Part 23 (1/2)

And a hundred paces farther on, at the street corner, we went into one of those little inns where YOU may have a bed for a few sous.

The men there, in a little dark room, were not gentlemen; they were taking their bottles of wine, with their caps over one ear, and s.h.i.+rt collars loose and open; but seeing us at the door, ragged as we were, with three-weeks' s.h.i.+rts, and beards and hats saturated and out of all shape and discolored with rain and sun, they took us at first for bear-leaders, or dromedary drivers.

The hostess, a fat woman, came forward to ask what we wanted.

”Your best strong soup, a good piece of beef, a bottle of good wine, and as much bread as we can eat,” said George.

The fat woman gazed at us with winking eyes, and without moving, as if to ask: ”All very fine! but who is going to pay me?”

George displayed a five-franc piece, and at once she replied, smiling: ”Gentlemen, we will attend to you immediately.”

Around us were murmurings: ”They are Alsacians! they are Germans! they are this, they are that!”

But we heeded nothing, we spread our elbows upon the table; and the soup having appeared in a huge basin, it was evident that our appet.i.tes were good; as for the beef, a regular Prussian morsel, it was gone in a twinkling, although it weighed two pounds, and was flanked with potatoes and other vegetables. Then, the first bottle having disappeared, George had called for a second; and our eyes were beginning to be opened; we regarded the people in another light; and one of the bystanders having ventured to repeat that we were Germans, George turned sharply round and cried: ”Who says we are Germans? Come let us see! If he has any spirit, let him rise. We Germans!”

Then he took up the bottle and shattered it upon the table in a thousand fragments. I saw that he was losing his head, and cried to him: ”George, for Heaven's sake don't: you will get us taken up!”

But all the spectators agreed with him.

”It is abominable!” cried George. ”Let the man who said we are Germans stand out and speak; let him come out with me; let him choose sabre, or sword, whatever he likes, it is all the same to me.”

The speaker thus called upon, a youth rose and said: ”Pardon me, I apologize; I thought----”

”You had no right to think,” said George; ”such things never should be said. We are Alsacians, true Frenchmen, men of mature age; my companion's son is at Phalsbourg in the Mobiles, and I have served in the Marines. We have been carried away, dragged off by the Germans; we have lost our horses and our carriages, and now on arriving here, our own fellow-countrymen insult us in this way because we have said a few words in Alsacian, just as Bretons would speak in Breton and Provencals in Provencal.”

”I ask your pardon,” repeated the young man. ”I was in the wrong--I acknowledge it. You are good Frenchmen.”

”I forgive you,” said George, scrutinizing him; ”but how old are you?”

”Eighteen.”

”Well, go where you ought to be, and show that you, too, are as good a Frenchman as we are. There are no young men left in Alsace. You understand my meaning.”

Everybody was listening. The young man went out, and as cousin was asking for another bottle, the landlady whispered to him over his shoulder: ”You are good Frenchmen; but you have spoken before a great many people--strangers, that I know nothing of. You had better go.”

Immediately, George recovered his senses; he laid a cent-sous piece on the table, the woman gave him two francs fifty centimes change, and we went out.

Once out, George said to me: ”Let us step out: anger makes a fool of a man.”

And we set off down one little street, then up another, till we came out into the open fields. Night was approaching; if we had been taken again, it would have been a worse business than the first; and we knew that so well, that that night and the next day we dared not even enter the villages, for fear of being seized and brought back to our battalion.

At last, fatigue obliged us to enter an enclosure. It was very cold for the season; but we had become accustomed to our wretchedness, and we slept against a wall, upon a bit of straw matting, just as in our own beds. Rising in the morning at the dawn of day, we found ourselves covered with h.o.a.r-frost, and George, straining his eyes in the distance, asked: ”Do you know that place down there, Christian?”

I looked.

”Why, it is Chateau-Salins!”

Ah! now all was well. At Chateau-Salins lived an old cousin, Desjardins, the first dyer in the country: Desjardins's grandfather and ours had married sisters before the Revolution. He was a Lutheran, and even a Calvinist; we were Catholics; but nevertheless, we knew each other, and were fond of each other, as very near relations.