All I can say is that girls, when they have got anything into their heads, become too bold with their parents, and all the excellent training they have had ends in nothing. Thank God, I had nothing to reproach myself with on that score, nor her mother either. Gredel had had four times as many blows as Jacob, because she deserved it, on account of her wanting to keep everything, putting it all into her own cupboard, and saying, "There, that's mine!" Yes, indeed, she had had plenty of correction of that kind: but you cannot beat a girl of twenty: you cannot correct girls at that age; and that was just my misfortune: it ought to go on forever! Well, it can't be helped. She upset the house and rummaged the mill from top to bottom, she visited the garden, and her mother said to her, "You see, we have got it in a safe place; since you cannot find it, the Uhlans won't." I remember that just as we were going up to sleep, that day, the 5th of August, early in the morning, Catherine and I had seen Cousin George in his char-a-banc coming down the valley of Dosenheim, and it seemed to us that he was out very early. The village was waking up; other people, too, were going to work: I lay down, and about eight o'clock my wife woke me to tell me that the postman, Michel, was there. I came down, and saw Michel standing in our parlor with his letter-bag under his arm. He was thoughtful, and told me that the worst reports were abroad; that they were speaking of the great battle near Wissembourg, where we had been defeated; that several maintained that we had lost ten thousand men, and the Germans seventeen thousand; but that there was nothing certain, because it was not known whence these rumors proceeded, only that the commanding officer of Phalsbourg, Taillant, had proclaimed that morning that the inhabitants would be obliged to lay in provisions for six weeks. Naturally, such a proclamation set people a-thinking, and they said: "Have we a siege before us? Have we gone back to the times of the great retreat and downfall of the first Emperor? Ought things forever to end in the same fashion?" My wife, Gredel, and I, stood listening to Michel, with lips compressed, without interrupting him. "And you, Michel," said I, when he had done, "what do you think of it all?" "Monsieur le Maire, I am a poor postman; I want my place; and if my five hundred francs a year were taken from me, what would become of my wife and children?" Then I saw that he considered our prospects were not good. He handed me a letter from Monsieur le Sous-prefet--it was the last--telling me to watch false reports; that false news should be severely punished, by order of our prefet, Monsieur Podevin.