grown a trifle pale and a trifle subdued because her
Jan was four months Christophe's senior — even a few
months might count later on, might make all the
difference between life and death, supposing the war
were of long duration.
In and out of the church went Monsieur le Cure,
rejoiced by the sight of those blazing candles; and
quite often he would be accompanied by Jan, some-
times bent upon prayer, sometimes bent upon tasks in
connection with the vestry, or perhaps the altar."
Jan's face had an eager yet stern expression, for his
mind was obsessed by the Cure's preaching. Stern
too were the prayers that he offered up as he knelt
on the punishing stones of the aisle, feeling glad that
the stones should bite into his knees, since those who
might be privileged to fight must first begin by sub-
duing their bodies. And meanwhile the clouds grew
more ominous as the German guns crept nearer to
Paris, so that scarcely a home not already bereaved,
but was overshadowed by the threat of bereavement.
A mighty torrent of anguish and death was sweeping
over France and her people,
§2
Goundran said to his wife: cln a few weeks' time I
may well be catching some very fine fishes — steel
fishes with big, ugly German snouts! Thank God,
I am not yet grown too old,' Then his eyes turned and
rested upon the child, and all of a sudden Goundran
fell silent,
Elise was carefully darning the jerseys which she
knew he would never wear in the navy, but which
none the less she must wash and darn because, in a
way, this task was consoling. The jerseys were so much
a part of himself and their life together that they
seemed to protect him by forming a closer link with a
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