The hospital had to be evacuated in dreadful haste. It was more dreadful than anything she had ever imagined. There was a day when the old town-crier went through the streets, beating a drum, and calling out the warning to evacuate. All the people who could do so fled. They fled, and left everything they possessed behind them.
It was said that when the troops were passed, the bridge at the bend of the river must be blown up after them, and so the village would be cut off and left to the enemy.
Rémy made the villagers give him the keys of their houses, and he put up a notice in the Grand' Place that any one wishing to enter the houses must apply for the keys to the château; he wrote the notice in German.
Claire was proud that he did not suggest that she should go away, that he took for granted she was at least as strong as he.
The explosion of the blowing up of the old bridge was like the final note of all the things that used to be. The dust of the valley settled down for an hour, and things seemed strangely quiet.
All the people of the village who had not been able to get away came to the château, the very old people and the sick, and some women with babies, begging shelter for the night.
Three wounded men, whom it had been impossible to remove, were left behind in the great Salle des Miroirs. Claire was with them all night. The curé had stayed, and the sage-femme of the village had also remained to help her; the doctor and the chemist were both fled.
One of the men died in the night.
Another, who was delirious, kept singing all the time, "Auprès de ma Blonde."
It frightened Claire. There was a moment when she was uncontrollably afraid. She was afraid, not of the things that were coming to pass, but with a nightmare panic of the wounded man, singing, "Auprès de ma Blonde."