There was deep silence: not a shot was heard: it was the blockade! Famine was doing quietly what the bombardment had been unable to effect. Then, with heads bowed down, we passed through the little wood on our left, full of dead leaves, and we saw our little village of Rothalp, three hundred paces behind the orchards and the fields; it looked dead too: ruin had passed over it--the requisitions had utterly exhausted it; winter, with its snow and ice, was waiting at every door. The mill was working; which astonished me. George and I, without speaking, clasped each other's hands; then he strode toward his house, and I passed rapidly to mine, with a full heart. Prussian soldiers were unloading a wagon-load of corn under my shed; fear laid hold of me, and I thought, "Have the wretches driven away my wife and daughter?" Happily Catherine appeared at the door directly; she had seen me coming, and extended her arms, crying, "Is it you, Christian? Oh! what we have suffered!" She hung upon my neck, crying and sobbing. Then came Gredel; we all clung together, crying like children. The Prussians, ten paces off, stared at us. A few neighbors were crying, "Here is the old mayor come back again!" At last we entered our little room. I sat facing the bed, gazing at the old bed-curtains, the branch of box-tree at the end of the alcove, the old walls, the old beams across the ceiling, the little window-panes, and my good wife and my wayward daughter, whom I love. Everything seemed to me so nice. I said to myself, "We are not all dead yet. Ah! if now I could but see Jacob, I should be quite happy." My wife, with her face buried in her apron between her knees, never ceased sobbing, and Gredel, standing in the middle of the room, was looking upon us. At last she asked me: "And the horses, and the carts, where are they?" "Down there, somewhere near Montmedy." "And Cousin George?" "He is with Marie Anne. We have had to abandon everything--we escaped together--we were so wretched! The Germans would have let us die with hunger." "What! have they ill-used you, father?" "Yes, they have beaten me." "Beaten you?" "Yes, they tore my beard--they struck me in the face." Gredel, hearing this, went almost beside herself; she threw a window open, and shaking her fist at the Germans outside, she screamed to them, "Ah, you brigands! You have beaten my father--the best of men!" Then she burst into tears, and came up to kiss me, saying, "They shall be paid out for all that!" I felt moved. My wife, having become calmer, began to tell me all they had suffered: their grief at receiving no news of us since the third day after the passage of the pedler; then the appointment of Placiard in my place, and the load of requisitions he had laid upon us, saying that I was a Jacobin.