It was about seven o'clock. The snow falling from the roofs at every gust of wind was enough to blind you. But going along the walls, with my nose in my great-coat, which was well drawn up on the shoulders, I reached the German gate, and was about going down the three steps of the guard-house, under the arch at the left, when the sergeant himself opened the heavy door and exclaimed: "Is it you, Father Moses! What the devil has brought you here in this cold?" The guard-house was full of mist; we could hardly see some men stretched on camp-beds at the farther end, and five or six veterans near the red-hot stove. I stood and looked. "Here," I said to the sergeant as I handed him my little bottle, "I have brought you your drop of cherry-brandy; it was such a cold night, you must need it." "And you have thought of me, Father Moses!" he exclaimed, taking me by the arm, and looking at me with emotion. "Yes, sergeant." "Well, I am glad of it." He raised the flask to his mouth and took a good drink. At that moment there was a distant cry. "Who goes there?" and the guard of the outpost ran to open the gate. "That is good!" said the sergeant, tapping on the cork, and giving me the bottle; "take it back, Father Moses, and thank you!" Then he turned toward the half-moon and asked, "News! What is it?" We both looked and saw a hussar quartermaster, a withered, gray old man, with quantities of chevrons on his arm, arrive in great haste. All my life I shall have that man before my eyes; his smoking horse, his flying sabretash, his sword clinking against his boots; his cap and jacket covered with frost; his long, bony, wrinkled face, his pointed nose, long chin, and yellow eyes. I shall always see him riding like the wind, then stopping his rearing horse under the arch in front of us, and calling out to us with a voice like a trumpet: "Where is the governor's house, sergeant?" "The first house at the right, quartermaster. What is the news?" "The enemy is in Alsace!" Those who have never seen such men--men accustomed to long warfare, and hard as iron--can have no idea of them. And then if you had heard the exclamation, "The enemy is in Alsace!" it would have made you tremble. The veterans had gone away; the sergeant, as he saw the hussar fasten his horse at the governor's door, said to me: "Ah, well, Father Moses, now we shall see the whites of their eyes!" He laughed, and the others seemed pleased. As for myself, I set forth quickly, with my head bent, and in my terror repeating to myself the words of the prophet: "One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king that his passages are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted. "The mighty men have forborne to fight, they have remained in their holds, their might hath failed, and the bars are broken.