return of Louis XVIII., in 1814, was
unbounded. It was in the spring, and the hedges, gardens, and orchards
were in full bloom. The people had for years suffered so much misery,
and had so many times feared being carried off by the conscription
never to return, they were so weary of battles, of the captured cannon,
of all the glory and the Te Deums, that they wished for nothing but to
live in peace and quiet and to rear their families by honest labor.

Indeed, everybody was content except the old soldiers and the
fencing-masters.

I well remember how, when on the 3d of May the order came to raise the
white flag on the church, the whole town trembled for fear of the
soldiers of the garrison, and Nicholas Passauf, the slater, demanded
six louis for the bold feat. He was plainly to be seen from every
street with the white silk flag with its "fleur-de-lis," and the
soldiers were shooting at him from every window of the two barracks,
but Passauf raised his flag in spite of them and came down and hid
himself in the barn of the "Trois Maisons," while the marines were
searching the town for him to kill him.

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