it in file. But the innkeeper and all his family hurled tables, stools,
plates, and cradles down upon them from the windows; the ladder was
overturned, and the soldiers fell.

In a wooden hut at the end of the village, another band found a peasant
woman washing her children in a tub near the fire. Being old and very
deaf, she did not hear them enter. Two men took the tub and carried it
away, and the stupefied woman followed with the clothes in which she was
about to dress the children. But when she saw traces of blood everywhere
in the village, swords in the orchards, cradles overturned in the
street, women on their knees, others who wrung their hands over the
dead, she began to scream and beat the soldiers, who put down the tub to
defend themselves. The cure hastened up also, and with hands clasped
over his chasuble, entreated the Spaniards before the naked little ones
howling in the water. Some soldiers came up, tied the mad peasant to a
tree, and carried off the children.

The butcher, who had hidden his little girl, leaned against his shop,
and looked on callously. A lancer and one of the men in armor entered
the house and found the child in a copper boiler. Then the butcher in
despair took one of his knives and rushed after them into the street,
but soldiers who were passing disarmed him and hanged him by the hands
to the hooks in the wall--there, among the flayed animals, he kicked and
struggled, blaspheming, until the evening.

Near the churchyard, there was a great gathering before a long, low
house, painted green. The owner, standing on his threshold, shed bitter
tears; as he was very fat and jovial looking, he excited the pity of
some soldiers who were seated in the sun against the wall, patting a
dog. The one, too, who dragged away his child by the hand, gesticulated