At length we made up our minds to rest outside, on the threshold of the unrelenting house. An accommodating bench very kindly welcomed three of us, Geneviève and Antoinette, wrapped up in their cloaks, stretched on the stony ground of the courtyard. As to myself, I chose for a resting-place a flight of steps. Crouching down in a comfortable corner, with Pierrot nestled in my arms, I covered our bodies with my shawl, and summoned sleep in vain. The stone was very hard. Yet I was comfortable, and had no mind to go away. But we soon remembered we were running away, and that it was high time for us to be off again. "Get up! get up! It is half-past two." We rose reluctantly, yawned, cleared our throats, stretched ourselves. Antoinette was so weary and so ill that we had much trouble to move her. At length we were all up. We cursed the household that had behaved so unkindly to the poor wanderers, and, leaving the inhospitable village, we turned to the right. The road wound its way through the woods. The moon had gone down; it was pitch dark; our hearts quivered with fear; our eyes searched into the shades of night; and we strained our ears like the dogs. The poor beasts disapproved of our nightly expedition, and sniffed at tufts of grass with great anxiety. "This black mass here, lying on the wayside, is it a dead body? No, it is but a log. And there, those white spots, aren't they faces? No, they are birches. Don't you hear a noise of steps? No, it is the breaking of a dead branch." We stopped to take a little breath. We were out of the forest; we had reached the top of the hill. Quite bare, it was not really a plateau, for the ground spread itself out in large waves. We walked along, dragging our luggage up and down the road. Geneviève and I carried the heaviest bag, and tried many experiments to make it lighter. We put it on our shoulders like an urn, on our back like a sack of flour. Like the queen of the turtles, we hung it on a stick, of which each of us took an end. From time to time we stopped a minute to change hands, or to listen to far-away noises. Then a slight quivering broke the stillness. We thought we heard a distant rumbling. Sometimes there were explosions--bridges were being blown up. Day was already breaking. A pallor whitened the sky towards the east. We reached Urcel, prettily placed among orchards on the slope of a hill. Worn out, we sat on the edge of the pavement like so many swallows on the edge of a gutter. We were in high spirits, we exchanged jokes, and all of a sudden: "Yvonne, Yvonne, laughter will end in crying...." Indeed, the poor girl, still half-choked with laughter, was now sobbing bitterly. We gathered round her, and tried to comfort her. "Get up, get up, the inn will be open in a minute, and we shall have a cup of coffee. Come." At the first glimmering of the dawn, the shop opened a shutter like a fearful eyelid.