Their first visit took place three days ago, in the afternoon of the 21st. The sound of heavy steps on the pavement of the cloister made me peep out of my attic window, and I saw five or six hulking fellows in forage-caps, with ruddy faces and low, brutal countenances, like those of Goudeloup’s murderers. They spoke in hushed voices, timidly advancing, like cowardly plunderers. If I had been able to fire at them, I should have put them to flight, but once the alarm given, they would return in greater numbers. I waited. Owing to the neglected look of the house, and thanks to the vines and ivy, that gave it the aspect of a ruin, the ruffians have passed by without stopping. And yet the last of them bent down for a moment to the keyhole. Standing behind my door, revolver in hand, I heard his breathing while I held my own breath. Perhaps he had caught sight of the glimmer of the dying cinders of my fire. However that may be, the wretch did not go away, and began to rummage in my keyhole with his bayonet. Fortunately his comrades called out to him:—Hartmann . . . Hartman . . .
He went off to rejoin them, and I was able to look into the enclosure through the attic window.
They had just broken open the door of the keeper’s house. Poor mother Guillard! it was indeed lost trouble to have given me her key. Soon after, shouts of joy told me that they had discovered the cellar. They brought out a barrel of wine into the orchard, so as to drink it more at their ease, and hoisted it on to a wide stone bench. Having staved in the barrel, they began drinking out of their caps and hands, shouting and jostling each other. The bent heads disappeared in the cask, and came out smeared with dregs, while others greedily took their place. The thin new wine, made of small, sour black grapes, soon intoxicated all these beer-drinkers. Some of them sang and danced round the barrel, while the others re-entered the keeper’s house, and as they found nothing tempting there to satisfy their craving for pillage, they threw the furniture out of the window, and set fire to a walnut cupboard, whose dry and time-worn shelves blazed up like a bundle of straw. At last they went off, reeling through the driving rain. In front of the gateway there was a quarrel. I saw the flash of bayonets, a man fall heavily into the mud and rise up again covered with blood, his uniform all stained with the yellow-coloured soil of the quarries. And to think that France is at the mercy of these brutes! . . .
The next day the same party returned. I understood by that, they had not mentioned their windfall, and I was a little reassured. However, I am a complete prisoner. I dare not stir from the principal room. Near at hand, in a little wood-shed, I have fastened up Colaquet, whose galloping might have betrayed me. The poor animal patiently bears his captivity, sleeps part of the day, and at times gives himself a good shake, surprised at the loss of his freedom . . . At dusk the Prussians depart, more intoxicated than on the evening before.
To-day I have seen no one. But the cask is not yet empty, and I expect them again.
