"Yes," said Captain Daspry, searching the road through the orifice of a loop-hole, "yes, there they are!... At six hundred yards, at most ... It's the vanguard.... They are skirting the pool and they haven't a notion that ..." A sergeant came to tell him that the enemy had hoisted a gun on the slope of the pass. The officer was alarmed, but old Morestal began to laugh: "Let them bring up as many guns as they please!... They can only take up positions which we command and which I have noted. A few good marksmen are enough to keep them from placing a battery." And, turning to his son, he said to him, quite naturally, as though nothing had ever parted them: "Are you coming, Philippe? We'll demolish them between us." Captain Daspry interfered: "Don't fire! We are not discovered yet. Wait till I give the order.... There'll be time enough later...." Old Morestal had moved away. Philippe walked resolutely towards the gate that led to the garden, to the open country. But he had not taken ten steps, when he stopped. He seemed to be vaguely suffering; and Marthe, who had not left his side, Marthe, anxious, full of mingled hope and apprehension, watched every phase of the tragic struggle: "All the past is calling on you, Philippe; all the love for France that the past has bequeathed to you. Listen to its voice." And, replying to every possible objection: "Yes, I know, your intelligence rebels against it. But is one's intelligence everything?... Obey your instinct, Philippe.... It's your instinct that is right." "No, no," he stammered, "one's instinct is never right...." "It is right. But for that, you would be far away by now. But you can't go. Your whole being refuses to go. Your legs have not the strength for flight." The Col du Diable was pouring forth troops and more troops, whose swarming masses showed along the slope. Others must be coming by the Albern Road; and, on every side, along every path and through every gap, the men of Germany were invading the soil of France. The vanguard reached the high-road, at the end of the Etang-des-Moines. There was a dull roll of the drum; and, suddenly, in the near silence, a hoarse voice barked out a German word of command. Philippe started as though he had been struck. And Marthe clung to him, pitilessly: "Do you hear, Philippe? Do you understand? The German speech on French soil! Their language forced upon us!" "Oh, no!" he said. "That can't be.... That will never be!" "Why should it never be? Invasion comes first ... and then conquest ... and subjection...." Near them, the captain ordered: "Let no one stir!" Bullets spluttered against the walls, while the sounds of firing reverberated. A window-pane was smashed on the floor above. And more bullets broke fragments of stone from the coping of the parapet. The enemy, surprised at the disappearance of the French troops, were feeling their way before passing below that house, whose gloomy aspect must needs strike them as suspicious.