1.A LEAF IN THE STORM, by Louise de la Ramee, from A Leaf in the Storm and Other Stories 

风雨中的一片叶子/萧傅之译

2.CATS, by Maurice Hewlett, from Earthwork out of Tuscany

猫/萧傅之译

3.AN ADVENTURE, by Honore de Balzac, from A Passion in the Desert

沙漠历险记/萧傅之译

4.OUT OF DOORS, by Richard Jefferies, from Saint Guido

户外奇遇记/萧傅之译

5.THE TABOO, by Herman Melville, from Typee

禁忌/萧傅之译

6.FOR THOSE WHO LOVE MUSIC, by Axel Munthe, from Vagaries 

致热爱音乐的人/辜涛译

7.SCHOOL DAYS AT THE CONVENT, by George Sand, from The Story of My Life (adapted)

修道院的读书岁月/辜涛译

8.IN BRITTANY, by Louisa Alcott, from Aunt Jos Scrap Bag

布列塔尼女人/辜涛译

9.THE ADIRONDACKS, by John Burroughs, from Wake Robin

阿地伦达山/辜涛译

10.AN ASCENT OF KILAUEA, by Lady Brassey, from Around the World in the Yacht Sunbeam

登基拉韦亚火山/辜涛译

……

A LEAF IN THE STORMA LEAF IN THE STORM

Bernadou clung to his home with a dogged devotion. He would not go from it to fight unless compelled, but for it he would have fought like a lion. His love for his country was only an indefinite shadowy existence that was not clear to him; he could not save a land that he had never seen, a capital that was only to him as an empty name; nor could he comprehend the danger that his nation ran; nor could he desire to go forth and spend his lifeblood in defence of things unknown to him. He was only a peasant, and he could not read nor greatly understand. But affection for his birthplace was a passion with him,——mute indeed, but deepseated as an oak. For his birthplace he would have struggled as a man can struggle only when supreme love as well as duty nerves his arm. Neither he nor Reine Allix1 could see that a mans duty might lie from home, but in that home both were alike ready to dare anything and to suffer everything. It was a narrow form of patriotism, yet it had nobleness, endurance, and patience in it; in song it has been oftentimes deified as heroism, but in modern warfare it is punished as the blackest crime.

So Bernadou tarried in his cottage till he should be called, keeping watch by night over the safety of his village and by day doing all he could to aid the deserted wives and mothers of the place by tilling their ground for them and by tending such poor cattle as were left in their desolate fields. He and Margot and Reine Allix, between them, fed many mouths that would otherwise have been closed in death by famine, and denied themselves all except the barest and most meagre subsistence, that they might give away the little they possessed.

And all this while the war went on, but seemed far from them, so seldom did any tidings2 of it pierce the seclusion in which they dwelt. By and by, as the autumn went on, they learned a little more. Fugitives coming to the smithy for a horses shoe; women fleeing to their old village homes from their light, gay life in the city; mandates from the government of defence sent to every hamlet in the country; stray newssheets brought in by carriers or hawkers and hucksters,——all these by degrees told them of the peril of their country,——vaguely, indeed, and seldom truthfully, but so that by mutilated rumors they came at last to know the awful facts of the fate of Sedan, the fall of the Empire, the siege of Paris. It did not alter their daily lives: it was still too far off and too impalpable. But a foreboding, a dread, an unspeakable woe settled down on them. Already their lands and cattle had been harassed to yield provision for the army and large towns; already their best horses had been taken for the siegetrains3 and the foragewagons; already their ploughshares were perforce idle, and their children cried because of the scarcity of nourishment; already the iron of war had entered into their souls.

The little street at evening was mournful and very silent: the few who talked spoke in whispers, lest a spy should hear them, and the young ones had no strength to play: they wanted food.

Bernadou, now that all means of defence was gone from him, and the only thing left to him to deal with was his own life, had become quiet and silent and passionless, as was his habit. He would have fought like a mastiff for his home, but this they had forbidden him to do, and he was passive and without hope. He closed his door, and sat down with his hand in that of Reine Allix and his arm around his wife. “There is nothing to do but wait” he said sadly. The day seemed very long in coming.

The firing (which had come nearer each day) ceased for a while; then its roll commenced afresh, and grew still nearer to the village. Then again all was still.

At noon a shepherd staggered into the place, pale, bleeding, bruised, covered with mire. The Prussians, he told them, had forced him to be their guide, had knotted him tight to a troopers saddle, and had dragged him with them until he was half dead with fatigue and pain. At night he had broken from them and had fled: they were close at hand, he said, and had burned the town from end to end because a man had fired at them from a housetop. That was all he knew. Bernadou, who had gone out to hear his news, returned into the house and sat down and hid his face within his hands.

……