"What are you doing, thief? Let my cows alone, or I will break every bone in your body."
Then, at my cries, the sergeant and his squad of men, with drawn bayonets, Ykel, Marie-Rose, and even the grandmother, dragging herself along and leaning against the wall, entered the passage.
Marie-Rose cried out to me:
"Father, they want to take away our cows."
And the grandmother said lamentingly:
"Good Heavens! what will we have to live on? Those cows are our only possession; they are all that we have left!"
The sergeant, a tall, lean man, with a tight-fitting uniform and with a sword at his side, hearing Ykel say, "Here is the master! the cows belong to him!" turned his head, as if on a pivot, and looked at me over his shoulder; he wore spectacles under his helmet, and had red mustaches and a hooked nose; he looked like an owl, who turns his head without moving his body; a very bad face!
The crowd was blocking up the passage and the sergeant cried:
"Back! Clear the premises, corporal, and if they resist, fire upon them!"
The trampling of the sabots in the mud and the cries of the grandmother, weeping and sobbing, made this scene fearful.