It was agreed that the two boys should set out the next morning at daybreak. This resolution drove Madame Teutch to despair, for, as she said, she felt as if she had a little family, and she loved them as if they were her own children. But she was too reasonable to attempt to delay, much less to prevent, a departure which she knew to be inevitable and, above all, urgent. She entered therefore into all their plans; the only condition that she made was that she herself might be allowed to give them the last meal that they were to take in her house. Not only was the offer accepted, but the young comrades, who regarded Madame Teutch, if not as a mother, at least as a friend, insisted that she should do the honors of the repast; an invitation which pleased her so greatly that she immediately gave orders to the cook for the best supper he could provide, and then hastened up to her room to don the handsomest gown she possessed. And as the supper preparations and Madame Teutch's toilet would consume at least half an hour, the two boys decided to employ that time in making ready for their departure. The Paris diligence, in which Eugene had engaged a place, was to start at daybreak. Charles intended to accompany his friend to the diligence and then to start for Auenheim, where Pichegru had his headquarters. Auenheim is some twenty-four miles distant from Strasbourg. It was one of the eight or ten fortresses which, like advance sentinels, watched over the safety of the frontiers around Strasbourg. Charles had need of a good night's rest to prepare for such a fatiguing journey. And it was to secure an uninterrupted sleep that Madame Teutch advised the boys to look over their papers and to pack their trunks before supper. In the meantime Augereau went to the barracks to leave word that, as he was to sup in the city, he did not know when he would return that evening, if he returned at all. As fencing-master he enjoyed many advantages over the other volunteers of Paris, who in their turn possessed immunities which the soldiers of the country were not allowed. The two boys left the communicating door between their rooms open, so that they could still talk with each other, although each was in his own room. Now that they were to part, each planned out his future as he intended it to be. "I," said Eugene, as he classified his military documents, "shall never be anything but a soldier. I know but little Latin, for which I have a strong dislike, and still less Greek, of which I don't understand a word. On the other hand, give me a horse, I don't care what it is, and I can ride it; I can hit the bull's-eye at twenty paces every time, and Augereau had told you himself that I need fear no one with sword or sabre. As soon as I hear a drum or a trumpet, my heart beats and the blood rushes to my head. I shall certainly be a soldier like my father. Who knows? Perhaps I shall become a general like him. It's fine to be a general."