"Do you hear, Philippe? Do you understand? The German speech on French soil! Their language forced upon us!"
"Oh, no!" he said. "That can't be.... That will never be!"
"Why should it never be? Invasion comes first ... and then conquest ... and subjection...."
Near them, the captain ordered:
"Let no one stir!"
Bullets spluttered against the walls, while the sounds of firing reverberated. A window-pane was smashed on the floor above. And more bullets broke fragments of stone from the coping of the parapet. The enemy, surprised at the disappearance of the French troops, were feeling their way before passing below that house, whose gloomy aspect must needs strike them as suspicious.
"Ah!" said a soldier, spinning on his heels and falling on the threshold of the drawing-room, his face covered with blood.
The women ran to his assistance.
Philippe gazed haggard-eyed at that man who was about to die, at that man who belonged to the same race, who lived under the same sky as himself, who breathed the same air, ate the same bread and drank the same wine.
Marthe had taken down a rifle and handed it to Philippe. He grasped it with a sort of despair: