When war was declared, the Sauvage son, then aged thirty-three, enlisted, leaving his mother alone at home. No one was particularly sorry for her since it was a well-known fact that she was quite comfortably off. She lived all by herself in this very isolated spot on the edge of the wood and far away from the village itself. Of the same stock as her husband, she was a fearless, tough old bird, tall, skinny and very dour. Not the sort of person you could have a laugh with – like a lot of peasant women in that respect. Let the menfolk laugh if they find things so funny, is their philosophy. But as for themselves, living as they do an unrelievedly bleak life, their attitude to the world is tight and constrained. The peasant man does sometimes get a bit merry at the café-bar and have the occasional guffaw, but his better half stays sober in every sense of the word. Her facial muscles seem never to have learned what it is to smile.

So Mother Sauvage carried on as usual in her cottage which was soon covered with snow. She used to come into the village once a week to fetch bread and a little meat and then return home. There were rumours of wolves about and so she slung over her shoulders her son’s rusty old rifle with its well-worn butt. She was a curious sight trudging slowly through the snow with the rifle-barrel sticking up behind the close-fitting black bonnet she wore clamped over her invisible but presumably white hair.

One day the Prussians arrived. They were billeted on local householders according to the latter’s means and resources. The old woman, who was known to be relatively prosperous, was given four soldiers.

They were stout, blond fellows with blue eyes and light skin. They had stayed on the heavy side despite all hardships endured so far and, although representative of the occupying forces, they were good lads on the whole. Left alone with this elderly woman, they were kindness itself and spared her as much effort and expense as they possibly could. The four of them could be seen in the mornings washing at the well, in the cold, snowy light splashing water on their pink-and-white northern flesh as Mother Sauvage moved about inside preparing the day’s soup. You would see them cleaning the kitchen, polishing the floor tiles, chopping firewood, peeling potatoes, doing the washing and all the other necessary household chores. All in all they behaved as good sons would towards their mother.

She, however, thought constantly of her own son; her tall, hook-nosed, brown-eyed boy, with the thick moustache lying there on his upper lip like a big black roll. Every day she would ask: ‘Do you know where the 23rd Infantry have got to? That’s what my son’s with.’

‘Ve don’t know,’ they would answer. ‘Ve really don’t know.’