"Where a company passes, a regiment can pass and a brigade can follow.... At Boersweilen, five miles from the Vosges, there are three thousand German soldiers: on a war-footing, mark you. At Gernach, twelve miles further, there are twelve thousand; and four thousand horses; and eight hundred waggons. By the evening of the day on which war is declared, perhaps even earlier, those fifteen thousand men will have crossed the Col du Diable. It's not a surprise which they mean to attempt: that wouldn't be worth their while. It is the absolute crossing of the frontier, the taking possession of our ridges, the occupation of Saint-Elophe. When our troops arrive, it will be too late! They will find Noirmont cut off, Belfort threatened, the south of the Vosges invaded.... You can picture the moral effect: we shall be done for! That is what is being prepared in the dark. That is what you have been unable to see, Jorance, in spite of all your watchfulness ... and in spite of my warnings." "I wrote to the prefect last week." "You should have written last year! All this time, the other has been coming on, the other has been advancing.... He hardly takes the trouble to conceal himself.... There ... listen to him ... listen to him...." In the far distance, like the sound of an echo, deadened by the mass of trees, a bugle-call had rung out, somewhere, through the air. It was an indistinct call, but Morestal was not mistaken and he hissed: "Ah, it's he!... It's he.... I know the voice of Germany.... I know it when I hear it ... the hoarse, the odious voice!..." Presently, Philippe, who had not taken his eyes off his father, said: "And then, father?" "And then, my son, it was in anticipation of that day that I built my house on this hill, that I surrounded my gardens with a wall, that, unknown to anybody, I stocked the out-houses with means of defence: ammunition, bags of sand, gun-powder ... that, in short, I prepared for an alarm by setting up this unsuspected little fortress at twenty minutes from the Col du Diable ... on the very threshold of the frontier!" He had planted himself with his face to the east, with his face to the enemy; and, clutching his hips with his clenched hands, in an attitude of defiance, he seemed to be awaiting the inevitable assault. The special commissary, who still feared that his zeal had been caught napping in this business, growled: "Your shanty won't hold out for an hour." "And who tells you," shouted Morestal, "who tells you that that hour is not exactly the one hour which we shall want to gain?... An hour! You never spoke a truer word: an hour of resistance to the first attack! An hour of delay!... That's what I wanted, that's what I offer to my country. Let every one be doing as I am, to the best of his power, let every one be haunted to fever-point by the obsession of the personal service which it is his duty to render to the country; and, if war breaks out, you shall see how a great nation can take its revenge!"