"He arrived in the village one night in a great storm. It was past the
New Year and soldiers had been coming through the street all day to go
up to the lines beyond Pont-a-Moussons. I've had them sleeping in here
on the floor in rows, clearing away the table and lying from wall to
wall so thick that I had to step on them when I crossed the room with my
lamp. But that night there were none; they were all passing through up
to the front lines, and though the other end of the village was full, no
one knocked here. There was snow as there is to-day, but not lying still
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.
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