And again everything relapsed into silence. While Hullin was watching, and feeling sick to his heart's core, a shopkeeper in the vicinity, Sôme the baker, came out of his house carrying a large basin of soup. Then you should have seen all these spectres move, their eyes sparkle, their nostrils dilate; they seemed born again. The unhappy fellows were dying of hunger! Good Father Sôme, with tears in his eyes, approached, saying, "I am coming, my children. A little patience! It is I, you know me!" But hardly was he near the first cart, when the great carbineer with the ashy cheeks, reviving, plunged his arm up to the elbow in the boiling basin, seized the meat, and hid it under his vest. It was done with the rapidity of lightning. Savage yells arose on all sides: those men, if they had had strength to move, would have devoured their comrade. He, his arms pressed tightly to his chest, the teeth on has prey, and glaring round him, appeared to hear nothing. At these cries an old soldier, a sergeant, rushed out of the nearest inn. He was an old hand; he understood at once what it was about, and, without useless reflections, he tore away the meat from the wild beast, saying to him, "Thou dost not deserve any! It must be divided into parts. We will cut ten rations!" "We are only eight!" said one of the wounded, very calm to all appearance, but with eyes gleaming out of their bronze mask. "How, eight?" "You can see, sergeant, that those two are dying fast: it would be so much food lost!" The old sergeant looked. "Eight," said he; "eight rations!" Hullin could bear it no longer. He went over to the innkeeper Wittmann's opposite, as white as death; Wittmann was also a fur and leather merchant. Seeing him enter, "Hé! is it you, Master Jean-Claude?" he exclaimed. "You arrive sooner than usual; I did not expect you till next week." Then seeing how he staggered--"But say, you are ill?" "I have just seen the wounded." "Ah, yes! the first time, it shocks you; but if you had seen fifteen thousand pass, as we have, you would not think anything more about it." "A glass of wine, quick?" said Hullin, who felt badly. "Oh, mankind, mankind! And to think that we are brothers!" "Yes, brothers until it touches your purse," replied Wittmann. "Come, drink! that will set you right." "And you have seen fifteen thousand go by?" rejoined the shoemaker. "At the least, for two months, without speaking of those who have remained in Alsace and the other side of the Rhine; for, you comprehend, they cannot find carts enough for all, and then many are not worth the trouble of being carried away." "Yes, I comprehend! But why are they there, those poor creatures? Why do they not go into the hospital?"