Grédel, after having read with clinched teeth, ran off like a mad woman, uttering fearful screams: "Oh! the wretches! ... Oh! my poor Jean Baptiste! ... Oh! the thieves! ... Oh! my poor Jean Baptiste!"
She seemed to be seeking something to fight with. And as we stood confounded at her outcries, I said: "Grédel, for Heaven's sake don't scandalize us in this way. The people will hear you from the other end of the village!" She answered in a fury: "Hold your tongue! You are the cause of it all!"
"I!" said I, indignantly.
"Yes, you!" she shrieked, with a terrible flashing in her eyes: "you, with your Plébiscite; deceiving everybody by promising them peace! You deserve to be along with Bazaine and the rest of them."
And my wife cried: "That girl will be the death of us."
She had sat down upon the stairs. Marie Anne, with her hands clasped, said: "Do forgive her; her mind is going."
Never had I felt so humbled; to be treated thus by my own daughter! But Grédel respected nothing now; and Cousin George, trying to get in a word, she exclaimed: "You! you! an old soldier! Are you not ashamed of staying here, instead of going to fight? The Landwehr are as old as you, with their gray hairs and their spectacles; they don't make speeches; they all march. And that's why we are beaten!"
At last I became furious; and I was looking for my cowhide behind the door, to bring her to her senses, when, unfortunately, a Landwehr came in to ask if the flour was ready. The moment Grédel caught sight of him, she uttered such a savage shriek that my ears still tingle with it, and in a second she had laid hold of her hatchet; George had scarcely time to seize her by her twisted back hair, when the hatchet had flown from her hand, whizzing through the air, and was quivering three inches deep in the door-post.
The Landwehr, an elderly man, with great eyes and a red nose, had seen the steel flash past close to his ear; he had heard it whiz, and as Grédel was struggling with George, crying: "Oh, the villain; I have missed him!" he turned, and ran off at the top of his speed. I ran to the mill-dam, supposing he was going to the mayor's, but no, he ran a great deal farther than that, and never stopped till he reached Wéchem.
Then Grédel became aware that she had made a mistake; she went up into her room, put on her shoes, took her basket, went into the kitchen for a knife and a loaf, and then she left the house; running down the other side of the hill to gain the Krapenfelz, where our cow was with several others, under the charge of the old rag-dealer.