第17章

"I know," said Bernadou, with a dark radiance in his azure eyes. "But then it is a choice between disgrace and the flames; let us only take heed to be clear of the first--the last must rage as God wills." But they screamed and mouthed and hissed at him: "Oh yes! fine talk, fine talk! See your own roof in flames if you will; you shall not ruin ours. Do what you will with your own neck; keep it erect or hang by it, as you choose. But you have no right to give your neighbours over to death, whether they will or no." He strove, he pleaded, he conjured, he struggled with them half the night, with the salt tears running down his cheeks, and all his gentle blood burning with righteous wrath and loathing shame, stirred for the first time in all his life to a rude, simple, passionate eloquence. But they were not persuaded. Their few gold pieces hidden in the rafters, their few feeble sheep starving in the folds, their own miserable lives, all hungry, woe-begone, and spent in daily terrors--these were still dear to them, and they would not imperil them. They called him a madman; they denounced him as one who would be their murderer; they threw themselves on him and demanded his musket, to bury it with the rest under the altar in the old chapel on the hill. Bernadou's eyes flashed fire; his breast heaved; his nerves quivered; he shook them off and strode a step forward. "As you live," he muttered, "I have a mind to fire on you, rather than let you live to shame yourselves and me!" Reine Allix, who stood by him silent all the while, laid her hand on his shoulder. "My boy," she said in his ear, "you are right, and they are wrong. Yet let not dissension between brethren open the door for the enemy to enter thereby into your homes. Do what you will with your own life, Bernadou,--it is yours,--but leave them to do as they will with theirs. You cannot make sheep into lions, and let not the first blood shed here be a brother's." Bernadou's head dropped on his breast. "Do as you will," he muttered to his neighbours. They took his musket from him, and in the darkness of the night stole silently up the wooded chapel hill and buried it, with all their other arms, under the altar where the white Christ hung. "We are safe now," said Mathurin, the miller, to the patriots of the tavern. "Had that madman had his way, he had destroyed us all." Reine Allix softly led her grandson across his own threshold, and drew his head down to hers, and kissed him between the eyes. "You did what you could, Bernadou," she said to him; "let the rest come as it will." Then she turned from him, and flung her cloak over her head, and sank down, weeping bitterly; for she had lived through ninety-three years only to see this agony at the last. Bernadou, now that all means of defence was gone from him, and the only thing left to him to deal with was his own life, had become quiet and silent and passionless, as was his habit. He would have fought like a mastiff for his home, but this they had forbidden him to do, and he was passive and without hope. He shut to his door, and sat down with his hand in that of Reine Allix and his arm around his wife. "There is nothing to do but to wait," he said, sadly. The day seemed very long in coming. The firing ceased for a while; then its roll commenced afresh, and grew nearer to the village. Then again all was still. At noon a shepherd staggered into the place, pale, bleeding, bruised, covered with mire. The Prussians, he told them, had forced him to be their guide, had knotted him tight to a trooper's saddle, and had dragged him with them until he was half dead with fatigue and pain. At night he had broken from them and had fled. They were close at hand, he said, and had burned the town from end to end because a man had fired at them from a housetop. That was all he knew. Bernadou, who had gone out to hear his news, returned into the house and sat down and hid his face within his hands. "If I resist you are all lost," he muttered.