In the panic-fraught breeze which dishevelled their hair and lashed their hastily donned garments, many of the runaways looked round with scared faces, and made gestures with trembling hands as though to shut out all view of the horizon. Others, farmers, accompanied by all their servants, were hastening across the fields, driving before them their herds and flocks--their sheep, cows, oxen and horses, which they had turned out with blows from their sheds and stables. They were making for the mountain gorges, the high table-lands, the deserted forests, and the sight of them recalled the memory of those great migrations of ancient times, when invaded nations made way for the conquering barbarians. They intended to live under canvas in some lonely rock-girt spot, so far from the roads that not one of the enemy's soldiers would dare to approach it. And the flying clouds that enveloped them were soon wafted away behind the clumps of fir trees, whilst the lowing of the cattle and the thuds of their hoofs grew more and more indistinct. Meantime, the flood of vehicles and wayfarers pressed along the road, hampering the march of the troops and becoming, as one approached Belfort, so compact and strong--with a force like the irresistible current of a spreading torrent--that the soldiers were repeatedly compelled to halt.
During one of those brief halts Maurice beheld a scene which he long remembered, as one might remember a blow dealt one in the face. There was a solitary house by the roadside, the abode of some poor peasant, whose meagre patch of land stretched behind it. Firmly rooted to his native soil, this man had been unwilling to leave his fields, feeling that if he did so he must needs tear his flesh to shreds. So he remained there, and could be seen crouching on a bench in a low room, whence with empty eyes he watched the passing soldiers, whose retreat was about to place his ripe corn at the mercy of the invader. Beside him stood a young woman, his wife, with a child in her arms, whilst another child was pulling at her skirts; and all three, mother and children, were sobbing and moaning. Suddenly, however, the door was roughly flung open, and on the threshold appeared the grandmother, a tall, thin, aged woman, who was furiously flourishing her bare arms which looked like knotted cords. Her grey hair, escaping from under her cap, was waving round her gaunt head, and so intense was her rage that the words she shouted were half-stifled in her throat, whence they escaped but indistinctly in an agonising hiccough. At first the soldiers began to laugh. The old lunatic had a fine phiz! But some of her words reached them, and they heard that she was shouting: 'Blackguards! brigands! cowards! cowards!'