fowls, and chosen the plumpest and the tenderest. The feathered tribe were waiting for their last hour in an adjacent shed.
But now to whom would the inheritance come?
"My beautiful fowls," the officer muttered between his teeth, "my beautiful fowls! Who will eat them? How many a slip is there 'twixt the duck and the lip!"
The alarm over, Von Bernhausen had not yet recovered his serenity. At break of day he summoned his host, the farmer, the cook, and the cook's boy, ordered them to slay, pluck, and roast directly all that bore comb or webbed foot.
"At eleven," he declared, "we shall eat them every one."
They ate them every one. Crammed to the brim, greatly pleased with themselves, the hussars strummed on their paunches: "'Tis so much gained!"
There is no need to say that they began their feast again on Christmas Day. In order to celebrate this godly day according to old customs, soldiers of all arms and all localities had looked everywhere for fir-trees. They were not satisfied with small ones, and in our wood, near Bucy, they lopped eighteen beautiful Norway pines; they did the like in other private estates, and even in a public place of Laon, where the beheaded trees cut a very sorry figure, you may take my word for it.
Their Christmas Eve supper was very merry, at Morny at least, and till a late hour of the night we heard the noise of dances, laughter, and shouts, mingled with women's voices. We civilians spent a poor trembling Christmas, whose bitter sweetness was made up of fond thoughts of the absent, and sad remembrances of past years. Christmas ... peace on the earth ... Christmas ... all the pleasures of our childhood recurred to our memory.... Good-will to all men.... Christmas, the feast of the one that said: "Love one another." And the strong still grind down the weak, hatred and bloodshed prevail everywhere!... The irony of the day brought to our lips a bitter taste.
On the 31st of December every one had gone to bed as usual; the people were but slumbering as they were now wont to, when out burst a sharp firing accompanied by loud shouting. Every one sprang up, all windows flew wide open, cries arose:
"The French!"
"Listen...."
"Hoch! hoch!"
Oh, despair! they were but the Prussians cheering the New Year. Even when they enjoy themselves, these people are not harmless. Their guns were loaded with balls, which passed through several shutters; it was a miracle that no one was hurt.
If that New Year's Day was not a merry one, it brought with it hope that is inseparable from everything at its beginning. Deliverance! that was what we wished one another. And we not only relied on the New Year to bring it, but to bring it without great delay. Fortunately this assurance gave us a moral satisfaction, for our material rejoicings were very scanty. In most houses, in ours for instance, meat did not appear on the table any more than it had for many a day. Only a few farmers succeeded in putting a chicken in their pot without the knowledge of the Germans. For it was understood that all fowls were requisitioned. Their owners had a right to look after them and to feed them, but not to eat them. At the butcher's horse-meat was sold—coming of course from animals killed at the front—and sometimes some coarse beef, which was obtained by large bribes from soldiers employed at the slaughter-house. Rather than feast upon such unappetising and expensive meat, we preferred to eat boiled vegetables. Sometimes frogs' legs varied the monotony of our daily menu; some of our neighbours managed to buy venison, poachers being not rare in the German army; and soldiers there were who profited handsomely from roebucks, which they killed when the officers turned their backs.
But these few windfalls did not make up for the lack of many things, hitherto looked upon as indispensable. And what was our alarm on hearing once that bread itself would run short! On a certain Saturday the people who went to fetch flour came back with their carts empty; likewise the following week. No more bread! This bad fortune had been long foreseen, and to provide against it we had dried slices of bread in the oven, and thus filled many and many a tin. But seven persons are not long eating up a reserve of this kind. So by a recipe, which all the village knew, a dough was made of mashed potatoes and a little flour—every one had managed to lay by a few pounds of it—and these thin cakes, baked in the oven, bore some likeness to the food we missed.
Other villages were even less fortunate than ours, and had no bread at all—officially at least—for a very long time. The farmers who had contrived to hide corn had to grind it in a coffee-mill or with the help of a mincing-machine, and the ovens—long unemployed—were again turned to account when no Germans were present.
On the whole our village did not starve now, as it had starved during October and November. A few peasants had mysteriously dug up their potatoes, and sold them just as mysteriously. Besides, through the Mayor's clever management, the Germans consented to our buying from them a certain quantity of rice, salt, and sugar. These goods, we heard, were the remainder of provisions sent to the commissary of stores. They were sold on stated days, and every inhabitant was entitled to a kilo of rice, a pound of sugar, half a pound of salt, once a fortnight. It was a sheer pleasure to chaffer with the invaders; they demanded gold as payment for their scanty revictualling, but later on they had to content themselves with a sum partly in gold, partly in silver. They played hang-dog tricks on the middlemen. Once the Mayor was informed that such and such goods were to be had to the amount of three hundred francs. Greatly pleased, he paid in golden cash. He was kept waiting one hour, then two, then three. At length he was told that he had been deceived. The provisions were not nearly so abundant as they were first thought; there was scarcely a hundred francs' worth. The difference was to be given back to the purchaser. And, indeed, two hundred francs were returned to him, but the two hundred francs were paid in German notes!
For three weeks we had no bread at all; then the Germans vouchsafed us flour of their own, so much a day; a loaf made with this powder took the shape of a small, flat, brown and heavy crown, which gave us such acute pains that we often preferred being hungry to having our fill of this dough. We were all poor wretches and starvelings, but we were fellow-citizens, and we arranged to keep a certain level of the provisions. But a hundred times more wretched and starving were the refugees who, when their villages were burned to the ground, had been shared among the communes throughout the country. For months they had neither house nor home, and about forty of them had taken shelter in Morny, where they were huddled in one or two empty houses, lived but scantily, and slept on straw. Several died during the winter. Laon was also overrun with hundreds of those poor fugitives, and throughout the town you were assailed and pursued by small ragged beggars who made you think of Naples or Marseilles. The poor things moved your pity the more deeply as you were compelled to think:
"Such is perhaps the fate that is awaiting me."
Indeed, nobody was sure that a whim of the Germans would not turn him out of doors. It was seen more than once. So many things were requisitioned. First of all, the invaders laid the absent people under contribution, and as long as their houses had window-panes and furniture, they were sufficient for the plunderers. But afterwards? A large manufacturer of the neighbourhood, M. Vergniaud, had built a castle a few years before in the Renaissance style, and filled it with Renaissance furniture. When the rumour of invasion came, the owner took flight with his household. The first soldiers quartered in the villa knocked off the sculptures of the cupboards with axes, while others carried away what pleased them. We saw a china bath taken away to the trenches; it contained two small pigs. In the luggage of an officer who lodged in our house there were damask curtains, plates of old Strasburg ware, and even children's clothes, all of which came from that castle.
In the end what remained of the furniture was taken to the station, loaded upon railway trucks, conveyed from one place to another for a fortnight, and then sent to an unknown destination. To Germany or to the trenches?
Some officers, who lived in Laon, did not approve of the costly furniture about them, so they sent for three civil prisoners. The orders they gave them were simple: "Take the furniture into the garden and break the whole in pieces with your axes; it will serve as firewood." The house thus cleared, these gentlemen had but to look elsewhere for the wherewithal to furnish their rooms.
If uninhabited houses contained nothing useful, they requisitioned what they wanted from those who had stayed at home. Von Bernhausen soon discovered that he might find many things in our house of which he could make a good use. First, he was sure that such people as we are overfed ourselves. In fact, boiled potatoes, boiled carrots, boiled beans, boiled rice, barley coffee, and nut-tree tea are everywhere looked upon as choice dainties. So one day the street was ringing with drunken shouts. We kept silent, attentive to the least sound. "Will they go by without worrying us?" Oh no! An angry hand rang a full peal, whilst heavy boots beat rhythmical imprecations upon the gate. The key had hardly turned in the lock when Sainte-Brute rushed in like a madman, with two other hussars. Geneviève jumped to avoid the shock of the man:
"Oh, he is drunk!"
These words increased the fury of the non-commissioned officer:
"Drunk ... drunk ... I am drunk.... You dare say it again. It is an insult to the German army.... You will see ... you will see...."
Geneviève, with folded arms and head erect, as white as her woollen jacket, faced the non-commissioned officer. She looked at him with such an air of scorn and defiance that the maniac broke into a new fit of rage. Bending forward, his fists clenched, his eyes starting from their sockets, crimson-faced, he foamed at the mouth, he spat out: "Drunk ... you said I am drunk ... you will go to prison ... you will be put on bread and water ... sleep on straw ... it will serve you right ... drunk ... drunk...."
Around us stood the frightened family. The "Blackguard" sneered, and "Rabbit's Paw," when the madman ceased, took up the burden of abuse. All of a sudden the sergeant altered his mind and sprang into the cellar. His companions followed him, and we heard them upsetting empty bottles and shaking casks. "You may seek for wine, my fine fellows, and if you find a single bottle I will pour it out for you myself."
In the depths of the cellar Sainte-Brute continued to breathe forth fury, loading us with violent and obscene insults. Fortunately we did not understand much of his foul language. Then he came upstairs again in haste, rushed into the garden, and squeaked:
"Beans ... beans ... beans...."
Like one stupefied, he stopped and gazed at the lawn as if he had expected the beans to spring up at his call. There was no sign of them.
Then he turned round to me:
"Have you any beans?"
Good Heavens! There was a small sack of big white beans which we had bought last week, and out of which we hoped to get many a meal! If I deny that we have any, thought I, these people will go to the attic, and the first thing they see is the sack of beans, white and fruitful of promise.
"Hum ... yes, we have a small quantity of beans. But as we bought them, they cannot be requisitioned."
"How much have you?"
The answer came reluctantly:
"About twenty litres."
"Well, they are requisitioned; you are forbidden to use them."
The callers were about to leave, but the drunken man still wished to take Geneviève away.
"She must go to prison ... she has insulted the German army."
The "Blackguard," who was almost sober, pulled him by the arm:
"Come away, come away! These people will make a fuss, and it will be said that we are barbarians!"
Sainte-Brute was loath to let himself be convinced. At length his unsteady legs took him off, and his acolytes followed him.
"Ah!" cried Geneviève, passing her hand over her forehead with a gesture as of madness, "to think that all our life we have been respected, that we have met only polite and courteous people, and now drunken brutes may insult us in our own house! Why, they talk of putting us in prison, as though we were old rag-pickers found trespassing."
The neighbours hastened to condole with us, for the shouts of the soldiers had been heard a mile off. The next intrusion came the following day. They returned to fetch the beans. This time they were merry in their cups, they asked for their prey with smiles, and laying hold of it seemed vastly amused. On leaving they burst out laughing, and Von Bernhausen, who was waiting for them outside, roared with merriment as he weighed the sack of beans in his hand.
The Prussians are full of humour.
For three days running, no offensive. Then, one morning, the Hussars announced themselves, as usual, by shouting, kicking at the gate, and ringing violently at the bell. They walked in, went through the house, and right on to the bathroom.
"We want this bath."
It was no use protesting. The bath was taken away. Three days after it was lying smashed to pieces in the yard of an inn which the Hussars frequented, and serving as a dust-bin for the sluts of the place.
Then came the turn of the piano.
Some time before Christmas the non-commissioned officer who had previously searched the house presented himself very civilly:
"You have a piano; I want it for a few days; we shall bring it back to you after Christmas."
We could not say a word. Weeks glided by; the new year saw many dawns break; and no one brought back the piano. This harmonious piece of furniture was the finest ornament of a house which the garde-voies had made their home. You saw nothing but black coats there; no Hussars, no convoys. The garde-voies are territorials, elderly, sedate men, fathers of families, whose stoutness their uniforms cannot conceal. They smoke pipes as big as beer glasses, and drink beer out of glasses as big as kegs. They looked scornfully on those who stay at the farm, whose drunkenness and rakish habits are a cause of scandal to them.
Therefore they kept aloof, searched houses, and requisitioned goods for their own account, had their private rejoicings, and spent their evenings amid tobacco smoke and the smells of beer, while they listened rapturously to patriotic songs or even playful ditties hammered out on our good-natured piano.
One day a rumour spread. The garde-voies are going away. The sergeant is already off. In fact, the non-commissioned officer had left our parts, unmindful of the various pieces of furniture he had "borrowed" from the inhabitants. It was the moment to go and claim what belonged to us. The house was about to be cleared under the superintendence of a corporal, who kindly authorised us to have the piano conveyed home. He did not care for it any more; he was going away. And the instrument was put back into our drawing-room. It did not stay there for a great while. That very evening Von Bernhausen came round, greatly incensed.
"That piano which the garde-voies had? I hear you took it away, without asking my leave!"
"But it is our piano. It was agreed we should have it back."
"I want it; I will come for it to-morrow at ten. You had no right to fetch it without orders from me."
Bouillot withdrew, proud of himself. The following day he came back followed by a vehicle and eight men chosen among the strongest of the band. All flocked round the piano, pushing, pulling to no purpose.
"I think," said my mother-in-law, "that it would be better for the walls and for the piano if you passed it directly into the street by the window."
"Hold your tongue," answered the kind officer, "you know nothing about it. The piano will go through the passage."
It went through, and took with it much of the wainscot. The Hussars made a great deal of bustle, sweating blood and water. "Peuh!" Yvonne whispered in my ear, "those fellows have no muscles, they are but fat. Two years ago, when we moved to Passy, the same piano was carried in by a single, small, hunchbacked man. But look at that!"
Bouillot acted the busybody, moved to and fro, jested with his men, and by way of encouragement gave them sound slaps in the small of the back. It was easy to see that these people, or at least their forefathers, had tended the swine in the forests of old Germany. At last by dint of effort the instrument was taken out of the house, carried along the pavement, and hoisted into the cart. The Hussars served as horses. Gee-ho! They rushed forward, but in the courtyard the carriage gave a start, and the piano—with intent to commit suicide—bounded out and fell to the ground. After a few convulsions, and one last writhe of agony, it lay quiet.
"Oh! my beautiful Pleyel," cried Yvonne.
Some fragments of wood had been knocked off; Bouillot picked them up:
"It will be easy to mend." They gave the piano a lift, and made for the farm. All along the street we saw it skip along in its jolting car; the ravishers scoffingly waved their hands, and mocked at us until they were lost sight of behind a screen of snow.
Two days after a new joke of the same kind. Bouillot and his whole gang broke in noisily:
"I want two chairs."
"All right," my mother-in-law answered, "I will give orders for them to be brought down."
"No, I will choose them myself."
The Hussars, merry as schoolboys on a holiday, came tumbling one over the other into the rooms, meddled with everything, poked their noses everywhere. Von Bernhausen went right to the drawing-room. Those he wanted were two easy-chairs in the style of Louis XVI.—ancient silk is matchless for wiping filthy boots upon. This was carrying things too far. Now an officer had installed himself in our house that very morning, taking the place of Barbu and Crafleux. Could we not appeal to him as a last shift?
Antoinette rushed forward, and knocked imperiously at the door of the newcomer: "Sir, sir...."
She was answered by a growl. Then the door opened slightly, and a ruffled head appeared.
"Sir, an officer is there who wants to take our furniture...."
But at that very moment Bouillot approached in a whirlwind. He stopped short at the sight of his brother-in-arms. The two men eyed one another.
"Ah! hum! you here...."
They shook hands coldly. They were face to face, the one immense, the other small; both had the same rank, the same decoration. Our guest had been aroused from his afternoon nap. It was three o'clock, the right time for honest men to sleep. His eyes were swollen, his dress untidy, and his toes, vexed at being incorrect, wriggled about in his socks. Yet he undertook our defence. He did not refer, I need hardly say, to justice or to the Conventions of the Hague. He advanced a single argument, but it struck home.
"I am quartered in this house."
"Yet this house is one of the best furnished in the village; it is but right we should fetch here what is wanting."
"... These are my quarters.... I want the furniture that is here...."
At the beginning of the conference the soldiers became serious, and one after another vanished on tiptoe. Bernhausen at last resigned himself and went after them. It was our turn now to laugh at the Hussars, when we saw them go away crestfallen, and heard their chief stammer explanations.
A few days after, Lieutenant Bubenpech, whom our roof had the honour to shelter, was appointed commandant in place of Bouillot, by right of seniority. Thus ended the persecution of which we had been the victims for two months. The guests of the farm continued their misdeeds and their extortions, but they avoided our house, which sheltered a power the rival of their own. We even had the pleasure of seeing the "Blackguard" come to our house on duty, a bashful, blushing "Blackguard," and more than that, as polite as a chamberlain in presence of his sovereign.
However, in the beginning of February, we again had difficulties with soldiers, coming from the trenches. Twice a week they went through Morny with heavily laden carts. Oh, these convoys! Monday and Thursday, as early as four in the morning, the carts rattled through the village, and noisily shook their empty sides on the pavement. They stopped at the station where there were large stores of straw, and a few hours later went back to the front full to the brim. The farmers took great interest in these personages. Loads, drivers, and carts engrossed their attention.
"Whatever those lazy-bones do," cried an old peasant, "is badly done, and ought not to be done."
To tell the truth, there is an art of loading carts with straw. The first layers should be well placed and should make a solid foundation according to time-honoured rules. The Prussians' loads always stood awry, and threatened ruin as soon as they were erected. First one bundle tumbled over, a second followed, then at a turn of the road the whole pyramid sank to the ground, hurling the listless drivers headlong into a ditch. Nearly every time they came to fetch straw the loaders managed to let it fall, and we watched them rebuild carelessly another tottering heap, Of course these men were thirsty after their hard toil, and they stopped at every fountain to refresh ... their horses; as to themselves they drank anything but water.
Such is, then, the way fifteen soldiers happened to come to our house to draw water from our pump. Many buckets had been pulled up, and the men did not go. They went up and down, laughed, opened one door, then another, ventured into the garden, peeped in at the windows. Geneviève went to encounter them.
"Do you want anything?"
"Nothing at all. We are pleased to stay here because there are pretty girls in the house," answered the sergeant in very good French.
"Then, if there is no need for you to stay here, you had better go away; I want to lock the gate, we never keep it open."
And the men withdrew. Colette, who watched the scene from upstairs, said afterwards:
"It was very funny! You'd have thought that our sister was driving these fifteen big louts before her."
No sooner were they in the street than the Germans gazed at one another. Did it not look as if they had been kicked out of doors!
"Hullo! we are not people to be trifled with!"
They soon gave proofs of it. Suddenly they flung themselves upon the windows, doors, walls. We were forced to give way, and my mother-in-law opened the gate. This compliance with their wishes did not abate the assailants' anger. They rushed into the yard, and poured forth worse volleys of abuse than ever an Apache of Montmartre could invent.
"Ah," cried the sergeant, grinding his teeth in anger, "you are not tamed down here; you do not know what the Germans are! Come to Lierval; you will see there how the people have been curbed. They don't say anything now.... They hold their tongues, I warrant you...."
One of his men drew the moral of this discourse by aiming his gun at us. "Franzouss ... all shot."
They stayed two hours, strolling about the yard, muttering insults between their teeth. To complete our misfortune, the convoy spent the night in Morny. The men came back in the evening, and the commandant being away they made the most fearful row we had ever heard, from nine to eleven, and yet the Hussars were not bad at rough music.
They were not bad at many other jobs. They were acknowledged the most skilful hunters of hiding-places, and Sainte-Brute, with his acolytes, spent many a day in wandering through fields and gardens. They sought for holes that might conceal potatoes, corn, or—generally near to the houses—wine which they were so fond of. The Conventions of the Hague, it would seem, allow the invaders of a country to requisition wine, for the use of the "wounded"; so when the soldiers emptied a cellar or discovered a cache they declared with gravity that it was all for the Red Cross. I suppose the Germans bear a likeness to zoophytes, what one of them absorbs is profitable to the others, and when wine had been unearthed "for the wounded" the whole pack were drunk for days together. And these creatures took all—all. They destroyed systematically what they could not take away. After having despoiled us of our money, they seized corn, straw, vegetables, wine, milk, eggs. Poultry, cows, oxen, the very horses which the peasants had bought of them in a bad condition, and taken good care of, belonged to them, and they alone were entitled to dispose of them. All that was on the earth and beneath the earth, all that was growing and living—including the people—were their own property. They carried off the very paving-stones heaped up on the wayside to repair the roads. If they stay long enough they will carry away, cart after cart, the rich, fat earth of our soil, to spread over and fertilise the barren ground of Prussia. If they could find a means, with the help of their alchemists who have made a pact with the devil, they would take away our deep-blue sky in panels; they would drag along our bracing and mild air to purify the mists of the north.
As they cannot—despite their bargain with the devil—perform such feats of skill, they wreak revenge on us by spoiling our beautiful country. Our farmers were furious when they saw the Germans—the first winter after their arrival—plough up fields throughout the land, unmindful of the limits and value of the soil. And what splendid tillage was theirs! Their laziness turned up about ten centimetres of earth; they sowed seed, and put no manure; before they leave they want to exhaust the soil of which they are jealous, and which they would like to annihilate. They cut down nut trees to make butt-ends of guns, and fruit trees to amuse themselves.
In the forests they committed downright murder. Where it is worth while they cut down trees of reasonable growth at regular intervals; anywhere else they break off saplings about one yard from the ground. In the wood of Festieux I know an immense beech-tree. Its trunk can hardly be encircled by four men with outstretched arms. In its boughs a nobleman of the neighbourhood lived for several weeks at the time of the Revolution. As they found no means to fell this giant, the invaders have hewn pieces out of it all round, and cut off its upper branches. The poor tree will not outlive the invasion. On the outskirts of the villages, along the roads and brooks, the Germans cut down the beautiful trees, poplars, maples, chestnuts, which gave a poetical charm to the country. To spoil the land is the aim of our malignant foe. Truly, it will be long before songs and laughter are heard again in the wasted country. The nymphs of our groves seek in vain their verdant shades along the treeless rivulets, and flee away, sighing their elegies. Can anything be sadder than this? No epic could be more tragical, no ode could exalt our hearts more than this call, more than this immense wailing we are ever hearing. It is the very breath of our sullied, bruised, wounded country, and it will not cease until the day when her sons return, and striking her soil with their feet will say:
"Mother! O, mother! thy cause is avenged! We come back from the country of thy foes!"