"I have finished, mother. I'm here. There's nothing to be frightened at; it isn't dark yet."
Then she brought in her fagots and her logs, and piled them up at the chimney-side, went out again to close the shutters—enormous shutters of solid oak—and then, when she again came in, pushed the heavy bolts of the door.
Her mother was spinning by the fire, a wrinkled old woman who had grown timorous with age.
"I don't like father to be out," said she. "Two women have no strength."
The younger answered: "Oh, I could very well kill a wolf or a Prussian, I can tell you." And she turned her eyes to a large revolver hanging over the fireplace. Her husband had been put into the army at the beginning of the Prussian invasion, and the two women had remained alone with her father, the old gamekeeper, Nicholas Pichou, who had obstinately refused to leave his home and go into the town.
The nearest town was Rethel, an old fortress perched on a rock. It was a patriotic place, and the townspeople had resolved to resist the invaders, to close their gates and stand a siege, according to the traditions of the city. Twice before, under Henry IV and under Louis XIV, the inhabitants of Rethel had won fame by heroic defenses. They would do the same this time; by Heaven, they would, or they would be burned within their walls.
So they had bought cannons and rifles, and equipped a force, and formed battalions and companies, and they drilled all day long in the Place d'Armes. All of them—bakers, grocers, butchers, notaries, attorneys, carpenters, booksellers, even the chemists—went through their maneuvres in due rotation at regular hours, under the orders of M. Lavigne, who had once been a non-commissioned officer in the dragoons, and now was a draper, having married the daughter and inherited the shop of old M. Ravaudan.
He had taken the rank of major in command of the place, and all the young men having gone to join the army, he enrolled all the others who were eager for resistance. The stout men now walked the streets at the pace of professional pedestrians, in order to bring down their fat, and to lengthen their breath; the weak ones carried burdens, in order to strengthen their muscles.
The Prussians were expected. But the Prussians did not appear. Yet they were not far off; for their scouts had already twice pushed across the forest as far as Nicholas Pichou's lodge.
The old keeper, who could run like a fox, had gone to warn the town. The guns had been pointed, but the enemy had not shown.