Often, in wandering through the streets which ran along the ramparts, I mounted one of the bastions, looking toward Strasburg, or Metz, or Paris. I had no fear then of stray balls. I looked forth upon the thousand bivouac fires scattered over the plain, the soldiers of the enemy returning from the villages with their long poles hung with quarters of meat, at others crouched around the little fires which shone like stars upon the edge of the forest, and at their patrols and their covered batteries from which their flag was flying. Sometimes I looked at the smoke of the chimneys at Quatre-Vents, or Bichelberg, or Mittelbronn. Our chimneys had no smoke, our festive days were over. You can never imagine how many thoughts come to you, when you are so shut up, as your eyes follow the long white highways, and you imagine yourself walking there, talking with people about the news, asking them what they have suffered, and telling them what you have yourself endured. From the bastion of the guard, I could see even the white peaks of the Schneeberg; I imagined myself in the midst of foresters, wood-cutters, and wood-splitters. There was a rumor that they were defending their route from Schirmeck; I longed to know if it were true. As I looked toward the Maisons-Rouges, on the road to Paris, I imagined myself to be with my old friend Leiser; I saw him at his hearth, in despair at having to support so many people, for the Russian, Austrian, and Bavarian staff-officers remained upon this route, and new regiments went by continually. And spring came! The snow began to melt in the furrows and behind the hedges. The great forests of La Bonne-Fontaine and the Barracks began to change their tents. The thing which affected me most, as I have often remembered, was hearing the first lark at the end of March. The sky was entirely clear, and I looked up to see the bird. I thought of little David, and I wept, I knew not why. Men have strange thoughts; they are affected by the song of a bird, and sometimes, years after, the same sounds recall the same emotions, so as even to make them weep. At last the house was purified, and Zeffen and Sorlé came back to it. The time of the Passover drew near; and the floors must be washed, the walls scoured, the vessels cleansed. In the midst of these cares, the poor women forgot, in some measure, our affliction; but as the time drew nearer our anxiety increased; how, in the midst of this famine, were we to obey the command of God: "This month shall be the first month of the year to you. "In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house. "Ye shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats. "And ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. "And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs shall they eat it."