Then he took up the bottle and shattered it upon the table in a thousand fragments. I saw that he was losing his head, and cried to him: "George, for Heaven's sake don't: you will get us taken up!" But all the spectators agreed with him. "It is abominable!" cried George. "Let the man who said we are Germans stand out and speak; let him come out with me; let him choose sabre, or sword, whatever he likes, it is all the same to me." The speaker thus called upon, a youth rose and said: "Pardon me, I apologize; I thought----" "You had no right to think," said George; "such things never should be said. We are Alsacians, true Frenchmen, men of mature age; my companion's son is at Phalsbourg in the Mobiles, and I have served in the Marines. We have been carried away, dragged off by the Germans; we have lost our horses and our carriages, and now on arriving here, our own fellow-countrymen insult us in this way because we have said a few words in Alsacian, just as Bretons would speak in Breton and Provencals in Provencal." "I ask your pardon," repeated the young man. "I was in the wrong--I acknowledge it. You are good Frenchmen." "I forgive you," said George, scrutinizing him; "but how old are you?" "Eighteen." "Well, go where you ought to be, and show that you, too, are as good a Frenchman as we are. There are no young men left in Alsace. You understand my meaning." Everybody was listening. The young man went out, and as cousin was asking for another bottle, the landlady whispered to him over his shoulder: "You are good Frenchmen; but you have spoken before a great many people--strangers, that I know nothing of. You had better go." Immediately, George recovered his senses; he laid a cent-sous piece on the table, the woman gave him two francs fifty centimes change, and we went out. Once out, George said to me: "Let us step out: anger makes a fool of a man." And we set off down one little street, then up another, till we came out into the open fields. Night was approaching; if we had been taken again, it would have been a worse business than the first; and we knew that so well, that that night and the next day we dared not even enter the villages, for fear of being seized and brought back to our battalion. At last, fatigue obliged us to enter an enclosure. It was very cold for the season; but we had become accustomed to our wretchedness, and we slept against a wall, upon a bit of straw matting, just as in our own beds. Rising in the morning at the dawn of day, we found ourselves covered with hoar-frost, and George, straining his eyes in the distance, asked: "Do you know that place down there, Christian?" I looked. "Why, it is Chateau-Salins!"