e
Empire. The noise grew fainter in the distance, and the chanting and
prayers and the sound of the bells as well. All the doors and windows
were closed, everybody had followed the procession. I stopped in the
silent street to take breath, a slight breeze came from the fields
beyond the ramparts, and I listened to the tumult in the distance and
wiped the sweat from my face and thought, "how am I to find Catherine?"

I was climbing the steps at the postern gate when I heard some one say:
"Mark the points, Margarot."

I then saw that Father Colin's windows on the first floor were open,
and that some men in their shirt-sleeves were playing billiards. They
were old soldiers with short hair, and mustaches like a brush. They
went back and forth, without troubling themselves about the mayor, or
the commandant, or Louis XVI., or the bourgeoisie. One of them, short,
thick, with his whiskers cut as was the fashion of the hussars in those
days, and his cravat untied, leaned out of the window, resting his cue
on the sill, and, looking toward the square, said:

"We will put the game at fifty."

I thought at once that they were half-pay officers, who were spending
their last sous, and who would soon be troubled to live. I continued
on my way, and hurried along under the vault of the powder magazine
behind the college, thinking of all these things, but when I reached
the German gate I forgot everything. The procession was just turning
the corner at Bockholtz, the chants broke forth opposite the altar like
trumpets, and the young priests from Nancy were running among the crowd
with their crucifixes raised to keep order, and the Swiss Sirou carried
himself majestically under his banner; at the head of the procession
were the priests and the choir singing, while the prayers rose to
heaven, and behind, the crowd responded: and all this took form, in a
low fearful murmur.

I stood on my tiptoes, half hidden by the shed, trying to discover
Catherine in all that multitude and thinking only of her, but what a
crowd of hats and bonnets and flags I saw defiling down the rue Ulrich.
You would never have imagined that there were so many people in the
country; there could not have been a soul left in the villages, except
a few little children and old people who stayed to take care of them.

I waited about twenty minutes, and gave up hoping to find Catherine,
when suddenly I saw her with Aunt Gredel. Aunt was praying in such a
loud