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The brandy made us look at everything on the bright side already, and I said to Buche: "Jean, now the worst is over and we shall see Pfalzbourg and Harberg again. We are on a good road which will take us back to France.
Desertions began that very day, and I said to Buche, "Let us return to Phalsbourg and Harberg, and take up our work, and live like honest men." About fifty of us from Alsace-Lorraine were in the battalion, and we set off together on the road to Strasbourg. On July 8 we heard that Louis XVIII. was to come back, and already the white banner of the Bourbons was being displayed in the villages.
We have had murders enough already, and we have escaped all, and we do not want to be killed here by Frenchmen. Come!" He struggled still, but at last I showed him a village on the left of the road and said: "Look! there is the road to Harberg, and there are houses like those at Quatre Vents; let us go there and ask for bread; I have money, and we shall certainly find some.
At Sarrebourg we received tickets for lodgings. Mine was for the old printer Jârcisse, who knew Mr. Goulden and Aunt Grédel, and who made me dine at his table with my new comrade and bedfellow, Jean Buche, the son of a wood-cutter of Harberg, who had never eaten anything but potatoes before he was conscripted. He devoured everything, even to the bones that they set before us.
At every moment great openings in the forest gave us light and air, and we could see the white piles of newly cut wood between their stakes, shining in the distance from time to time. Besides this, nothing could be heard or seen. Buche said to me in a low voice, "I like the smell of the wood, it is like Harberg."
The mayors of the canton were seated in a semicircle, Monsieur the Sub-Prefect and the Mayor of Phalsbourg in the middle, in arm-chairs, and the Secretary Freylig at his table. A Harberg conscript was dressing himself, the gendarme Descarmes helping him put on his suspenders.
He shook my hand, and I said: "I promise." "Well!" he added, "it is here on my breast. You must carry it to Harberg and hang it up in the chapel in remembrance of Jean Buche, dead in the faith of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." He spoke very earnestly, and I thought his wish very natural.
Zébédé was not always with me now, and my closest comrade was Jean Buche, the son of a sledge-maker at Harberg, who had never eaten anything better than potatoes before he became a conscript. Buche turned in his feet in walking, but he never seemed to know the meaning of being tired, and in his own fashion was a wonderful pedestrian.
Buche kept saying: "Well! a dozen big potatoes roasted in the ashes as we do at Harberg would rejoice my eyes. We don't eat meat every day at home, but we always have potatoes." I thought of our warm little room at Pfalzbourg, the table with its white cloth, Father Goulden with his plate before him, while Catherine served the rich hot soup and the smoked cutlets on the gridiron.
"Yes, Monsieur Goulden," answered Catharine in a choking voice; "they have finished Harberg." "Then it is time for you to go, Joseph," said he; "but do not grieve; do not be frightened. These drawings, you know, are only a matter of form. For a long while past none can escape; for if they escape one drawing, they are caught a year or two after. All the numbers are bad.
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