Before the doors of the houses, amid a scene of fearful confusion, men were loading carts and piling up articles of furniture, careless whether they broke them or not; and from the upper windows women flung out a last mattress or lowered a baby's cradle which had been well-nigh forgotten. And the baby having been strapped inside it, the cradle was perched atop of the load, among the upturned legs of the chairs and tables. In another vehicle, standing behind, the poor, infirm, old grandfather was being bound to a wardrobe that he might be carted away like some household utensil. Then there were those who had no cart, and who piled a few goods and chattels into a wheelbarrow, and others who went off with simply a bundle of clothes under their arm, and others too who had only thought of saving their parlour clock, which they pressed to their hearts as though it had been an infant. It was impossible to remove everything, and many articles of furniture and heavy bundles of linen lay abandoned in the ditches. Some folks before leaving fastened up their homes, and the houses with their doors and shutters securely closed looked quite dead; but the majority of the people, in their haste and the despairing conviction that everything would be destroyed, left their old homesteads open, with doors and windows gaping widely; and these poor empty houses, through which the wind could blow as it listed, and whence the very cats had fled, shuddering at what was about to happen, were the saddest of all, sad like the houses of a captured town depopulated by fright. At each succeeding village the spectacle became more and more pitiable, the number of those who were moving and hastening away became larger and larger, and there was shaking of fists, swearing of oaths, and shedding of tears amid all the growing scramble and confusion. But it was especially whilst he followed the high road through the open country that Maurice felt his anguish stifling him. As they drew nearer to Belfort the train of runaways closed up and became a continuous procession. Ah! the poor people who imagined they would find a shelter-place under the walls of the stronghold. The man belaboured the horse, and the woman followed, dragging the children with her. Entire families, bending beneath their burdens, and with the little ones, who were unable to keep up, lagging behind, were hastening over the blinding white roads which the fiery sun was heating. Many of the fugitives had taken off their shoes that they might cover the ground more rapidly, and were walking along barefooted; and mothers with their dress-bodies unfastened were giving the breast to crying infants, without pausing for a moment in their march.