"Then what was the attraction out there?"
The young man looked inquiringly into his brother's face as though to say, why should he want to know, then answered:
"The country——Hark! that's the reveille now."
The sounds of the bugle, sharp, incisive, stopped. Now five or six strong untrained voices struck up "Le chant du départ." Occasional words reached the listeners where they lay. "Mourir pour la patrie ... le plus beau ... d'envie." The rest was lost in space.
Meanwhile the sounds were approaching; the two brothers motionless under the elms, each pursuing the train of thought evoked by the first notes of the bugle, could hear the conscripts of Sallertaine coming up the hill towards them.
Toussaint Lumineau, on his way home from vespers with his friend Massonneau, heard them also. Massonneau, an old tenant farmer, tall and thin, with skin as dark as a ripe ear of corn, the cartilages of his neck standing out like the breast-bone of a fowl, had acquired his name of "Le Glorieux" from a nervous twitch he had, which caused his chin to jerk upwards at every instant; Lumineau and he were discussing the latest events of La Fromentière. The two men represented the age and wisdom of the Marais; moreover, they could tell the names and nicknames of every living soul at Sallertaine, their history and parentage. As they reached the last houses of the town, both simultaneously stopped and turned their faces windward.
"Do you hear, Glorieux?" exclaimed Lumineau. "They are bugling and singing, poor boys! But the parents of those who are going may well weep."
"Yes," returned Massonneau, with a twitch of the chin, "the parents are to be pitied."
"I could name them, everyone, from only hearing their lad's voices," continued Lumineau. "You, good people of La Bounellerie, and you, of Grand Paiement; you, of Juch-Pie; you, of Linotteries; and you, of Belle-Blanche, I recognise your boys' voices. May it not do the same work for them that it did for my François! They are going to the place that changed my boy's heart—to the town that robbed me of him."
"As it robbed La Pinçonnière," said his companion.