They had no children, and I had been called upon to run many a small errand for them. I worshipped him endlessly; but she was repugnant to me, because the only reward I ever got from her for all of my errands were rotten apples or mushy pears; she also did not permit her husband to smoke more than two cigars, at two pfennig a piece, per month. I had to get them for him from the grocer, because he was ashamed of buying such cheap cigars for himself, and he smoked them in the yard, because Friederike could not stand the smell of tobacco. He was also truly delighted today by the sight of our troops. Watching them leaving, he said: [a] Saloppe: I have no idea what this word means. "Yes, there is something great, something noble in this kind of enthusiasm for God, king, and fatherland!" "But what does one get out of it?" asked the cantor's wife. "Bliss is what you get out of it, the genuine, the true kind of bliss!" With these words, he entered the house; he did not like to argue. I went to our yard. There stood a French apple-tree [a]. I sat in its shade and thought about what the cantor had said. So the true kind of bliss was to be found in these words: God, king, and fatherland; I wanted and had to remember that! Later, experience has reshaped and ground down these words for me; but though they might have altered their shapes, the inner essence has remained. [a] Franzäpfelbaum: A small kind of apple-tree with hardly any trunk, first grown in France. Of all those who had moved out today, to perform great heroic deeds, the borrowed horse was first to return. The adjutant had handed it over to a currier, who brought it home, because walking was much healthier than riding, and because the rider did not have enough money saved to replace the horse, in case it would be injured or even shot dead in a fight. The master weaver Kretzschmar followed in the evening. He maintained that he could not have walked any further with his flat-feet; this was a natural defect, beyond his control. After dark, a few others turned up as well, who were dismissed for urgent reasons, bringing news that our corps had put up camp beyond Chemnitz, near Oederan, and that spies had been sent to Freiberg to investigate the battle-field there. In the morning, the surprising, but not at all sad, news arrived that they had been instructed at Freiberg to turn around immediately; they were not needed at all, since the Prussians had moved into Dresden, and therefore, there was not even the slightest danger for the king and the government any more. You can easily imagine that there was no school and no work on that day. I also refused to stitch any gloves. I simply ran away and joined those brave boys and girls, who were to form eleven companies and move out to meet their returning fathers on the way. This plan was carried out. We made our camp at the lakes of Wüstenbrand, and as soon those whom we were waiting for