She clinched her hand, and little Sâfel listened. This was all the comfort she could give me. I thought as she did, but I was so angry that I would have given half my fortune to ruin the wretch. All that day, and in the night, too, I exclaimed more than twenty times: "Ah, the scoundrel!--I was going--they had said to me, 'You may go!'--He is the cause of all my misery!" You cannot imagine, Fritz, how I have always hated that man. Never have my wife and I forgotten the harm he did us--never shall my children forget it. V FATHER MOSES RECEIVES WELCOME NEWS The next day we must answer to the call before the mayoralty. All the children in town surrounded us and whistled. Fortunately, the blindages of the Place d'Armes were not finished, so that we went to learn our exercises in the large court of the college, near the _chemin de ronde_ at the corner of the powder-house. As the pupils had been dismissed for some time, the place was at liberty. Imagine to yourself this large court filled with citizens in bonnets, coats, cloaks, vests, and breeches, obliged to obey the orders of their former tinkers, chimney-sweeps, stable-boys, now turned into corporals, sergeants, and sergeant-majors. Imagine these peaceable men, in fours, in sixes, in tens, stretching out their legs in concert, and marching to the step, "One--_two_! One--_two_! Halt! Steady!" while others, marching backward, frowning, called out insolently: "Moses, dress thy shoulders!" "Moses, bring thy nose into line!" "Attention, Moses! Carry arms! Ah, old shoe, thou'lt never be good for anything! Can any one be so stupid at his age? Look--just look! Thunder! Canst thou not do that? One--_two_! What an old blockhead! Come, begin again! Carry arms!" This is the way my own cobbler, Monborne, ordered me about. I believe he would have beaten me if it had not been for Captain Vigneron. All the rest treated their old patrons in the same way. You would have said that it had always been so--that they had always been sergeants and we had always been soldiers. I heaped up gall enough against this rabble to last fifty years. They in fine were the masters! And the only time that I remember ever to have struck my own son, Sâfel, this Monborne was the cause of it. All the children climbed upon the wall of the _chemin de ronde_ to look at us and laugh at us. On looking up, I saw Sâfel among them, and made a sign of displeasure with my finger. He went down at once; but at the close of the exercise, when we were ordered to break ranks before the town-house, I was seized with anger as I saw him coming toward me, and I gave him two good boxes on the ear, and said: "Go--hiss and mock at your father, like Shem, instead of bringing a garment to cover his nakedness--go!"