It was too much for us. I placed the lantern on the floor and went down, feeling as if my thighs were broken. I wanted to sit down at every step.
Out of doors they were shouting as if it were morning, and in a more frightful way. Chimneys were falling, and women running to the windows; but I paid no attention to it, I was so frightened myself.
The two Carabins had gone away paler than death.
All that night I was ill. Sorlé and Zeffen were no more at ease than myself. The sergeant kept on alone, placing the logs and making them fast. About midnight he came down.
"Father Moses," said he, "the roof is screened, but your two men are cowards; they left me alone."
I thanked him, and told him that we were all sick, and as for myself I had never felt anything like it. He laughed.
"I know what that is," said he. "Conscripts always feel so when they hear the first ball; but that is soon over—they only need to get a little used to it."
Then he went to bed, and everybody in the house, except myself, went to sleep.
The Russians did not fire after ten o'clock that night; they had only tried one or two field-pieces, to warn us of what they had in store.
All this, Fritz, was but the beginning of the blockade; you are going to hear now of the miseries we endured for three months.