Father Goulden, as soon as the city gates were opened, had written to the minister of war, Dupont, that I was at Pfalzbourg and still unwell, that I had limped from my birth, and that I had in spite of this been pressed into the service, that I was a poor soldier, but that I could make a good father of a family, that it would be a real crime to prevent me from marrying, that I was ill-formed and weak and should be obliged to go into the hospital, etc. It was a beautiful letter, and it told the truth too. The very idea of going away again made me ill. So we waited from day to day--Aunt Gredel, Father Goulden, Catherine, and I, for the answer from the minister. I cannot describe the impatience I felt when the postman Brainstein, the son of the bell-ringer, came into the street. I could hear him half a mile away, and then I could not go on with my work, but must lean out of the window and watch him as he went from house to house. When he would stay a little too long, I would say to myself, "What can he have to talk about so long? why don't he leave his letters and come away? he is a regular tattler, that Brainstein!" I was ready to pounce upon him. Sometimes I ran down to meet him, and would ask, "Have you nothing for me?" "No, Mr. Joseph," he would reply as he looked over his letters. Then I would go sadly back, and Father Goulden, who had been looking on, would say: "Have a little patience, child! have patience, it will come. It is not war time now." "But he has had time to answer a dozen times, Mr. Goulden." "Do you think he has nobody's affairs to attend to but yours? He receives hundreds of such letters every day--and each one receives his answer in his turn. And then everything is in confusion from top to bottom. Come, come! we are not alone in the world--many other brave fellows are waiting for their permits to be married." I knew he was right, but I said to myself, "If that minister only knew how happy he would make us by just writing ten words, I am sure he would do it at once. How we would bless him, Catherine and I, Aunt Gredel and all of us." But wait we must.