Her face suddenly became white as death; all she was capable of uttering was a stifled moan: 

“My God! my God!”

Prosper went on, in words calculated to give her least alarm, and related what he had learned during the day by questioning one person and another.  No one doubted now that Goliah was a spy, that he had formerly come and settled in the country with the purpose of acquainting himself with its roads, its resources, the most insignificant details pertaining to the life of its inhabitants.  Men reminded one another of the time when he had worked for Father Fouchard on his farm and of his sudden disappearance; they spoke of the places he had had subsequently to that over toward Beaumont and Raucourt.  And now he was back again, holding a position of some sort at the military post of Sedan, its duties apparently not very well defined, going about from one village to another, denouncing this man, fining that, keeping an eye to the filling of the requisitions that made the peasants’ lives a burden to them.  That very morning he had frightened the people of Remilly almost out of their wits in relation to a delivery of flour, alleging it was short in weight and had not been furnished within the specified time.

“You are forewarned,” said Prosper in conclusion, “and now you’ll know what to do when he shows his face here—­”

She interrupted him with a terrified cry.

“Do you think he will come here?”

“Dame! it appears to me extremely probable he will.  It would show great lack of curiosity if he didn’t, since he knows he has a young one here that he has never seen.  And then there’s you, besides, and you’re not so very homely but he might like to have another look at you.”

She gave him an entreating glance that silenced his rude attempt at gallantry.  Charlot, awakened by the sound of their voices, had raised his head.  With the blinking eyes of one suddenly aroused from slumber he looked about the room, and recalled the words that some idle fellow of the village had taught him; and with the solemn gravity of a little man of three he announced: 

“Dey’re loafers, de Prussians!”

His mother went and caught him frantically in her arms and seated him on her lap.  Ah! the poor little waif, at once her delight and her despair, whom she loved with all her soul and who brought the tears to her eyes every time she looked on him, flesh of her flesh, whom it wrung her heart to hear the urchins with whom he consorted in the street tauntingly call “the little Prussian!” She kissed him, as if she would have forced the words back into his mouth.

“Who taught my darling such naughty words?  It’s not nice; you must not say them again, my loved one.”

Whereon Charlot, with the persistency of childhood, laughing and squirming, made haste to reiterate: 

“Dey’re dirty loafers, de Prussians!”

And when his mother burst into tears he clung about her neck and also began to howl dismally. Mon Dieu, what new evil was in store for her!  Was it not enough that she had lost in Honore the one single hope of her life, the assured promise of oblivion and future happiness? and was that man to appear upon the scene again to make her misery complete?