"For me, my place is here; we shall have to defend our position to the death!"
"Papa Jean-Claude!" cried Louise, stretching out her arms to him.
But he had already turned the corner; the doctor struck his horse, the sleigh sped over the snow, and behind followed Frantz Materne and his men, carbine on shoulder, while the firing still continued all round the farm. This is what Catherine Lefévre and Louise beheld in the space of a few minutes. Something strange and terrible had doubtless happened during the night. The old farm-mistress, recollecting her dream, grew silent and absorbed. Louise dried her tears, and threw a long look on the hillside she was leaving, and which was all alight, as if on fire. The horse, urged by the doctor, went at full speed; the mountaineers who formed the escort could hardly keep up with him. For a long time still the tumult, the sounds of the combat, the explosions, the hissing of bullets whistling through the trees, continued to be heard; but all this, by degrees, grew less and less, and in a short time, at the descent of the path, all had disappeared as in a dream.
The sledge had just reached the other acclivity of the mountain, and was speeding like an arrow through the darkness of the night. The gallop of the horse, the hurried breathing of the escort, the occasional cry of the doctor, "Up, Bruno! come up, then!" alone disturbed the silence.
A strong gust of cold air coming up from the valleys of the Sarre, brought from a distance, like a sigh, the ceaseless sounds of the torrents and the woods. The moon, just emerging from behind the cloud, shed her pale light over the gloomy forests of the Blanru with their tall fir-trees loaded with snow.
Ten minutes after, the sledge reached the corner of these woods, and Doctor Lorquin, turning round on his saddle, called out:
"Now, Frantz, what shall we do? This is the path which leads towards the hills of St. Quirin, and this other leads down to the Blanru; which shall we take?"
Frantz and his escort had come up with them. As they found themselves then on the eastern declivity of the Donon, they began to see again, on the other side, high in air, the firing of the Germans who came by the Grosmann.
They saw nothing but the flashes, and a few instants after the reports awoke the echoes of the abyss.