Ever since eight o’clock Weiss, abandoned by the retiring troops, had been a self-made prisoner there.  His return to Sedan had become an impossibility, for the Bavarians, immediately upon the withdrawal of the French, had swarmed down from the park of Montivilliers and occupied the road.  He was alone and defenseless, save for his musket and what few cartridges were left him, when he beheld before his door a little band of soldiers, ten in number, abandoned, like himself, and parted from their comrades, looking about them for a place where they might defend themselves and sell their lives dearly.  He ran downstairs to admit them, and thenceforth the house had a garrison, a lieutenant, corporal and eight men, all bitterly inflamed against the enemy, and resolved never to surrender.

“What, Laurent, you here!” he exclaimed, surprised to recognize among the soldiers a tall, lean young man, who held in his hand a musket, doubtless taken from some corpse.

Laurent was dressed in jacket and trousers of blue cloth; he was helper to a gardener of the neighborhood, and had lately lost his mother and his wife, both of whom had been carried off by the same insidious fever.

“And why shouldn’t I be?” he replied.  “All I have is my skin, and I’m willing to give that.  And then I am not such a bad shot, you know, and it will be just fun for me to blaze away at those rascals and knock one of ’em over every time.”

The lieutenant and the corporal had already begun to make an inspection of the premises.  There was nothing to be done on the ground floor; all they did was to push the furniture against the door and windows in such a way as to form as secure a barricade as possible.  After attending to that they proceeded to arrange a plan for the defense of the three small rooms of the first floor and the open attic, making no change, however, in the measures that had been already taken by Weiss, the protection of the windows by mattresses, the loopholes cut here and there in the slats of the blinds.  As the lieutenant was leaning from the window to take a survey of their surroundings, he heard the wailing cry of a child.

“What is that?” he asked.

Weiss looked from the window, and, in the adjoining dyehouse, beheld the little sick boy, Charles, his scarlet face resting on the white pillow, imploringly begging his mother to bring him a drink:  his mother, who lay dead across the threshold, beyond hearing or answering.  With a sorrowful expression he replied: 

“It is a poor little child next door, there, crying for his mother, who was killed by a Prussian shell.”

“Tonnerre de Dieu!” muttered Laurent, “how are they ever going to pay for all these things!”