"We shall but keep back," he went on, "large landowners and the workers we are in need of. At the end of the month, a train will start every day; volunteers will first go, then the necessitous." The number of volunteers were very small. The people reposed no trust at all in the Prussians. "Do you think," the women of the village whispered, "that they are going to take you to France? To a concentration camp rather. You may take my word for it. Some people have thus left Chauny, and now they are somewhere in the north ... out in the open country ... up to the knees in the mud...." We laughed at them. "But why should the Germans take charge of us? They would be obliged to feed us no matter how little they gave us." It was all of no use. Nobody was willing to go, not even those who eagerly wished to escape. The organisers of the convoys were amazed. They determined that certain persons should go by foul means since they would not go by fair means. The commandant of every village was ordered to eject so many persons. The number for Morny was fixed at twenty. There were two volunteers besides ourselves, an elderly lady, Mme. Charvon, and her granddaughter; both wanted to go back to Paris. Thirteen reluctant emigrants were then to be picked up among the people. Bubenpech chose at random a woman from Braye, her five small children, and her old father, then three orphan boys, and a family including an invalid father, a mother, and two little girls. These had two sons, sixteen and eighteen years old, who would stay behind if the parents went. They raised an outcry. "My poor boys!" the mother moaned; "am I going to abandon them like that? We beg nothing of the Germans! We want only to be left together." She went to the "bureau," threw herself at the feet of Bubenpech, who scouted her demand with disdain, and had her kicked out of doors. The morning we were to start she pretended to be ill, and kept to her bed. The lieutenant despatched four men who took her out of bed, heedless of her resistance, and made her get into the cart, with a blanket as sole wrapper. We heard the poor woman sob while she put on her stays and petticoats in the jolting cart that took us to Laon. And the folly of it was that another woman of Cerny wished for nothing better than to go. "Since my sister and father are sent away," she said, "I choose rather to go with them; I have no mind to stay here alone with my two babies." It was not to be. Three persons eager to stay were forced to go; three others, nothing loath to go, were bidden to stay. Thus had our leaders settled the matter.