ty paces before me,
Pinacle, the pedler, with his huge basket, his otter-skin cap, woollen
gloves, and iron-pointed staff. The lantern hanging from the strap of
his basket lit up his debauched face, his chin bristling with yellow
beard, and his great nose shaped like an extinguisher. He glared with
his little eyes like a wolf, and repeated, "Who goes there?"

This Pinacle was the greatest rogue in the country. He had the year
before a difficulty with Monsieur Goulden, who demanded of him the
price of a watch which he undertook to deliver to Monsieur Anstett, the
curate of Homert, and the money for which he put into his pocket,
saying he paid it to me. But although the villain made oath before the
justice of the peace, Monsieur Goulden knew the contrary, for on the
day in question neither he nor I had left the house. Besides, Pinacle
wanted to dance with Catharine at a festival at Quatre-Vents, and she
refused because she knew the story of the watch, and was, besides,
unwilling to leave me.

The sight, then, of this rogue with his iron-shod stick in the middle
of the road did not tend to rejoice my heart. Happily a little path
which wound around the cemetery was at my left, and, without replying,
I dashed through it although the snow reached my waist.

Then he, guessing who I was, cried furiously:

"Aha! it is the little lame fellow! Halt! halt! I want to bid you
good-evening. You came from Catharine's, you watch-stealer."

But I sprang like a hare through the heaps of snow; he at first tried
to follow me, but his pack hindered him, and, when I gained the ground
again, he put his hands around his mouth, and shrieked:

"Never mind, cripple, never mind! Your reckoning is coming all the
same; the conscription is coming--the grand conscription of the
one-eyed, the lame, and the hunch-backed. You will have to go, and you
will find a place under ground like the others."

He continued his way, laughing like the sot he was, and I, scarcely
able to breathe, kept on, thanking Heaven that the little alley was so
near; for Pinacle, who was known always to draw his knife in a fight,
might have done me an ill turn.

In spite of my exertion, my feet, even in the thick shoes, were
intensely cold, and I again began running.

That night the water froze in the cisterns of Phalsbourg and the wines
in the cellars--things that had not happened before for sixty years.

On the bridge and under the German gate the silence s