houses to look for the children.

The innkeeper had one child, who, in its little shift, was screaming on
the table where they had just dined. A soldier took it in his arms, and
carried it away under the apple trees, while the father and mother
followed, crying.

Thereafter the lancers opened other stable doors,--those of the cooper,
the blacksmith, the cobbler,--and calves, cows, asses, pigs, goats, and
sheep roamed about the square. When they broke the carpenter's windows,
several of the oldest and richest inhabitants of the village assembled
in the street, and went to meet the Spaniards. Respectfully they took
off their caps and hats to the leader in the velvet mantle, and asked
him what he was going to do. He did not, understand their language; so
some one ran to fetch the cure.

The priest was putting on a gold chasuble in the vestry, in readiness
for the benediction. The peasant cried: "The Spaniards are in the
orchard!" Horrified, the cure ran to the door of the church, and the
choir-boys followed, carrying wax-tapers and censer.

As he stood there, he saw the animals from the pens and stables
wandering on the snow and on the grass; the horsemen in the village, the
soldiers before the doors, horses tied to trees all along the street;
men and women entreating the man who held the child in its little shift.

The cure hastened into the churchyard, and the peasants turned anxiously
towards him as he came through the pear trees, like the Divine Presence
itself robed in white and gold. They crowded about him where he
confronted the man with the white beard.