Then the calls grew hoarse, strangled, and finally ceased. The joy of some and the grief of others were in horrible contrast. Louise wept hot tears in Hullin's arms.
"Ah! Jean-Claude," said Mother Lefevre; "you have much to learn of your daughter. Now I will tell you nothing, but we were attacked—"
"Yes, we will talk of it by and by. Time presses," interrupted Hullin. "The Donon road is lost; the Cossacks may be here at daybreak, and we have yet many things to do."
He entered the farm-house. All followed. Duchene had just thrown a fagot upon the fire. Those faces, black with powder, but still breathing the fire of battle; those garments, torn by bayonet-thrusts, some of them bloody, advancing from darkness into the full light, offered a strange spectacle. Kasper, whose handkerchief was bound around his forehead, had received a sabre-cut; his bayonet, blouse, and high blue cloth gaiters were stained with blood. Old Materne, thanks to his imperturbable presence of mind, came safe and sound from the fray. The remnants of the two troops of Jerome and Hullin were thus united. They showed the same fierce countenances, animated by the same energy and desire for vengeance, save that the last, worn-out with weariness, sat wherever they might find room—on the fagots, the hearth—with their heads bowed upon their hands, and their elbows resting on their knees. The others looked around, unable to realize that Hans, Juson, Daniel, had disappeared for ever, and exchanging questions followed by long periods of silence. Materne's two sons held each other by the arms, as if each feared he would lose his brother, and their father, behind them, leaning against the wall, gazed on with looks of delight.
"They are there; I see them," he seemed to say. "And they are famous fellows, and both have escaped." The good man coughed, and when some one came to speak to him about Pierre, or Jacques, or Nicolas—of a son or a brother—he replied at random, "Ay, ay, there are a good many stretched out yonder; but what would you have? War is war. Your Nicolas did his duty. Be consoled." And then he thought, "My boys are out of the scrape, and that is the principal thing."
Catherine set the table with Louise. Soon Duchene, returning from the cellar with a cask of wine upon his shoulder, placed it on the sideboard. He opened it, and each of the partisans presented his glass, or cup, or pitcher, to the purple fountain, which gave back the leaping flames on the hearth in a thousand reflections.
"Eat and drink!" cried the old mistress of the house. "All is not yet ended; you will yet need strength. Frantz, hand me down those hams. Here are bread and knives. Be seated, my children."
Frantz, with his bayonet, roasted the hams at the fire.
Benches were brought forward; the men sat down, and ate with that keen appetite which neither present grief nor thought of future evil can make mountaineers forget. But all this did not keep sorrow from the hearts of these brave fellows, and sometimes one, sometimes another, would stop, drop his fork, and leave the table, saying,