“It has been a year of days, Edmond,” she said uncomplainingly, “yet I knew that you would come. And the roses have been ready every morning. Yesterday I would have ridden to Hagenau, but Jules Picard met me and said he had news of you. He has been very good to us. I rode with him to Niederbronn on Sunday. It was a dreadful day. They killed a German soldier—he died almost at my feet—”
His merry laugh ran through the little house.
“How—you call it a dreadful day, Beatrix! A dreadful day because a Prussian was killed! What will you say when I tell you that at Saarbrück on Tuesday General Bataille killed four thousand of them? The tale is everywhere. It was a victory for the Emperor and the Prince. The Prussians ran like deer. They will run every day when we begin. And we shall begin to-morrow, chérie; to-morrow we go to the north.”
She could see his spirit waxing hot at the very thought of it; and his forgetfulness of all else but this consuming passion of the war was unmistakable from the first. He wished to hear of nothing, to speak of nothing but the troops of France then marching northward to their victory.
“You shall tell me the story at dinner, petite,” he said. “I have asked Chandellier and Giraud, and the Colonel himself may come. It is only for to-morrow, for we march again on Saturday. Duhesme is with us, and Michel; Douay goes forward to Weissenburg. We shall be very strong when de Failly reports. He has two divisions at Bitche, and Frossard is before Saarbrück. We have the cuirassiers and the Turcos and ninety-six guns besides the mitrailleuse. That is the medicine for the Prussians—the mitrailleuse. You should hear the tales they tell of the Prince’s baptism. Whole regiments mowed down as wheat by the wind. Not a man left to go to Berlin and tell the others about it. It was a triumph, a procession. Those that could run were the lucky ones. Ah, mignonne, did I not promise you that before the vines had ripened I would be home again?”
She took both his hands and looked up into his face very seriously, as one whose love wished more for him even than his own ambitions.
“God grant it!” she ejaculated fervently.
He kissed her for the words, but could not spare any praise for her pretty room or for the roses with which she had decked out the mantelpiece and the little windows. His thoughts were all of his comrades who were coming to dinner at the châlet. He talked incessantly of all that had happened in Strasburg and upon the march afterwards.