That was their feeling, but the laborers and the peasants and the tradespeople with one voice hailed the return of peace and cried, "Down with the conscription and the right of union." Everybody was tired of living like a bird on branch and of risking their lives for matters which did not concern them. In the midst of all this joy nobody was so happy as I; the others had not had the good luck to escape unharmed from the terrible battles of Weissenfels and Lutzen and Leipzig, and from the horrible typhus. I had made the acquaintance of glory and that gave me a still greater love for peace and horror of conscription. I had come back to Father Goulden's, and I shall never in my life forget his hearty welcome, or his exclamation as he took me in his arms: "It is Joseph! Ah! my dear child, I thought you were lost!" and we mingled our tears and our embraces together. And then we lived together again like two friends. He would make me go over our battles again and again, and laughingly call me "the old soldier." Then he would tell me of the siege of Pfalzbourg, how the enemy arrived before the town, in January, and how the old republicans with a few hundred gunners were sent to mount our cannon on the ramparts, how they were obliged to eat horseflesh on account of the famine, and to break up the iron utensils of the citizens to make case-shot and canister. Father Goulden, in spite of his threescore years, had aimed the pieces on the Magazine bastion on the Bichelberg side, and I often imagined I could see him with his black silk cap and spectacles on, in the act of aiming a twenty-four pounder. Then this would make us both laugh and helped to pass away the time. We had resumed all our old habits. I laid the table and made the soup. I was occupying my little chamber again and dreamed of Catherine day and night. But now, instead of being afraid of the conscription as I was in 1813, I had something else to trouble me. Man is never quite happy, some petty misery or other assails him. How often do we see this in life? My peace was disturbed by this. You know I was to marry Catherine; we were agreed, and Aunt Gredel desired nothing better. Unhappily, however, the conscripts of 1815 were disbanded, while those of 1813 still remained soldiers. It was no longer so dangerous to be a soldier as it was under the Empire, and many of these had returned to their homes and were living quietly, but that did not prevent the necessity of my having a permit in order to be married. Mr. Jourdan, the new mayor, would never allow me to register without this permission, and this made me anxious.