By this time the school was crowding about us, as curious as ourselves. The bell clanged for classes to resume, but no one moved. The pion screamed impotently in the rear. None took any notice, and the windows above were black with the gowns of the professors.
Some thought that the noise was only the letting off of blasts in the Pierre de Montagne quarries, but it was pointed out that such explosions took place only at eight, one, and four, the hours when the men would be out of the quarries at their meals. Besides, the crackle of small fire was unaccounted for, and each moment it became more lively.
Practice at the Chassepot factories? Very likely—but at human targets.
Finally the college authorities caused discipline to prevail, and Deventer and I watched alone by the parapet. We had both passed our bachot, and were an honour to the college. So the strictness of rule and line was relaxed in our case.
Our hearts beat, and in the instancy of our watch we would not have turned our heads if the proviseur himself had been at our side.
Presently we could see soldiers marching, the flash of bayonets, and groups of a dozen, as if pushed beyond their patience, turning and firing with rapid irregularity. All this in flashes of vision, mostly at the bridge-end, or at the intersection of two streets. Through the northern gate a kind of uncertain retreat began to dribble—the red breeches of the linesmen, the canter of the artillery horses attacking the hill, with stragglers here and there looking about for their regiments.
Neither Deventer nor I knew enough to explain these things.
"There are no Germans nearer than Toul or Besançon," he said, with a puzzled anxiety.
The field guns answered him smartly. From all the houses about the northern gate a storm of rifle fire broke out. The soldiers on foot hastened their retreat. The artillerymen, better led or of firmer courage, faced about, and with one volley pitted the façades of the houses from which the attack had come. They withdrew regularly, covering the retreat of the infantry, and spat out their little devils' claws of shrapnel over every group which showed itself outside the wall. Slowly the soldiers passed out of sight. The artillery bucketed over the knolls of the Montagne of Aramon among the evergreen odoriferous plants and the faint traces of the last snow wreaths.
There was nothing left for us to see now except the town of Aramon, its green and white houses sleeping in the sun, the tall chimney of the Small Arms Factory, now smokeless—and the broad Rhône sweeping grave and placid between them and us.