As this first attack seemed to have been repulsed, Delaherche, whose curiosity once more began to gain the upper hand, was in less haste to get away. Standing outside the dyeworks, he began talking to the portress, who had stepped to the threshold of the room she occupied, on the ground floor.
'You ought to come away with us, Françoise,' he said. 'It's not right for a woman to remain here all alone in the midst of such horrible things.'
She raised her trembling arms and answered: 'Ah, sir, I should certainly have gone away if it hadn't been for my little Auguste, who's so ill. Will you come in and look at him, sir?'
He did not go in, but craned his neck forward and shook his head ominously as he espied the lad lying in a clean white bed, with the purple flush of fever suffusing his face, whilst with flaming eyes he looked fixedly at his mother.
'But now I think of it,' said the manufacturer, 'why don't you take him away? I'll fix you up at Sedan. Wrap him in a warm blanket, and come with us.'
'Oh! it can't be done, sir. The doctor told me it would kill the boy to move him. If only his poor father were still alive. But there are only we two left, and, needing one another as we do, we must be very careful. And, after all, perhaps those Prussians won't do any harm to a lone woman and a sick child.'
At this moment Weiss returned, delighted at having made every door in his house secure. 'They'll have to smash everything if they want to get in,' said he. 'And now let's get off. It won't be an easy job—we had better keep close to the houses or we may be hit by a bullet.'
The enemy was, indeed, evidently preparing a fresh attack, for the fusillade was increasing in violence, and there was no pause now in the hissing of the shells. A couple of the latter had already fallen in the road about a hundred yards away, whilst a third had plunged into the soft soil of a neighbouring garden without bursting.
'I must say good-bye to your little Auguste, Françoise,' resumed Weiss. 'Oh! he doesn't look so bad now; in a couple of days he'll be out of danger. Well, keep your spirits up. Mind you go indoors at once. Don't venture out here.'