All at once, seeing a pastrycook’s window, with a grand display of buns and tarts beneath the lamps, with one impulse, without stopping to parley, we hurl ourselves, all six, into the _Conditorei_. Georg invokes all the devils of hell, but follows us. “Mange,” says Détry to him, forcing him to sit down at a table loaded with custard tartlets and éclairs. And we, who have been craving for sweet things for months, begin to devour all that comes to our hands. Trembling with concupiscence, I go to the counter, I take the mistress by the hand, and, my mouth full, say to her: “Madame, you will be an angel if you can get me two pounds of butter!” She does not sell butter, but a mother is never able to resist the cry of a child, and she lets me have her own butter. “I can buy some more,” she says with a smile. I open the show-cases: “Hullo, Suchard! How much this pile?” She names the price. “There you are.” Then I spy some little sponge-cakes coated with sugar. In a trice I have filled my haversack, which I carry beneath my coat. Big-bellied as a Bavarian, I am unable to rebutton. “_Vorwärts!_” cries Georg, stuffed with good things. We pay our shot. Leaving the pastrycook’s we overwhelm our gaoler with prayers: “Do let us go to the ham and beef shop, to the tobacconist.…”—“It’s absolutely impossible,” he cries. In reality, he dreads losing his commission! He marches on at a terrible rate, kicking out of the way, driving out of the way with the butt end of his musket, the escorting rabble of children. It is only two young girls of really charming appearance, ten or twelve years of age, who walked by my side on the way to the cemetery and to whom I said, “I have sisters of your age who are like you,” that continue to accompany me, notwithstanding the roughness of the _Bursch_. We talk like old friends. They leave us at the wicket of the cavalry barracks, with a parting “_Grüss Gott, Herr Franzose!_” My companions are still arguing with Georg. “It won’t take a minute to buy a dozen packets of tobacco and a string of sausages!” The innocents! They reason with Georg. Durupt especially, who is eloquent in the Teutonic tongue, surpasses himself. “To be at the source of all good things and not to drink from it! To pass stupidly by!”—“_Ne, ne_,” the _Bursch_ growls continually. Now we are traversing badly lighted streets. We make our way through the suburbs, and beyond the station we reach the dull country on the outskirts of the town. “Old fellow,” says Détry to Durupt, “we are greatly indebted to you. With all your German, you have not been smart enough to get us the smallest of sausages, a single pipefull of tobacco! It is obvious, O Durupt the Just, that you do not know the only language in which it is possible to persuade Georg!”