a low voice: "It is when we are happy that
we feel the bitterness of poverty. It is not enough to give our blood
to our country, but there is suffering at home in consequence, and when
we return we must have misery before our eyes."

I saw that he was growing sad, so I filled his glass and we drank, and
his melancholy vanished. Catherine came back and said, "the
grandmother was very happy, and that she thanked Mr. Goulden, and said
it had been a beautiful day for her." And this roused everybody. As
the dinner continued, Aunt Gredel heard the bells for vespers, and she
went out to church, but Catherine remained, and the animation which
good wine inspires had come, and we began to speak of the last
campaign; of the retreat from the Rhine to Paris, of the fighting of
the battalion at Bibelskirchen and at Saarbruck, where Lieutenant
Baubin swam the Saar when it was freezing as hard as stone, to destroy
some boats which were still in the hands of the enemy; of the passage
at Narbefontaine, at Courcelles, at Metz, at Enzelvin, and at Champion
and Verdun, and, still retreating, the battle of Brienne. The men were
nearly all destroyed, but on the 4th of February the battalion was
re-formed from the remnant of the 5th light infantry, and from that
moment they were every day under fire; on the 5th, 6th, and 7th at
Mery-sur-Seine; on the 8th at Sezanne, where the soldiers died in the
mud, not having strength enough to get out; the 9th and 10th at Muers,
where Zebede was buried at night in the dung-heap of a farmhouse in
order to get warm, and the terrible battle of Marche on the 11th, in
which the Commandant Philippe was wounded by a bayonet-thrust; the
encounter on the 12th and 13th at Montmirail, the battle of Beauchamp
on the 14th, the retreat on Montmirail on the 15th and 16th, when the
Prussians returned: the combats at the Ferte-Gauche, at Jouarre, at
Gue-a-Train, at Neufchettes, and so on. When the Prussians were
beaten, then came the Russians, after them the Austrians, the
Bavarians, the Wurtemburgers, the Hessians, the Saxons, and the Badois.

I have often heard that campaign described, but never as it was done by
Zebede. As he talked his great thin face quivered and his long nose
turned down over the four hairs of his yellow mustache, and his eyes
would flash and he would stretch out his hand from his old sleeve and
you could see what he was describing. The great plains of Champagne
with the smoking villages to