In truth, the tumult increased from second to second. The cattle, the carriages, and the people, seemed to want to pass out over each other's backs; they seemed to have gone out of their minds, and were shouting, and even striking at each other in their mad desire to escape. Materne pushed open the door, and, seeing the women more dead than alive, pale and dishevelled, he exclaimed, striking his stick on the ground--"What! Mother Faltaux! are you, too, out of your senses? What! you, who ought to set a good example to your daughters, have you lost all presence of mind; it's too bad!" Then the old woman, turning round, replied, in a doleful voice--"Ah, my poor Materne! if you did but know--if you did but know!" "Well, what? the enemy is here; he will not eat you." "No, but they are swallowing up everything without mercy. Old Ursule, of Schlestadt, who arrived here yesterday evening, says that the Austrians will have nothing but _knoépfe_ and _noudels_, the Russians _schnaps_, and the Bavarians _sour-krout_. And when they've stuffed themselves with all that up to their very throats, they keep still calling out, with their mouths full: '_schokolate! schokolate!_' My God! my God! how shall we feed all these people?" "I well know that it is very difficult," replied the old huntsman. "You can never give a jackdaw enough cheese; but, in the first place, where are these Cossacks, these Bavarians, and these Austrians? All the way from Grandfontaine we have not met a single one." "They are in Alsace, round about Urmatt, and they are coming here." "Well, in the meanwhile," said Kasper, "be so obliging as to serve us with a jug of wine; here is a crown piece; you can hide it easier than your barrels." One of the girls went down into the cellar, and just at that moment several other people came in--an almanack-seller from the Strasbourg side, a waggoner in his smock-frock from Sarrebrück, and two or three of the inhabitants of Mutzig, of Hirsch, and of Schirmeck, who were escaping with their flocks and herds, and had hardly strength left to speak.