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Updated: June 20, 2025
Mother Heitz ran down to the cellar to bring a bottle of wine, and I heard Buche sobbing in the corner. Neither of us could speak for thinking of the joy of our friends. The sight of our own country had upset us, and we rejoiced to think that our bones would one day rest peacefully in the village cemetery. Meanwhile we were going to embrace those we loved best in the world.
I smoked my pipe quietly and replied, "Yes! yes! we'll settle the rascals, we'll push them! They'll see enough of us!" I left Jean Buche with his pipe, and as we were on guard, Zébédé went about nine o'clock to relieve the sentinels at the head of the picket. I stepped a little out of the circle and stretched myself in a furrow a few steps in the rear with my knapsack under my head.
We should have kept on eating still, if we had had more to eat, but yet we were satisfied. We knelt down with our hands in the water and we drank. "Now let us go," said Buche, "and leave the bag."
Then I embraced M. Goulden, and an hour later Aunt Grédel arrived. Jean Buche would not stay and dine with us, but hurried home to Harberg. I have often seen him since; and Zébédé, too, who remained in the army. Many insulting things were said about us by the Pinacles, but I had happiness in my family circle, especially when Catherine presented me with a little Joseph.
"Yes, I understand," said he, getting up after having emptied his glass, "and I will do the same thing for grandmother, who loves me more than she does the other boys; I will send some one on before me." He went out at once, and I waited a few minutes; Mother Heitz talked to me but I did not listen; I was thinking how far Buche had gone; I saw him near the ford, at the outworks, and at the gate.
They sat down on the benches opposite, and ordered the favorite sour beer of the country for us to drink. Buche asked for some bread; the innkeeper's wife brought us a whole loaf and a large piece of beef in a porringer. All urged us to "Eat, eat!"
I pushed Jean, and he said, "I hear it, the Prussians are outside." You cannot imagine our terror, but it was much worse a moment after; some one knocked at the door of the inn, and it opened; in a moment the great hall was full of people. Some one came up the stairs. We had both got up, and Buche said, "I shall defend myself if they try to take me." I dared not think what I was going to do.
"From which battalion are you?" said he, knitting his brows. "The third." Buche, pale as ashes, did not say a word. The officer looked at our guns and knapsacks and cartridge-boxes behind the bed in the corner. "You have deserted," said he. "No, lieutenant, we left, the last ones, at eight o'clock, from Mont-St.-Jean." "Go downstairs, we will see if that is true." We went downstairs.
This seemed to me to be going too far, but the peasants in their pity for us had made us drink again and again, and had given us pipes and tobacco, and at last I said the same as Buche. It was not till after we had left the place that the recollection of our shameful falsehoods made me ashamed of myself, and I said to Buche: "Do you know, Jean, that our lies about the traitors were not right?
As I had been on guard the night before, I quietly stretched myself at the foot of a tree by the side of Buche, with my comrades. It was about one o'clock in the morning of the day of the terrible battle of Ligny.
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