Despite minor annoyances, my companions were very soon slumbering. For my part I could not sleep. I was feverish and ... my golden waistband played tricks and got into my ribs. The slanting light of the moon gave an added pallor to the faces of the four sleeping girls, whose presence on their bed of hay, beneath the beams of the loft which spiders had covered with their grey lace, was astonishing enough. It seemed as though the four heads had been put there for a whim, and the bodies laid down somewhere else. I fell into a doze. I saw hundreds of Prussians pass before my eyes, laden with goods, and carrying away the very houses. Then there came a multitude of galloping horses, which all vanished from my sight, and I was asleep. The next day an impudent sunbeam woke us up by caressing our eyelids. In the barn below the refugees were bustling about noisily. The first moment after awaking was cruel; we had, as Stendhal says, "to learn our misery afresh." One after the other, like fowls getting out of the henhouse, we went down our long ladder, and ran off to wash and to hear the latest news. That day also was a day of tears. The villagers, frightened to death, had not dared to unlock their doors, and we heard only in the morning that a French convoy had been taken by surprise and captured by the Germans at Neuville, no more than two miles from Chevregny. Then a scout--a fact completely unconnected with the former--had been killed by the enemy at a cross-way, near Mme. Laroye's house. We went to see the place, where the two white roads cross each other; large reddish spots still marked the ground. Kneeling down, we kissed this blood which cried for revenge, and from our inmost soul we besought Heaven that France should be victorious over her enemy, so that her heart's blood might not be shed in vain. Some peasants, who had witnessed the scene, gave us an account of it. In great numbers the Germans came down the road. All of a sudden, two French scouts appeared on the outskirts of the wood, saw the enemy, fired at them, and then turned back. One of them was lucky enough to get under cover, but the other, severely wounded, was unhorsed, and fell down. Stretched by the wayside he made an attempt to get up, but his adversaries rushed upon him, and in a confused scuffle beat him to death with the butt-ends of their guns, and rode away at full gallop.