"The enemy is in Alsace!"
Those who have never seen such men—men accustomed to long warfare, and hard as iron—can have no idea of them. And then if you had heard the exclamation, "The enemy is in Alsace!" it would have made you tremble.
The veterans had gone away; the sergeant, as he saw the hussar fasten his horse at the governor's door, said to me: "Ah, well, Father Moses, now we shall see the whites of their eyes!"
He laughed, and the others seemed pleased.
As for myself, I set forth quickly, with my head bent, and in my terror repeating to myself the words of the prophet:
"One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king that his passages are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.
"The mighty men have forborne to fight, they have remained in their holds, their might hath failed, and the bars are broken.
"Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms, appoint a captain against her.
"And the land shall tremble and sorrow; for every purpose of the Lord shall be performed, to make the land a desolation without an inhabitant!"
I saw my ruin at hand—the destruction of my hopes.