"But, Babette," said her brother, "can you form no idea as to their intentions?"
"Indeed I cannot, God help me! I am simply waiting,—that's all."
"So, then, you don't know whether they are coming to save our honor, or to abandon us to our shame; whether the cannon which are playing an accompaniment to my words announce to us the approach of benefactors whom we ought to bless in our hearts, or treacherous villains who must be punished? Can you not tell me that, Babette?"
"Alas!" said Babette, "why do you ask such questions of me, poor wretched girl that I am, who know nothing except that I must pray and resign myself to my fate?"
"Why do I ask you that question, Babette? You remember what sentiments with regard to France and the French nation were instilled into us by our father. We have never looked upon the English as our fellow-countrymen, but as oppressors; and three months since, no music would have sounded more sweetly in my ears than that which fills them at this moment."
"Ah!" cried Jean, "to me it still sounds like the voice of my country calling me."
"Jean," rejoined Pierre, "the fatherland is nothing more than home on a grand scale; it is an enlargement of the family, an extension of the ties of blood. Ought we to sacrifice to it the lesser ties, the lesser family, the lesser home?"
"Mon Dieu! Pierre, what do you mean?" asked Babette.
"I mean this," Pierre replied: "in the rough plebeian work-stained hands of your brother, Babette, the fate of the city of Calais rests at this moment in all probability. Yes, these poor hands, blackened by my daily toil, have it in their power to deliver the key of France to her king."
"And can they hesitate?" cried Babette, who had imbibed with her mother's milk bitter hatred of the foreign yoke.