In the country the word "requisition" does not exist. You are "required"—that is all. Mouton, then, was required to go and fetch provender. Very well. He could not tempt the greed of the Germans, being well stricken in years, and somewhat lame.
"But who will drive Mouton?" asked Mme. Laroye.
"Well, I don't know, perhaps me," said Liza.
"You don't say so, Liza," her mistress cried out. "There are men enough left in the village to do that. Now a woman has to stay at home, that is her right place."
In the afternoon Liza came back, and said in a triumphant tone:
"The blacksmith is driving to Pont-Avers. I have told them it was not a woman's job."
The good creature was delighted with her saying, and repeated over and over again:
"I told them so ... it is not a woman's job."
Alas, how many things women had to take charge of which were not "women's jobs"! How courageous and hard-working they were, the women of the villages! The men had gone to the war, and left the harvest ungathered. "The work must be done," said the women, and, without a moment's rest, they bent in toil to the earth. We, too, did our share. Perched upon steep ladders or hazardous trees, we picked thousands of small blue plums, which Liza crammed into big-bellied casks. After mysterious treatment the fruit was expected to turn into an exquisite brandy, pronounced by the well-skilled old gossips a cure for every ill. Better than that, we shut up with our own hands Mme. Laroye's hiding-place. For who would have believed it? Her house was not in order! She had buried a cash-box full of golden coins in her garden, but we thought she had better remove a great many other things just as valuable as money. Besides, she had a hiding-place. It was not a fanciful hiding-place like ours, but a serious hiding-place, contrived by a workman, a past-master in digging and masonry. The cellar opens into the arched entrance of the house. In a corner of this cellar is a trap-door which, lifted up, leads to a break-neck flight of steps hewn out in the rock. At the foot of the steps is a smaller cellar, which is the hiding-place. We took down the other silver, linen, fine old shawls, at which we gazed with envious eyes, and then the wine.
"Not all the wine, dear cousin, not all. They will never believe you have no wine at all."