THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE
It was the success of their policy of boldness, together with something which Madame Blondel told him, which prompted Tom to undertake the impudent and daring enterprise which was later to make him famous on the western front.
Blondel himself, notwithstanding his sixty-five years, had been pressed into military service, but Madame Blondel remained in the little house on the edge of the town in calm disregard of the German officers who had turned her little home into a headquarters while the new road was being made. For this, of course, was being done under the grim eye of the Military.
The havoc wrought by these little despots, minions of the great despot, in the simple abode of the poor old French couple, was eloquent of the whole Prussian system.
The officer whose heroic duty it was to oversee the women and girls slaving with pick and shovel had turned the little abode out of windows, to make it comfortable for himself and his guests, treating the furniture and all the little household gods with the same disdainful brutality that his masters had shown for Louvain Cathedral. The German instinct is always the same, whether it be on a small or a large scale—whether kicking furniture or blowing up hospitals.
Amid the ruins of her tidy little home, Madame Blondel lingered in undaunted proprietorship—the very spirit of gallant, indomitable France!
Perhaps, too, the bold entrance into these tyrant-ridden premises of the two American boys under the forbidding flag of Teuton authority, had something in it of the spirit of America. At least so Madame Blondel seemed to regard it; and when Tom showed her his little button she threw her arms around him, extending the area of her assault to Archer as well.
"Vive l'Amerique!" she cried, with a fine look of defiance in her snapping eyes.
She took the boys upstairs to a room—the only one, apparently, which she could call her own—and here they told her their story.
It appeared that for many years she had lived in America, where her husband had worked in a silk mill and she had kept a little road-house, tempting American autoists with French cooking and wine of Burgundy. She spoke English very well, save for a few charming little slips and notwithstanding that she was short and stout and wore spectacles, she was overflowing with the spirit of her beloved country, and with a weakness for adventure and romance which took Tom and Archer by storm. A true Frenchwoman indeed, defying with a noble heroism Time and Circumstance and vulgar trespasses under her very roof.
"So you will rescue Mam'selle," she said clasping her hands and pressing them to her breast with an inspiring look in her eyes. "So! This is America—how you say—in a nutshell. Yess?"
"It seems to me you're France in a nutshell," said Tom awkwardly, "and downstairs it's Germany in a nutshell."
"Ah-h-h!" She gave a fine shrug of disgust; "he have gone to Berlin. Tomorrow night late, his comrade will come—tomorrow night. So you are safe. And you are ze true knight—so! You will r-rescue Mam'selle," and she placed her two hands on Tom's shoulders, looking at him with delight, and ended by embracing him.
She seemed more interested in his rescuing "Mam'selle" than in anything else and that apparently because it was a bold adventure in gallantry. A true Frenchwoman indeed.
"She'd make a bully scoutmaster," Tom whispered to Archer.
"They might as well try to capturre the moon as put France out of business," said Archer.
Yes, big or little, man or woman, one or a million, in devastated home or devastated country, she is always the same, gallant, spirited, defiant. Vive la France!
While Madame Blondel plied them with food she told them the story of the new road—another shameless item in the wake of German criminality and dishonor.
"They will wait to see if Amerique can send her troops. They will trust zese submarines—so long. No more! All the while they make zis road—ozzer roads. Zere will be ze tramping of zese beasts over zese roads to little Switzerland yet!" she said, falling into the French manner in her anger. "So zey will stab her in ze back! Ug-g-g-gh!"
"Do you think that Florette and her mother are both there?" Tom asked.
"Ah," she said slyly; "you wish not that her mother should be there? So you will be ze true knight! Ah, you are a bad boy!"
To Tom's embarrassment she embraced him again, by way of showing that she was not altogether averse to bad boys.
"That ain't the way it is at all," he said flashing awkwardly. "I want to save 'em both. That's the only thing I'm thinking about."
"Ah," she laughed slyly, to Archer's delight. "You are a bad boy! Iss he not a bad boy? Yess?" She turned upon Archer. "Sixty years old I am, but still would I have so much happiness to be ze boy. See! Blondel and I, we run away to our marriage so many years ago. No one can catch us. So! Ziss is ze way—yess? Am I right?" She pointed her finger at poor Tom. "Ah, you are ze true knight! Even yet, maybe, you will fight ze duel—so! Listen! I will tell you how you will trrick ze Prussians."
This was getting down to business and much to Tom's relief though Archer had enjoyed the little scene hugely.
"See," she said more soberly. "I will tell you. Every young mam'selle must work—all are there. From north and south have they brought them. All! But not our older women. Like soldiers they must obey. Here to this very house come those that rebel—arrest! Some are sent back with—what you say? Reprimand. Some to prison. I cannot speak. My own countrywomen! Ug-gh! Zese wretches!"
"So now I shall see if you are true Americans." She looked straight at Tom, and even her homely spectacles did not detract from the fire that burned in her eyes. Here was a woman, who if she had but been a man, could have done anything. "I shall give you ze paper—all print. Ze warrant. You see?" She paused, throwing her head back with such a fine air of defiance that even her wrinkled face and homely domestic garb could not dim its glory. "You shall arrest Mam'selle! Here you shall bring her. See—listen! You know what our great Napoleon say? 'Across ze Alps lies Italee.' So shall you arrest Mam'selle!" She put her arm on Tom's shoulder and looked into his eyes with a kind of inspiring frenzy. "Close, so very close," she whispered significantly, "across ze Rhine lies Switzerland!"