"He says that generals Blücher and Schwartzenberg are near Paris." "Near Paris! They! The rascals!" he faltered out. Suddenly, with a bad look on his face, he gave a low laugh and said: "Ah! thou meanest to take Phalsburg, dost thou? Thou meanest to return to thy land of sauerkraut with palms of victory? He! he! he! I have given thee thy palms of victory!" He made the motions of pricking with his bayonet as he spoke, "One--_two_--hop!" It made us all tremble only to look at him. "Yes, Father Moses, so it is," said he, emptying his glass by little sips. "I have nailed this sort of an apothecary to the door of the tile-kiln. He made up a funny face--his eyes starting from his head. His Aurelia will have to expect him a good while! But never mind! Only, Madame Sorlé, I assure you that it is a lie. You must not believe a word he says. The Emperor will give it to them! Don't be troubled." I did not wish to go on. I felt myself grow cold, and I finished the letter quickly, passing over three-quarters of it which contained no information, only compliments for friends and acquaintances. The sergeant himself had had enough of it, and went out soon afterward, saying, "Good-night! Throw that in the fire!" Then I put the letter aside, and we all sat looking at each other for some minutes. I opened the door. The sergeant was in his room at the end of the passage, and I said, in a low voice: "What a horrible thing! Not only to kill the father of a family like a fly, but to laugh about it afterward!" "Yes," replied Sorlé. "And the worst of it is that he is not a bad man. He loves the Emperor too well, that is all!" The information contained in the letter caused us much serious reflection, and that night, notwithstanding our stroke of good fortune in our sales, I woke more than once, and thought of this terrible war, and wondered what would become of the country if Napoleon were no longer its master. But these questions were above my comprehension, and I did not know how to answer them. XVII FAMINE AND FEVER After this story of the landwehr, we were afraid of the sergeant, though he did not know it, and came regularly to take his glass of cherry-brandy. Sometimes in the evening he would hold the bottle before our lamp, and exclaim: "It is getting low, Father Moses, it is getting low! We shall soon be put upon half-rations, and then quarter, and so on. It is all the same; if a drop is left, anything more than the smell, in six months, Trubert will be very glad." He laughed, and I thought with indignation: "You will be satisfied with a drop! What are you in want of? The city storehouses are bomb-proof, the fires at the guard-house are burning every day, the market furnishes every soldier with his ration of fresh meat, while respectable citizens are glad if they can get potatoes and salt meat!"