ad
promised to marry each other, and all through the campaign of Zurich, I
never passed a day without thinking of her. But when I first received
a furlough and reached home, what did I hear? Margredel had been three
months married to a shoemaker, named Passauf."

"You may imagine my wrath, Josephel; I could not see clearly; I wanted
to demolish everything; and, as they told me that Passauf was at the
_Grand-Cerf_ brewery, thither I started, looking neither to the right
nor left. There I saw him drinking with three or four rogues. As I
rushed forward, he cried, 'There comes Christian Zimmer! How goes it,
Christian? Margredel sends you her compliments.' He winked his eye.
I seized a glass, which I hurled at his head, and broke to pieces,
saying, 'Give her that for my wedding present, you beggar!' The
others, seeing their friend thus maltreated, very naturally fell upon
me. I knocked two or three of them over with a jug, jumped on a table,
sprang through a window, and beat a retreat.

"'It was time,' I thought.

"But that was not all," he continued; "I had scarcely reached my
mother's when the gendarmerie arrived, and they arrested me. They put
me on a wagon and conducted me from brigade to brigade until we reached
my regiment, which was at Strasbourg. I remained six weeks at
Finckmatt, and would probably have received the ball and chain, if we
had not had to cross the Rhine to Hohenlinden.

"The Commandant Courtaud himself said to me:

"'You can boast of striking a hard blow, but if you happen again to
knock people over with jugs, it will not be well for you--I warn you.
Is that any way to fight, animal? Why do we wear sabres, if not to use
them and do our country honor?'

"I had no reply to make.

"From that day, Josephel, the thought of marriage never troubled me.
Don't talk to me of a soldier who has a wife to think of. Look at our
generals who are married, do they fight as they used to? No, they have
but one idea, and that is to increase their store and to profit by
their wealth by living well with their duchesses and little dukes at
home. My grandfather Yeri, the forester, always said that a good hound
should be lean, and I think the same of good generals and good
soldiers. The poor fellows are always in working order, but our
generals grow fat from their good dinners at home."

So spoke my friend Zimmer in the honesty of his heart, and all this did
not lessen my sadness.

As soon as I cou