ss.

"Bah! don't grieve at that," he answered; "your leg is sound. I'll
answer for it."

"But that," said Monsieur the Mayor, "does not prevent his being lame
from birth; all Phalsbourg knows that."

"The leg is too short," said the surgeon from the hospital; "it is
doubtless a case for exemption."

"Yes," said the Mayor; "I am sure that this young man could not endure
a long march; he would drop on the road the second mile."

The first surgeon said nothing more.

I thought myself saved, when Monsieur the Sub-Prefect asked:

"You are really Joseph Bertha?"

"Yes, Monsieur the Sub-Prefect," I answered.

"Well, gentlemen," said he, taking a letter out of his portfolio,
"listen."

He began to read the letter, which stated that, six months before, I
had bet that I could go to Laverne and back quicker than Pinacle; that
we had run the race, and I had won.

It was unhappily too true. The villain Pinacle had always taunted me
with being a cripple, and in my anger I laid the wager. Every one knew
of it. I could not deny it.

While I stood utterly confounded, the first surgeon said:

"That settles the question. Dress yourself." And turning to the
secretary, he cried, "Good for service."

I took up my coat in despair.

Werner called another. I no longer saw anything. Some one helped me
to get my arms in my coat-sleeves. Then I found myself upon the
stairs, and while Catharine asked me what had poised, I sobbed aloud
and would have fallen from top to bottom if Aunt Gredel had not
supported me.

We went out by the rear-way and crossed the little court. I wept like
a child, and Catharine did too. Out in the hall, in the shadow, we
stopped to embrace each other.

Aunt Gredel cried out:

"Oh the robbers! They are taking the lame and the sick. It is all the
same to them; next they will take us."

A crowd began collecting, and Sepel the butcher, who was cutting meat
in the stall, said:

"Mother Gredel, in the name of Heaven keep quiet. They will put you in
prison."

"Well, let them put me there!" she cried, "let them murder me. I say
that men are fools to allow such outrages!"

But the _sergent-de-ville_ was coming up, and we went on together
weeping. We turned the corner of Cafe Hemmerle, and went into our own
house. People looked at us from the windows and said, "There is
another one who is going."

Monsieur Goulden knowing that Aunt Gredel and Catharine would come to
dine with us the