After a minute he put some sous in Frantz Sepel's hand, and received his morsel, which he hid under his cloak. Then looking round again, he was going away quickly, with his head down. This sight moved my heart: I hurried away, raising my hands to heaven, and exclaiming: "Is it possible? Is it possible? Burguet too! A man of his genius to suffer hunger and eat carcasses! Oh, what times of trial!" I went home, completely upset. We had not many provisions left; but, still, the next morning, as Sâfel was going down to open the shop, I said to him: "Stop, my child, take this little basket to M. Burguet; it is some potatoes and salt beef. Take care that nobody sees it, they would take it from you. Say that it is in remembrance of the poor deserter." The child went. He told me that Burguet wept. This, Fritz, is what must be seen in a blockade, where you are attacked from day to day. This is what the Germans and Spaniards had to suffer, and what we suffered in our turn. This is war! Even the siege rations were almost gone; but Moulin, the commandant of the place, having died of typhus, the famine did not prevent the lieutenant-colonel, who took his place, from giving balls and fêtes to the envoys, in the old Thevenot house. The windows were bright, music played, the staff-officers drank punch and warm wine, to make believe that we were living in abundance. There was good reason for bandaging the eyes of these envoys till they reached the very ball-room, for, if they had seen the look of the people, all the punch-bowls and warm wines in the world would not have deceived them. All this time, the grave-digger Mouyot and his two boys came every morning to take their two or three drops of brandy. They might say "We drink to the dead!" as the veterans said "We drink to the Cossacks!" Nobody in the city would willingly have undertaken to bury those who had died of typhus; they alone, after taking their drop, dared to throw the bodies from the hospital upon a cart, and pile them up in the pit, and then they passed for grave-diggers, with Father Zébédé. The order was to wrap the dead in a sheet. But who saw that it was done? Old Mouyot himself told me that they were buried in their cloaks or vests, as it might be, and sometimes entirely naked. For every corpse, these men had their thirty-five sous; Father Mouyot, the blind man, can tell you so; it was his harvest. Toward the end of March, in the midst of this fearful want, when there was not a dog, and still less a cat, to be seen in the streets, the city was full of evil tidings; rumors of battles lost, of marches upon Paris, etc. As the envoys had been received, and balls given in their honor, something of our misfortunes became known either through the family or the servants.