She was accompanied by a child of three or four years old and in her arms carried another, in swaddling-clothes, who was whimpering.
"Of course they'll have to go," said Victor. "And what about me? You'll see, they'll call me to the colours, though I'm past the age!... You'll see!..."
"You as well as the rest," grinned the gardener, who now entered in his turn. "As long as one can hold a rifle.... But our eldest, Henriot, who's sixteen: do you think they'll forget him?"
"Oh, as for him," scolded the mother, "I shall hide him if they try to take him from me!"
"And what about the gendarmes?"
All were gesticulating and talking together. And Victor repeated:
"Meantime, we had better be off. Shut up the house and go. That's the wisest. We can't remain here like this, at two steps from the frontier."
In his eyes, war represented the disordered flight of the old men and the women, running away in herds and pushing before them carts loaded with furniture and bedding. And he stamped his foot, resolved upon making an immediate move.
But a great hullabaloo arose on the terrace. A little farm-labourer came rushing into the drawing-room: