Jorancé could not help laughing:
"Do you think that will stop the Prussians?"
"Don't laugh, my friend. … You know the view I take of my duty and what I am doing. But it is just as well that Philippe should know, too. Sit down, my boy."
He himself sat down, put aside the pipe which he was smoking and began, with the obvious satisfaction of a man who is at last able to speak of what he has most at heart:
"You know the frontier, Philippe, or rather the German side of the frontier? … A craggy cliff, a series of peaks and ravines which make this part of the Vosges an insuperable rampart. … "
"Yes, absolutely insuperable," said Philippe.
"That's a mistake!" exclaimed Morestal. "A fatal mistake! From the first moment when I began to think of these matters, I believed that a day would come when the enemy would attack that rampart."
"Impossible!"
"That day has come, Philippe. For the last six months, not a week has passed without my meeting some suspicious figure over there or knocking up against men walking about in smocks that were hardly enough to conceal their uniform. … It is a constant, progressive underhand work. Everybody is helping in it. The electric factory which the Wildermann firm has run up in that ridiculous fashion on the edge of the precipice is only a make-believe. The road that leads to it is a military road. From the factory to the Col du Diable is less than half a mile. One effort and the frontier's crossed."
"By a company," objected Jorancé.
"Where a company passes, a regiment can pass and a brigade can follow. … At Börsweilen, five miles from the Vosges, there are three thousand German soldiers: on a war-footing, mark you. At Gernach, twelve miles further, there are twelve thousand; and four thousand horses; and eight hundred waggons. By the evening of the day on which war is declared, perhaps even earlier, those fifteen thousand men will have crossed the Col du Diable. It's not a surprise which they mean to attempt: that wouldn't be worth their while. It is the absolute crossing of the frontier, the taking possession of our ridges, the occupation of Saint-Élophe. When our troops arrive, it will be too late! They will find Noirmont cut off, Belfort threatened, the south of the Vosges invaded. … You can picture the moral effect: we shall be done for! That is what is being prepared in the dark. That is what you have been unable to see, Jorancé, in spite of all your watchfulness … and in spite of my warnings."
"I wrote to the prefect last week."
"You should have written last year! All this time, the other has been coming on, the other has been advancing. … He hardly takes the trouble to conceal himself. … There … listen to him … listen to him. … "
In the far distance, like the sound of an echo, deadened by the mass of trees, a bugle-call had rung out, somewhere, through the air. It was an indistinct call, but Morestal was not mistaken and he hissed:
"Ah, it's he! … It's he. … I know the voice of Germany. … I know it when I hear it … the hoarse, the odious voice! … "
Presently, Philippe, who had not taken his eyes off his father, said:
"And then, father?"
"And then, my son, it was in anticipation of that day that I built my house on this hill, that I surrounded my gardens with a wall, that, unknown to anybody, I stocked the out-houses with means of defence: ammunition, bags of sand, gun-powder … that, in short, I prepared for an alarm by setting up this unsuspected little fortress at twenty minutes from the Col du Diable … on the very threshold of the frontier!"
He had planted himself with his face to the east, with his face to the enemy; and, clutching his hips with his clenched hands, in an attitude of defiance, he seemed to be awaiting the inevitable assault.
The special commissary, who still feared that his zeal had been caught napping in this business, growled:
"Your shanty won't hold out for an hour."
"And who tells you," shouted Morestal, "who tells you that that hour is not exactly the one hour which we shall want to gain? … An hour! You never spoke a truer word: an hour of resistance to the first attack! An hour of delay! … That's what I wanted, that's what I offer to my country. Let every one be doing as I am, to the best of his power, let every one be haunted to fever-point by the obsession of the personal service which it is his duty to render to the country; and, if war breaks out, you shall see how a great nation can take its revenge!"
"And suppose we are beaten, in spite of all?" Philippe asked again.
"What's that?"
Old Morestal turned to his son as though he had received a blow; and a rush of blood inflamed his features. He looked Philippe in the face:
"What do you say?"
Philippe had an inkling of the conflict that would hurl them one against the other if he dared to state his objections more minutely. And he uttered words at random:
"Of course, the supposition is not one of those which we can entertain. … But, all the same … don't you think we ought to face the possibility? … "
"Face the possibility of defeat?" echoed the old man, who seemed thunderstruck. "Are you suggesting that the fear of that ought to influence France in her conduct?"
A diversion relieved Philippe of his difficulty. Some one had appeared from the staircase at the end of the terrace and in so noisy a fashion that Morestal did not wait for his son to reply:
"Is that you, Saboureux? What a row you're making!"
It was Farmer Saboureux, whose house could be seen on the Col du Diable. He was accompanied by an old, ragged tramp.
Saboureux had come to complain. Some soldiers taking part in the manœuvres had helped themselves to two of his chickens and a duck. He seemed beside himself, furious at the catastrophe:
"Only, I've a witness in old Poussière here. And I want an indemnity, not to speak of damages and punishment. I call it a calamity, I do: soldiers of our own country! … I'm a good Frenchman, but, all the same … "
Morestal was too much absorbed in the discussion of his favourite ideas to take the least interest in the man's troubles; and the farmer's presence, on the contrary, seemed to him an excellent reason for returning to the subject in hand. They had other things to talk about than chickens and ducks! What about the chances of war? And the alarming rumours that were current?
"What do you say, Saboureux?"
The farmer presented the typical appearance of those peasants whom we sometimes find in the eastern provinces and who, with their stern, clean-shaven faces, like the faces on ancient medals, remind us of our Roman ancestors rather than of the Gauls or Francs. He had marched to battle in 1870 with the others, perishing with hunger and wretchedness, risking his skin. And, on his return, he had found his shanty reduced to ashes. Some passing Uhlans. … Since that time, he had laboured hard to repair the harm done.
"And you want it all over again?" he said. "More Uhlans burning and sacking? … Oh, no, I've had enough of that game! You just let me be as I am!"
He was filled with the small land-owner's hatred against all those, Frenchmen or others, who were likely to tread with a sacrilegious foot on the sown earth, where the harvest is so slow in coming. He crossed his arms, with a serious air.
"And you, Poussière, what would you say if we went to war?" asked Morestal, calling to the old tramp, who was sitting on the parapet of the terrace, breaking a crust.
The man was lean and wizened, twisted like a vine-shoot, with long, dust-coloured