The Honor of the Name | Page 4

morning--the sacristan of the parish
church at Sairmeuse sounded the three strokes of the bell which warn
the faithful that the priest is ascending the steps of the altar to celebrate
high mass.
The church was already more than half full, and from every side little
groups of peasants were hurrying into the church-yard. The women
were all in their bravest attire, with cunning little /fichus/ crossed upon
their breasts, broad-striped, brightly colored skirts, and large white
coifs.
Being as economical as they were coquettish, they came barefooted,
bringing their shoes in their hands, but put them on reverentially before
entering the house of God.

But few of the men entered the church. They remained outside to talk,
seating themselves in the porch, or standing about the yard, in the shade
of the century-old elms.
For such was the custom in the hamlet of Sairmeuse.
The two hours which the women consecrated to prayer the men
employed in discussing the news, the success or the failure of the crops;
and, before the service ended, they could generally be found, glass in
hand, in the bar-room of the village inn.
For the farmers for a league around, the Sunday mass was only an
excuse for a reunion, a sort of weekly bourse.
All the cures who had been successively stationed at Sairmeuse had
endeavored to put an end to this scandalous habit, as they termed it; but
all their efforts had made no impression upon country obstinacy.
They had succeeded in gaining only one concession. At the moment of
the elevation of the Host, voices were hushed, heads uncovered, and a
few even bowed the knee and made the sign of the cross.
But this was the affair of an instant only, and conversation was
immediately resumed with increased vivacity.
But to-day the usual animation was wanting.
No sounds came from the little knots of men gathered here and there,
not an oath, not a laugh. Between buyers and sellers, one did not
overhear a single one of those interminable discussions, punctuated
with the popular oaths, such as: "By my faith in God!" or "May the
devil burn me!"
They were not talking, they were whispering together. A gloomy
sadness was visible upon each face; lips were placed cautiously at the
listener's ear; anxiety could be read in every eye.
One scented misfortune in the very air. Only a month had elapsed since

Louis XVIII. had been, for the second time, installed in the Tuileries by
a triumphant coalition.
The earth had not yet had time to swallow the sea of blood that flowed
at Waterloo; twelve hundred thousand foreign soldiers desecrated the
soil of France; the Prussian General Muffling was Governor of Paris.
And the peasantry of Sairmeuse trembled with indignation and fear.
This king, brought back by the allies, was no less to be dreaded than the
allies themselves.
To them this great name of Bourbon signified only a terrible burden of
taxation and oppression.
Above all, it signified ruin--for there was scarcely one among them
who had not purchased some morsel of government land; and they were
assured now that all estates were to be returned to the former
proprietors, who had emigrated after the overthrow of the Bourbons.
Hence, it was with a feverish curiosity that most of them clustered
around a young man who, only two days before, had returned from the
army.
With tears of rage in his eyes, he was recounting the shame and the
misery of the invasion.
He told of the pillage at Versailles, the exactions at Orleans, and the
pitiless requisitions that had stripped the people of everything.
"And these accursed foreigners to whom the traitors have delivered us,
will not go so long as a shilling or a bottle of wine is left in France!" he
exclaimed.
As he said this he shook his clinched fist menacingly at a white flag
that floated from the tower.
His generous anger won the close attention of his auditors, and they
were still listening to him with undiminished interest, when the sound

of a horse's hoofs resounded upon the stones of the only street in
Sairmeuse.
A shudder traversed the crowd. The same fear stopped the beating of
every heart.
Who could say that this rider was not some English or Prussian officer?
He had come, perhaps, to announce the arrival of his regiment, and
imperiously demand money, clothing, and food for his soldiers.
But the suspense was not of long duration.
The rider proved to be a fellow-countryman, clad in a torn and dirty
blue linen blouse. He was urging forward, with repeated blows, a little,
bony, nervous mare, fevered with foam.
"Ah! it is Father Chupin," murmured one of the peasants with a sigh of
relief.
"The same," observed another. "He seems to be