and me!"

Reine Allix, who stood by him silent all the while, laid her hand on his
shoulder. "My boy," she said in his ear, "you are right, and they are
wrong. Yet let not dissension between brethren open the door for the
enemy to enter thereby into your homes. Do what you will with your own
life, Bernadou,--it is yours,--but leave them to do as they will with
theirs. You cannot make sheep into lions, and let not the first blood
shed here be a brother's."

Bernadou's head dropped on his breast. "Do as you will," he muttered to
his neighbours. They took his musket from him, and in the darkness of
the night stole silently up the wooded chapel hill and buried it, with
all their other arms, under the altar where the white Christ hung. "We
are safe now," said Mathurin, the miller, to the patriots of the tavern.
"Had that madman had his way, he had destroyed us all."

Reine Allix softly led her grandson across his own threshold, and drew
his head down to hers, and kissed him between the eyes. "You did what
you could, Bernadou," she said to him; "let the rest come as it will."

Then she turned from him, and flung her cloak over her head, and sank
down, weeping bitterly; for she had lived through ninety-three years
only to see this agony at the last.

Bernadou, now that all means of defence was gone from him, and the only
thing left to him to deal with was his own life, had become quiet and
silent and passionless, as was his habit. He would have fought like a
mastiff for his home, but this they had forbidden him to do, and he was
passive and without hope. He shut to his door, and sat down with his