“Yes, go out and play with your toy, Papa Tuck-of-Drum,” cried young Brienne after him. Laplume did not hear. They marched next to the Café de l’Ecu. The village postmaster, shaking still and casting nervous looks round him like a frightened horse, was telling his story to a similar assembly.
“Pah!” muttered old Dufour, twirling his thin mustache, “these villages are the rubbish heaps of France. The men are all away.” Again the appeal was made. A fat man, with fishy eyes and yellow, pendulous cheeks, shrugged his shoulders and raised protesting hands. “What can we do? What can we do?”
“They would finish us all with a volley. We should be killed,” whined another man.
“Killed? And what then?” Laplume snorted with fierce contempt.
“Let us be killed then!” broke in Dufour, crashing his stick down on the sanded floor. “It would be worth it. A thousand times worth it! Let each village in France raise a wall of dead against the invaders!”
Bergeret nodded his foolish head again and again with emphasis. The fat man began to talk fast, volubly, excitedly, pouring torrents of abuse on the Emperor, generals, government, the enemy, waving his fat hands, shrugging his fat shoulders. The curtained door of the café opened. He stopped suddenly and lamely. A countryman burst in.
“They are coming—they are coming!” he shrieked. “I have seen them in the road. I ran through the woods. Hundreds of them! I have seen their lances—the sun on their lances!”
“Come!” cried Dominique Laplume in a voice of thunder. “In the name of France!”
No one stirred. He looked round, scorn in his old eyes. “We will go, then—Bergeret, Dufour—my old comrades.” His voice choked with bewilderment, disappointment, anger.