Up the centre of the village street marched Tuck-of-Drum, drumming, drumming with an energy surprising and pathetic, as though he could call from their weed-grown graves the lads who had once jumped so smartly to the rattle of the parchment. “_Rat-a-plan! rat-a-plan!_” sounded the summons; his hands had not lost their cunning, though they ached and grew weary with the unwonted strain. Behind him staggered Bergeret, his great bearskin toppling forward over the fat, smooth, foolish face; Dufour hobbled in the rear, his stick and wooden leg tapping the cobbles; little Pierre, beside him, dragged the heavy musket. Pale faces, working in terror, peered from the café of the Boule d’Or. Tuck-of-Drum burst open the door. On the little tables glasses of bock, tiny glasses of spirits, stood half emptied. The men had all risen; the tawdry, gilded mirrors, cracked and dusty, distorted their faces, showing them more pallid, more unhealthy even than in life. Three or four old men—not so old as the veterans by many years—three or four washed-out-looking lads, rejected even by the army that had dragged men in from the very highways and hedges to resist the invaders—turned startled looks on the newcomers. “The enemy is coming!” said Tuck-of-Drum. “Comrades, let us march against them, like the men of Dreux, of Châteauneuf! Look—the sun of Austerlitz is going down! Today, all France must help——” They exchanged glances; they huddled together like sheep. “What is the use?” one muttered. “Aye, what is the use?” A youth sniggered vacuously. “You are sixty years too late, Monsieur Tuck-of-Drum. If the great Emperor could come back now, if France had a man—” The speaker shrugged his shoulders, spread out his hands with a gesture of helplessness and looked round for assent. “If—if—if!” cried Dominique Laplume. “_We_ will lead you—we, of the Grand Army! Today all France must rise. All must help. It is the great effort. Today France conquers—or is conquered. ‘If’ never won a battle. Come, I say! Jules Brienne, your grandfather carried an eagle at Marengo. Monsieur Grenier, your uncle fell by our side, fighting bravely, on the field of Austerlitz.” He argued, ordered, entreated; in vain. “Bah! Poltroons!” he muttered, and turned on his heel. Again the drum sounded. “Yes, go out and play with your toy, Papa Tuck-of-Drum,” cried young Brienne after him. Laplume did not hear. They marched next to the Café de l’Ecu. The village postmaster, shaking still and casting nervous looks round him like a frightened horse, was telling his story to a similar assembly. “Pah!” muttered old Dufour, twirling his thin mustache, “these villages are the rubbish heaps of France. The men are all away.” Again the appeal was made. A fat man, with fishy eyes and yellow, pendulous cheeks, shrugged his shoulders and raised protesting hands. “What can we do? What can we do?” “They would finish us all with a volley. We should be killed,” whined another man.