I imagined great battles. The grandmother also was very uneasy; she sat by the window and said:
"Listen, Frederick, do you hear nothing?"
And I listened; it was only the wind among the dry leaves.
Sometimes, but rarely, the city seemed to awake; so a few cannon shots thundered amid the echoes from Quatre Vents to Mittelbroun and then all was silent again. The idea of Metz sustained us; it was from there, above all, that we hoped to obtain succour.
I have nothing more to tell you about this autumn of 1870; no news, no visits, and towards the last but little hope.
But I must tell you now about a thing that surprised us a good deal, that we could not understand, and which unhappily has now become too clear for us, like many other things.
XIV
About two weeks after the establishment of Bismark Bohlen at Hagenau, we saw arrive one morning in the valley a vehicle similar to those used by the Germans who were starting for America before the invention of railroads—a long wagon, loaded with hundreds of old traps, straw beds, bedsteads, frying-pans, lanterns, etc., with a muddy dog and an unkempt wife and a horde of scabby children, and the master himself leading his sorry jade by the bridle.
We looked at them in amazement, thinking, "What does all this mean? What are these people coming to do among us?"
Under the cover near the pole the woman, already old, yellow, and wrinkled, her cap put on awry, was picking the heads of the children, who were swarming in the straw, boys and girls, all light-haired and chubby and pussy, as potato-eaters always are.