As the sun was beginning to shine hotly, the soldiers asked her if she did not want to rest there.

"Thanks, no!" was the horrified woman's answer.
Real terror seized her when they neared the town.

She threw her anguished gaze in all directions, but no refuge offered itself, only wide rice-fields, a small irrigating ditch, and some stunted trees; there was not a cliff or even a rock upon which she might dash herself to pieces! Now she regretted that she had come so far with the soldiers; she longed for the deep river that flowed by her hut, whose high and rock-strewn banks would have offered such a sweet death.

But again the thought of her sons, especially of Crispin, of whose fate she was still ignorant, lightened the darkness of her night, and she was able to murmur resignedly, "Afterwards--afterwards--we'll go and live in the depths of the forest." Drying her eyes and trying to look calm, she turned to her guards and said in a low voice, with an indefinable accent that was a complaint and a lament, a prayer and a reproach, sorrow condensed into sound, "Now we're in the town." Even the soldiers seemed touched as they answered her with a gesture.

She struggled to affect a calm bearing while she went forward quickly.
At that moment the church bells began to peal out, announcing the end of the high mass.