"Severe! I believe you! All may thank their lucky stars who have not left their bones to bleach there. Everything was against us. Sickness, traitors, the peasants, the shopkeepers, our Allies--in short, everything. Of our company, which left Phalsbourg in full marching order on the 21st of last January, there have returned only thirty-two men. I think Gaspard Lefévre is the only one of the conscripts left. Poor fellows! they fought well; but they were not used to starving, and they melted away like butter on a stove." So saying, the old soldier approached the counter, and tossed off his brandy at a single draught. "Your health, friend. Are you, by chance, the father of Gaspard?" "No; I am a relation." "Well, you have reason to be proud of him. What a fine young fellow for twenty! Yes, in spite of all, he has kept his post while others gave in by dozens." "But still," pursued Hullin, after a moment's silence, "I'm at a loss to see what there was in this last campaign so different to all others; for we also had sicknesses--traitors to encounter." "Different!" exclaimed the sergeant; "everything was different. Formerly, if you fought with us in Germany, you must remember that after one or two victories it was all over; people received you well; you drank wine and ate sour-krout and ham with the worthy citizens, or danced with their fat wives. The husbands and grandpapas shook their sides with laughing, and when the regiment took its departure, everybody was ready to cry their eyes out. But this time, after Lutzen and Bautzen, instead of coming round, the people only made wry faces at you; you could get nothing, except by force, till you would almost have thought yourself in Spain or La Vendee. I don't know what they had taken into their heads against us. Again, if we had been nothing but Frenchmen, and hadn't had heaps of Saxons and other allies, who were only waiting the opportunity to spring at our throats, we should have gained the day all the same, one against five; but the Allies!--never talk to me of allies again! Why, look now at Leipzig, the 18th of last October, in the very midst of the battle, our Allies turned against us, and fired at us from behind: those were our fine friends, the Saxons. A week after, our once excellent friends, the Bavarians, came and threw themselves in the way of our retreat. We had to cut our way through them at Hanau. The next day, close to Frankfort, another column of good friends present themselves. They had to be crushed. In short, the more of them you kill, the more spring up in your path. And now, here we are on this side of the Rhine. Well, rest assured we have yet more of these good friends all the way from Moscow on our track. Oh, if we could only have foreseen this after Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and Wagram!" Hullin had grown quite thoughtful. "And what is the state of things with us now?" he asked.