Now, Jackdaw's Leg had been feeling very poorly for some weeks. Was it due to home-sickness and to a longing for sauerkraut and sausages? Or might it not rather come from too many merry parties? In short, the commandant seemed to languish, and ten times a day lay down on his couch. As he had two bedrooms at his disposal, he slept in one bed by night, and--for variety's sake--in the other by day, unmindful of the fact that he thus requisitioned two pairs of sheets a week, that soap was scarcely to be had, and that the poor washerwoman had to whiten the linen with wood ashes. Jackdaw's Leg, being ill, got a month's leave of absence, and disappeared in the background. His place was filled up by the young linguist who had put up at Mme. Lantois'. He would gladly have seen us dead. Calling on his brother-in-arms, lingering without a motive, or for a wrong motive, in our garden, in our lobby or on our threshold, peeping through the keyholes--we once detected him in this occupation--he had discovered that our souls were not unworthy of associating with his, mad for music and philology, enamoured of art and culture. Notwithstanding that we had the reputation of hating the Germans, this nice Prussian, who produced in tippling-houses a list of at least one thousand and three names--the list of his conquests in France--this nice Prussian then gave us to understand that he would condescend to enter into relations with us, relations based on philosophy, science, and literature. Why not on politics? We responded in such a manner to his advances as to convince even a Prussian. And since then the fellow had borne us a dangerous grudge. Two days after the departure of Jackdaw's Leg we heard a beat of the rural constable's drum ... women from sixteen to fifty ... one o'clock ... market-place.... We hardly listened to it. It was no concern of ours. But at one o'clock Mme. Lantois ran up breathless: "Do you know that the lieutenant just said that _everybody_ must go to the market-place? He even told us that if you didn't go, he would send four soldiers to fetch you, and take you off to Chalandry."