students
scowled, and no one replied. At last Zimmer rose.

"Come, Joseph," said he; "I know nothing of politics, but I insist that
we should give no armistice to those beggars. When they are down we
should keep them there."

After we had paid our reckoning, and were once more in the street, he
continued:

"I do not know what was the matter with those people to-day. We must
have disturbed them in something."

"It is very possible," I replied. "They certainly did not seem like
the good-natured folks you were speaking of."

"No," said he. "Those young fellows are far beneath the old students I
have seen. _They_ passed--I might say--their lives at the brewery.
They drank twenty and sometimes thirty glasses a day; even I, Joseph,
had no chance with such fellows. Five or six of them whom they called
'seniors' had gray beards and a venerable appearance. We sang _Fanfan
la Tulipe_ and 'King Dagobert' together, which are not political songs,
you know. But these fellows are good for nothing."

I knew afterward, that those students were members of the _Tugend-bund_.

On returning to the hospital, after having had a good dinner and drank
a bottle of wine apiece in the inn of La Grappe in the Rue de Tilly, we
learned that we were to go, that same evening, to the barracks of
Rosenthal--a sort of depot for wounded, near Lutzen, where the roll was
called morning and evening, but where, at all other times, we were at
liberty to do as we pleased. Every three days, the surgeon made his
visit; as soon as one was well, he received his order to march to
rejoin his corps.

One may imagine the condition of from twelve to fifteen hundred poor
wretches clothed in gray great-coats with leaden buttons, shakos shaped
like flower-pots, and shoes worn out by marches and
counter-marches--pale, weak, most of them without a sou, in a rich city
like Leipzig. We did not cut much of a figure among these students,
these good citizens and smiling young women, who, despite our glory,
looked on us as vagabonds.

All the fine stories of my comrade only made me feel my situation more
bitterly.

It is true that we were formerly well received, but in those days our
men did not always act honestly by those who treated them like
brothers, and now doors were slammed in our faces. We were reduced to
the necessity of contemplating squares, churches, and the outside of
sausage-shops, which are there very handsome, from morning till night.

W