While he was speaking, his countenance resumed the sinister expression and peculiar intensity that these fearful night-watches had imparted to it. What a terrible companion I am going to have! . . . [Picture: Goudeloup hunting his prey] * * * * * [Picture: Prussian patrol] _November_ 20_th_. We have just spent a most dreadful week. During eight days, the Prussian patrols have unceasingly passed backwards and forwards through the forest. They skirted the walls of the Hermitage, and even entered the enclosure, but the state of the keeper’s little house, left wide open and abandoned; the ivy and brambles giving such a dilapidated appearance to my own, protected us. My companion and myself carefully remained inside the whole time, deadening our steps across the room, lowering our voices by the hearth, and only making a small fire at night. [Picture: Jug] This time, had we been discovered, it meant death, and I felt rather annoyed with Goudeloup for having made me his accomplice by coming to take refuge here. He understood my feelings, and offered several times to go and seek another shelter; but I would not consent to this. To show his gratitude for my hospitality, he renders me a lot of little services. Very obliging, very clever in all the practical details of life, about which I am so ignorant, he has taught me to make bread that is eatable, real cider, and candles. It is a pleasure to see him busy all day long, restricting his faculty for work and order, which he formerly exercised on a wider scale in the management of his large farmstead and seventy-five acres of land, and adapting himself to the confined space of our only room. Gloomy and silent, moreover, and sitting motionless for hours in the evening, his head buried in his hands, like all inveterate workers with whom overwrought physical life absorbs the moral being, I could not help sometimes smiling when I noticed that, notwithstanding the tragical circumstances surrounding us, he kept up his habit of prolonged meals and pauses between each mouthful. Such as he is, the fellow interests me. He is the true peasant in all his native brutality. His land, his goods, are far more precious to him than his country or his family. He unconsciously utters the most monstrous sentiments. If he is so bent on revenge, it is only because the Prussians have burnt down his farm, and the horrors of the invasion only rouse him when he thinks of his lost harvest, and his fields left untilled and unsown. [Picture: Goudeloup sitting despondent] * * * * * [Picture: Goudeloup’s derelict farm] * * * * * [Picture: Discussion with Goudeloup] _November_ 22_nd_ . . .