“They have caught a postman,” he says, “and torn up and scattered his letters over the forest.”
No need to ask who “they” are!
“Another postman has escaped by throwing his bicycle down by the roadside and plunging into the heart of the woods.”
No one seems to know whether the first man was killed, though rumour surmises he is injured. The point is, these encounters take place on the very road the malle-poste has to traverse.
Afraid to stay, afraid to go, poor Madame Job is in a sad plight. Finally the huge washing-basket with its moorings of cord is safely transferred to the cemented kitchen floor. The Précepteur, his wife and children, the Job-Lepouses and numerous villagers who had turned in to bid them good-bye, have a kind of second breakfast of black bread and coffee round that inevitable big black stove which I always, in my own mind, call “the peasants’” friend.
WHAT THE UHLANS THINK
A furious fight is going on in the village street. Fists and tongues striving to outdo each other. Les Prussiens, of course. I think if the earth opened and swallowed us up we should at once attribute it to German atrocities! But this time the aubergiste is cuffing the picturesque poacher for something that gentleman has done.
“Brave garçon,” sneers a passer-by.
“Malain,” retorts the poacher fiercely.
The peasants fling themselves on the malcontents and proclaim a truce. They argue rightly that only fools quarrel in war-time.