With a look of despair, Mme. Laineux went and fetched an officer who was eating upstairs.
"Come and see what your men are doing."
The officer came, looked round, and declared:
"C'est la kerre, Matame!"
And he went back to his lunch.
The shop cleared out, the men made farther search into the house, and discovered a small store-room, which they emptied with equal activity. For the pleasure of the thing, they cut stockings to transform them into socks, and spilled ink on petticoats and blouses. The last comers took the trap from the coach-house, the horse out of his stable, put the horse in the trap, and drove off with a light heart.
A bitter disenchantment filled our tired hearts. Nothing would have astonished us. In the afternoon two soldiers entered the farm, but at the sight of the yard crowded with men and dogs, withdrew. Broken down with weariness, we went early to bed. A ladder about twenty feet high led to a square opening through which we climbed into the hay-loft. There every one of us made a hole in the hay and buried herself in it. Now, in theory, hay offers a soft and sweet-smelling couch. The reality is slightly different. You may find comfort in this bed if you are wrapped up in cloaks and shawls to keep out the cold of the night, but the odour of the hay will make you sneeze, you will soon feel stiff in your legs, and hard blades of grass will prick your ankles and your neck.
Despite minor annoyances, my companions were very soon slumbering. For my part I could not sleep. I was feverish and ... my golden waistband played tricks and got into my ribs. The slanting light of the moon gave an added pallor to the faces of the four sleeping girls, whose presence on their bed of hay, beneath the beams of the loft which spiders had covered with their grey lace, was astonishing enough. It seemed as though the four heads had been put there for a whim, and the bodies laid down somewhere else. I fell into a doze. I saw hundreds of Prussians pass before my eyes, laden with goods, and carrying away the very houses. Then there came a multitude of galloping horses, which all vanished from my sight, and I was asleep.
The next day an impudent sunbeam woke us up by caressing our eyelids. In the barn below the refugees were bustling about noisily. The first moment after awaking was cruel; we had, as Stendhal says, "to learn our misery afresh." One after the other, like fowls getting out of the henhouse, we went down our long ladder, and ran off to wash and to hear the latest news.
That day also was a day of tears.