As I left the church and stood looking at a poor ploughboy who, pale with apprehension, was endeavoring to give to himself a look of unconcern by smoking a big cigar in company with some soldiers, who were laughing at him for his pains, a hand touched my arm, and upon turning round I saw Francois Derblay with his wife and Henri and Louise.  A year’s illness could not have aged them more than the night they had just spent:  they all seemed completely worn out, and when the old man tried to speak his voice was so hollow and harsh that it frightened me.  “Look at Louise, sir,” he said at last, slowly shaking his white head:  “she and Madeleine there have been sitting up all night praying to God.”

“‘Cast thy bread upon the waters,’” I answered, “’and thou shalt find it after many days.’”

“Yes, sir,” said Louise:  “our curate tells us that prayers are like letters—­when properly stamped with faith they always reach their address.”

“Ay,” exclaimed Henri, “but does God always answer them?”

Francois drew a mass-book from his pocket and finding the Lord’s Prayer, “Look,” he said as he pointed to the words, Fiat voluntas tua in terra ut in coelo.

A few minutes after the church-clock struck nine, and by a common impulse all the population of the market-place hurried simultaneously toward the town-hall.  The door and ground-floor windows of this building opened at the same time, and we could see the mayor of St. Valery, with the commissioner of police and a captain of infantry in full uniform, seated at a table upon which stood a cylindrical box horizontally between two pivots.  This was the urn.  Two gendarmes, one upon each side, stood watching over it with their arms folded.  A man came to the window and shouted something which I could not catch, and at the same moment half a dozen mayors of districts, girt with their tri-color sashes, ran up the steps of the Hotel de Ville to draw for the order in which their respective communes were to present themselves.  This formality occupied five minutes, and the mayors then came out again to marshal their people into separate groups.  The district in which the Derblays lived was to go up third, and as he came to tell us this the mayor of N——­ patted Francois on the back and told him that three was an odd number and therefore lucky.  Poor Madeleine was so weak that she could hardly stand up:  Louise and I were obliged to support her.

At half-past nine, punctually, the conscription began, and amidst a breathless silence one of the mayor’s assistants came to the window and called out the first name:  “Adolphe Monnier, of the commune of S——­;” and a tall country-boy, elbowing his way through the crowd, walked up into the town-hall.  The commissioner of police gave the round box a touch, and as it turned round some six or seven times one might almost have heard a raindrop fall.  “Now,” said he laughing, “good luck to you!” and the peasant, plunging his hand into the trap of the box, drew out a little piece of card-board rolled into a curl.  “No. 17,” shouted the infantry captain, taking it from his hands and reading it, whilst a loud roar of laughter from the mob hailed the dismal face with which the unhappy lad heard of his ill-success.