'Too stupid, Your Excellency!' answered the Major. 'Let us try,' said His Excellency, and turning his horse, he approached Bartek. Bartek himself scarcely knew what was happening to him: it was a thing unknown in the Prussian Army for the General to talk to a Private! His Excellency was the more easily able to do this, because he knew Polish. Moreover this Private had captured three flags and two guns. 'Where do you come from?' enquired the General. 'From Pognębin,' answered Bartek. 'Good. Your name?' 'Bartek Słowik.' 'Mensch,' explained the Major. 'Mens!' Bartek tried to repeat. 'Do you know why you are fighting the French?' 'I know, Your Excellency.' 'Tell me.' Bartek began to stammer, 'Because, because--' Then on a sudden Wojtek's words fortunately came into his mind, and he burst out with them quickly, so as not to get confused: 'Because they are Germans too, only worse villains!' His Excellency's face began to twitch as if he felt inclined to burst out laughing. After a moment, however, His Excellency turned to the Major, and said: 'You are right, Sir.' Our friend Bartek, satisfied with himself, remained standing as straight as a fiddle string. 'Who won the battle to-day?' the General asked again. 'I, Your Excellency,' Bartek answered without hesitation. His Excellency's face again began to twitch. 'Right, very right, it was you! And here you have your reward.' Here the old soldier unpinned the iron cross from his own breast, stooped and pinned it on to Bartek. The General's good humour was reflected in a perfectly natural way on the faces of the Colonel, the Majors, the Captains, down to the non-commissioned officers. After the General's departure the Colonel for his own part presented Bartek with ten thalers, the Major with five, and so on. Everyone repeated to him smilingly that he had won the battle, with the result that Bartek was in the seventh heaven. It was a strange thing: the only person who was not really satisfied with our hero was Wojtek. In the evening, when they were both sitting round the fire, and when Bartek's distinguished face was bulging as much with pea sausage as the sausage itself, Wojtek ejaculated in a tone of resignation: 'Oh Bartek, what a blockhead you are, because--' 'But why?' said Bartek, between his bites of sausage. 'Why, man, didn't you tell the General that the French are Germans?' 'You said so yourself.' 'And what of that?--' Wojtek began to stammer a little--'Well, though they may be Germans, you needn't have told him so, because it's always unpleasant--' 'But I said it about the French, not about them....' 'Ah, because when....' Wojtek stopped short, though evidently wishing to say something further; he wished to explain to Bartek that it is not suitable when among Germans to speak evil of them, but somehow his tongue became entangled. CHAPTER V A little while later the Royal Prussian Mail brought the following letter to Pognębin: