one
after all!" When, on the morning of the twenty-fifth of January, as I
was about starting for Quatre-Vents, Monsieur Goulden, who was working
at his bench with a thoughtful air, turned to me with tears in his eyes
and said:

"Listen, Joseph! I wanted to let you have one night more of quiet
sleep; but you must know now, my child, that yesterday evening the
brigadier of the _gendarmes_ brought me your marching orders. You go
with the Piedmontese and Genoese and five or six young men of the
city--young Klipfel, young Loerig, Jean Leger, and Gaspard Zebede. You
go to Mayence."

I felt my knees give way as he spoke, and I sat down unable to speak.
Monsieur Goulden took my marching orders, beautifully written, out of a
drawer, and began to read them slowly. All that I remember is that
Joseph Bertha, native of Dabo, Canton of Phalsbourg, Arrondissement of
Sarrebourg, was incorporated in the Sixth regiment of the line, and
that he was to join his corps the twenty-ninth of January at Mayence.

This letter produced as bad an effect on me as if I had known nothing
of it before. It seemed something new, and I grew angry.

Monsieur Goulden, after a moment's silence, added:

"The Italians start to-day at eleven."

Then, as if awakening from a horrible dream, I cried:

"But shall I not see Catharine again?"

"Yes, Joseph, yes," said he, in a trembling voice. "I notified Mother
Gredel and Catharine, and thus, my boy, they will come, and you can
embrace them before leaving."

I saw his grief, and it made me sadder yet, so that I had a hard
struggle to keep myself from bursting into tears.

He continued after a pause:

"You need not be anxious about anything, Joseph. I have prepared all
beforehand; and when you return, if it please God to keep me so long in
this world, you will find me always the same. I am beginning to grow
old, and my greatest happiness would be to keep you for a son, for I
found you good-hearted and honest. I would have given you what I
possess, and we would have been happy together. Catharine and you
would have been my children. But since it is otherwise, let us be
resigned. It is only for a little while. You will be sent back, I am
sure. They will soon see that you cannot make long marches."

While he spoke, I sat silently sobbing, my face buried in my hands.

At last he arose and took from a closet a soldier's knapsack of
cowskin, which he placed upon the table. I looked at him, t