"And in my room?"
"Just a small streak at the bottom."
Into the smallest details of our life the Germans had managed to introduce something vexatious.
Yet Morny being a quiet village, with a prudent Mayor at its head, we were not so much to be pitied during the first months of the occupation. It might perhaps be thought that we were too easily resigned to fate, that we yielded too readily to the enemy's orders. Of course a rebellion, followed by fearful punishment, would look well in a story. But to what purpose should we attempt what would certainly bring new harsh measures upon our neighbours? Ah, if the least of our actions might have been useful to the country we were burning to serve, how eagerly we—even the women—would have risked all to be helpful, and exposed our lives, our liberty. But, alas, we were persuaded that we were helpless, useless, even of no worth at all. We were mere ciphers, as unimportant to one army as to the other, just like clods of earth in the fields! I know that a well-placed clod may cause a man to fall, and you may be sure that when we found an opportunity we never failed to make a Prussian stumble. But it would have been downright folly to think of an open rebellion, and we knew it well, though we sometimes talked of it.
The German soldiers said:
"French women not bad; Belgian run after us with hay-forks." Alas, what a price poor Belgium paid for her heroism!
Soon after their arrival, the invaders took care to explain how they intended to be obeyed, and to insist that the community would be responsible for all individual acts. The Hussars were very near burning Chevregny while we were there, because some one—evidently one of the French convoys escaped from the fight, and hidden in the wood—fired at a battalion passing on the road. One man was wounded in the foot. Furious, the commander talked of setting the whole village on fire, and it escaped only because the priest proved that a soldier had fired the gun and not one of his flock.
At Laon, a German soldier was killed by a civilian—in a brawl after drinking, French witnesses said; while asleep, the German report declared. We have read the poster stuck up in Laon. The end ran thus:
"The house where the crime was committed has been set on fire, and the guilty man will be shot. If a similar deed occurs again, the quarter where it takes place will be burnt, and the town condemned to pay a million francs."
We did not require telling twice that it was not worth while. Bought one at a time, the Prussians were really too expensive. An invaded country could not afford them at such a price! Then all power of action had been taken away from us; we could but try to the utmost of our power to save as much of our goods as possible, to set bounds, with cunning, which is the arm of the weak, to the ravages of the scourge. If impotent anger often moved the women into tears, what shall we say of the men? How shall we depict the fate of thousands of soldiers ordered back home on the eve of the invasion? They are soldiers, they ought to fight for their country. They watch from afar the different stages of the battle, whose manifold din reaches them. They stand, panting, with clenched fists. They think: "This is going on, such a thing is happening. If I were with my brothers, I would fall upon the enemy, I would fight against the invaders."