e I stood thus, the door of the kitchen opened, and
Mademoiselle Louise, their servant, putting out her head, asked:

"Who is there?"

"It is I, Mademoiselle Louise."

"Ah! it is you, Monsieur Joseph. Come this way."

They had their clock in a large parlor which they rarely entered; the
high windows, with blinds, remained closed; but there was light enough
for what I had to do. I passed then through the kitchen and regulated
the antique clock, which was a magnificent piece of work of white
marble. Mademoiselle Louise looked on.

"You have company, Mademoiselle Louise?" said I.

"No, but monsieur ordered me to let no one in."

"You are very cheerful here."

"Ah! yes," she said; "and it is for the first time in years; I don't
know what is the matter."

My work done, I left the house, meditating on these occurrences, which
seemed to me strange. The idea never entered my mind that they were
rejoicing at our defeat.

Then I turned the corner of the street to go to Father Feral's, who was
called the "Standard-bearer," because, at the age of forty-five, he, a
blacksmith, and for many years the father of a family, had carried the
colors of the volunteers of Phalsbourg in '92, and only returned after
the Zurich campaign. He had his three sons in the army of Russia,
Jean, Louis, and George Feral. George was commandant of dragoons; the
two others, officers of infantry.

I imagined the grief of Father Feral while I was going, but it was
nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind
and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed
upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw
his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great
drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while
his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old
comrades of the times of the Republic--Father Desmarets, Father Nivoi,
old Paradis, and tall old Froissard--had come to console him. They sat
around him in silence, smoking their pipes, and looking as if they
themselves needed comfort.

From time to time one or the other would say: "Come, come, Feral! are
we no longer veterans of the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse?"

Or,

"Courage, Standard-bearer: courage! Did we not carry the battery at
Fleurus?"

Or some other similar remark.

But he did not reply; every minute he sighed, his aged, hollow cheeks
swelled; then