When the invaders alarmed strong and courageous men, I, who am not a thunderbolt of war, how could I put a good face on the matter? Geneviève, on the other hand, was more indignant than frightened, but, as to myself, I was frightened to death.
It was the reign of terror, terror, terror. And you do not understand the meaning of this, you who have not rushed to your light to blow it out for fear its pale glimmer would betray your presence, who have not stopped panting in the dark to listen to angry yells uttered close to your windows, to hear your shutters shake and creak under the assailants' blows—you who have not realised that you are a woman and weak, and that a dozen brutes will seek more than your life if they succeed in their design. You do not know what it is like, but we know it from sad experience, and if the horrors that have overwhelmed other places have been spared us, at least we have felt their envenomed breath, and our bodies and souls have not yet set themselves free from the poison.
CHAPTER IX
Thus ground down and sunk in grief we reached the end of the year. You must not think that we were as yet urged to desperation. The courageous inhabitants who, after hours' waiting, got a passport to go to Laon always came back with the most comforting information.
"The news is very good ... very good. I should not be astonished if the Germans went away in a short time."
The farmer's wife of the "Huchettes" who daily took milk to Laon—so many bottles were requisitioned for the Red Cross—mysteriously said with her forefinger lifted up:
"I have good hope, good hope, that 'our French' will be back before the 1st of January."
And the cannon was ever booming; its voice cheered us; we never got weary of listening to it and studying it. Once we even believed that it promised our deliverance. It was the 21st of December, at about eleven in the evening. Geneviève and I were gloomily reading books held quite close to the light, when Colette knocked at our door and appeared in her nightgown: