on the ground. It was rushing through the air and choking people and
lying heavy on everything that moved outside. That glass of mine up
there was too heavy for me to move so I let it be. A knock came at the
door in the middle of the night, and when I got up to unbar the door
there was a soldier on the doorstep. I said: 'Are you going to wake me
up every night to fill the room with men?' And he said: 'Not to-night,
mother, only one. Pass in, monsieur.'

"It was a bishop, as I told you. _Un eveque_. A great big man with a red
face shining with the snow. If he had not been white with snow he would
have been as black as a rook. He stamped on the cobbles by the door and
the snow went down off him in heaps, and there he was in his beautiful
long clothes, and I said to myself: 'Whatever shall I do with him? Not
the floor for such a man!' So there we were, I in my red shawl that
hangs on the hook there, and he in his long clothes like a black baby
in arms, and his big man's face staring at me over the top.

"'I can't put you anywhere but in my bed,' I told him. I told him like
that, quickly, that he might know. And he answered like a gentleman, the
Lord save his soul: 'Madame, what lady could do more!'

"'But there's only one bed' I told him (I told him to make it clear),
'and I'm not young enough to sleep on the floor.' Not that I'm an old
woman. And he answered like a gentleman, the Lord save him...."

"I will tell _you_ the end," said the old woman, drawing near to Julien
as he took some money from his pocket to pay for the coffee.

Two hours later they drew up at a _cafe_ in the main square at Ligny.