I remember nothing at all about the youngest girl, not even her name.
The two sons were army surgeons like their father.
The eldest had already left the service some two or three years before, and practised medicine in Crespy.
The other was with his regiment, no one knew where. In the midst of this general débâcle nothing had been heard of him for six or eight weeks past, and the poor mother and his two sisters were very uneasy about him.
As we crossed the main square of Crespy, we came upon a kind of bivouac; we inquired about this garrison—a source of danger rather than a means of help, in a town which was as open as a market-place, and we learnt that it was composed of 100 infantry and 200 cavalry. This little corps was completely cut off from all communication with the main army, and was stationed there, under inferior officers, without any orders: there they awaited the tide of events.
The enemy lay all round Crespy: at Compiègne, at Villers-Cotterets, at Levignan. But by some curious chance, for which we were most grateful, Crespy had remained, like Péronne, if not quite inviolable, at least inviolate.
Our two or three hundred men kept splendid guard; they had pickets all round, their muskets were kept ever ready piled, and their horses were only unbridled when they had to be fed.
The activity of this handful of men was a remarkable contrast to the negligence of the duc de Treviso and of his army corps, who, as we have related, allowed themselves to be surprised one night at Villers-Cotterets.
One day, in spite of this vigilance, or rather because of it, an alarm was spread; the enemy had been seen filing out of the wood of Tillet, at the foot of the rise of Montigny.
This was the same hillock I thought so high, when I travelled to Béthisy with Picard and my cousin Marianne.