Julius Read Online Free PDF Page B

from the window and he put his hand on her shoulder.
    ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he said. ‘We must none of us be afraid - it can’t do any good. The baker’s wife told you wrong. Paris is being barricaded everywhere - and the Prussians are marching to Versailles.’
    He spoke softly, slowly, never raising his voice, but Julius knew that these were words he should never forget, that would stay in his memory should he live, for ever and ever, words that sank deep into his boy’s brain and remained like letters of ice - blocked and frozen. ‘The Prussians are marching to Versailles.’ And even as Père’s voice was silenced, and they stared at one another, bewildered and lost, it seemed to Julius he could see the long line of the enemy coming towards Puteaux, he could see their spiked helmets, their grey uniforms, he could hear the slow tramp, tramp of their boots upon the cobbled streets, the gleaming steel of their bayonets striking the air. Already men and women were collecting at the street corners, on the doorsteps of houses, already folk ran to and fro in groups, calling excitedly, and a baby cried pitifully, his thin cry rising in the air.
    Somewhere, away to the left, hidden by the towering fortress of Mont Valérien and the thick trees of Meudon, the enemy would be marching, their feet echoing hollow on the road; somewhere, beyond the hills, muffled and strange like distant thunder on a summer day, would come the low mutter and rumble of a cannon, and the siege of Paris would begin.
    Every day more houses were deserted, more families fled from the villages into Paris.Always the line of carts crossing the bridge, the wheels rumbling on the cobbled stones.
    ‘Yesterday the baker sent his wife and sons into Belleville to his cousin,’ said Mère; ‘he told me it is no longer safe to stay outside Paris.’ ‘To-day the coal-merchant shut up his house,’ said Père; ‘he has found accommodation for his family in Auteuil. Once inside the fortifications he will lose his fear.’
    ‘The blanchisseuse at the corner of the street is packing up to-morrow, ’ said Julius; ‘her son told me this morning. They are going to relations in Montmartre. They are leaving their dog behind to starve - who is going to feed it? Can I feed it, Grandpère?’
    And in every one of their hearts rose the same unspoken question: ‘And us? When are we leaving Puteaux? Where are we going?’
    Jean Blançard watched the stream of villagers troop down towards the Seine, cross the bridge, march side by side, bundles over their shoulders, trailing children by the hand. ‘Go on, you cowards, you poor crawling fools,’ he shouted, ‘go on and shut yourselves up behind the barriers of Paris. I was born in Puteaux, and my father was born in Puteaux, and not all the louse-ridden Prussians in the world will turn me from my own house and my own village.’ He watched them, his arms folded, his cap on the back of his head, a cigarette hanging from his lips.
    And the booming cannon of Mont Valérien would bark suddenly, a mutter and a rumble of thunder, and Grandpère would take his cigarette from his mouth and smile, jerking his thumb in their direction.
    ‘D’you hear the fortress?’ he said. ‘They’re ready up there; they’ll send the vandals back to hell. We’re ready, aren’t we? Let ’em come - let ’em all come, every stinking Prussian mother’s son.’
    No one could make him move, he would stay in Puteaux until the very stones of the street were blown up beneath his feet, and his blind obstinacy influenced his daughter, she would not leave her house and her belongings, she was a Blançard, she was not afraid.
    ‘I have a gun,’ said Grandpère, ‘it belonged to my uncle who fought at Austerlitz. I can use it, can’t I, if the Prussians come to Puteaux? They shan’t take my house, not a stone - not a brick.’
    And Julius helped him clean his gun, he soaked an old rag in oil and polished the barrel, but he was thinking: