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Jean’s suffering wrested from him a deep-toned exclamation:

“Oh! I am hungry!”

On every side, meantime, the men, notwithstanding the complainings of their empty stomachs, had thrown themselves down to sleep. Their fatigue was so great that it finally got the better of their fears and struck them down upon the bare earth, where they lay on their back, with open mouth and arms outstretched, like logs beneath the moonless sky. The bustle of the camp was stilled, and all along the naked range, from end to end, there reigned a silence as of death.

“Oh! I am hungry; I am so hungry that I could eat dirt!”

Jean, patient as he was and inured to hardship, could not restrain the cry; he had eaten nothing in thirty-six hours, and it was torn from him by sheer stress of physical suffering. Then Maurice, knowing that two or three hours at all events must elapse before their regiment could move to pass the stream, said:

“See here, I have an uncle not far from here–you know, Uncle Fouchard, of whom you have heard me speak. His house is five or six hundred yards from here; I didn’t like the idea, but as you are so hungry–The deuce! the old man can’t refuse us bread!”

His comrade made no objection and they went off together. Father Fouchard’s little farm was situated just at the mouth of Harancourt pass, near the plateau where the artillery was posted. The house was a low structure, surrounded by quite an imposing cluster of dependencies; a barn, a stable, and cow-sheds, while across the road was a disused carriage-house which the old peasant had converted into an abattoir, where he slaughtered with his own hands the cattle which he afterward carried about the country in his wagon to his customers.

Maurice was surprised as he approached the house to see no light.

“Ah, the old miser! he has locked and barred everything tight and fast. Like as not he won’t let us in.”

But something that he saw brought him to a standstill. Before the house a dozen soldiers were moving to and fro, hungry plunderers, doubtless, on the prowl in quest of something to eat. First they had called, then had knocked, and now, seeing that the place was dark and deserted, they were hammering at the door with the butts of their muskets in an attempt to force it open. A growling chorus of encouragement greeted them from the outsiders of the circle.

“Nom de Dieu! go ahead! smash it in, since there is no one at home!”

All at once the shutter of a window in the garret was thrown back and a tall old man presented himself, bare-headed, wearing the peasant’s blouse, with a candle in one hand and a gun in the other. Beneath the thick shock of bristling white hair was a square face, deeply seamed and wrinkled, with a strong nose, large, pale eyes, and stubborn chin.

“You must be robbers, to smash things as you are doing!” he shouted in an angry tone. “What do you want?”

The soldiers, taken by surprise, drew back a little way.

“We are perishing with hunger; we want something to eat.”

“I have nothing, not a crust. Do you suppose that I keep victuals in my house to fill a hundred thousand mouths? Others were here before you; yes, General Ducrot’s men were here this morning, I tell you, and they cleaned me out of everything.”

The soldiers came forward again, one by one.

“Let us in, all the same; we can rest ourselves, and you can hunt up something–”

And they were commencing to hammer at the door again, when the old fellow, placing his candle on the window-sill, raised his gun to his shoulder.

“As true as that candle stands there, I’ll put a hole in the first man that touches that door!”

The prospect looked favorable for a row. Oaths and imprecations resounded, and one of the men was heard to shout that they would settle matters with the pig of a peasant, who was like all the rest of them and would throw his bread in the river rather than give a mouthful to a starving soldier. The light of the candle glinted on the barrels of the chassepots as they were brought to an aim; the angry men were about to shoot him where he stood, while he, headstrong and violent, would not yield an inch.