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Updated: June 3, 2025
Klipfel, Zébédé, Furst, and I often went to see these poor wretches, and never did we see men so miserably clad. Some wore jackets which once belonged to Cossacks, crushed shakos, women's dresses, and many had only handkerchiefs wound round their feet in lieu of shoes and stockings. They gave us a history of the retreat from Moscow, and then we knew that the twenty-ninth bulletin told only truth.
Klipfel threw down the pipe and we departed, not one caring to look back at the wounded Prussian. We arrived at the edge of the forest, outside which, among tufted bushes, the Prussians we pursued had taken refuge. We saw them rise to fire upon us, but they immediately lay down again.
At the same moment, five or six reports rang out to the right and left; the sergeant Zébédé, Klipfel, and the rest appeared, and a hundred paces farther on we found the young Prussian upon the ground blood gushing from his mouth. He gazed at us with a scared expression, raising his arms, as if to parry bayonet-thrusts, but the sergeant called gleefully to him: "Fear nothing!
Our friends in Phalsbourg, over their warm suppers, scarcely think of us lying here, with nothing but a piece of cow-beef to eat, a river flowing beside us, the damp earth beneath, and only the sky for a roof, without speaking of the sabre-cuts and bayonet-thrusts our friends yonder have in store for us." "Bah!" said Klipfel; "this is life. I would not pass my days otherwise.
They called Zébédé, Furst, Klipfel, Bertha; we answered like the others. Then the captain gave the word, "March!" and we went, two abreast, toward the French gate. At the corner of Spitz's bakery, an old woman cried, in a choking voice, from a window: "Kasper! Kasper!" It was Zébédé's grandmother. His lips trembled. He waved his hand without replying, and passed on with downcast face.
Klipfel, Zébédé, Sergeant Pinto, and the others of the company had not yet arrived when masses of black smoke arose above the roofs; shattered tiles fell into the streets, and shot buried themselves an the walls, or crashed through the beams with a horrible noise.
I shuddered at the thought of passing my home. As we neared it, my knees trembled, and I heard some one call at the window; but I turned my head toward the "Red Ox," and the rattle of the drums drowned the voices. The children ran after us, shouting: "There goes Joseph! there goes Klipfel!"
My appearance seemed to affect him, for, without rising, he squeezed my hand, crying: "Klipfel! here is Joseph!" Another soldier, seated near a pot, turned his head, saying: "It is you, Joseph, is it? Then you were not killed." This was all my welcome. Misery had made them so selfish that they thought only of themselves.
I handed a couple of the sausages to Zébédé, who took them with tears in his eyes. I was also going to offer some to the others; but he put his hand on my arm, saying: "What is good to eat is good to keep." We retired from the circle and ate, drinking at the same time; the rest of the soldiers said nothing, but looked wistfully at us. Klipfel, smelling the sausages, turned and said: "Holloa!
For a long while we watched their labor, while again and again we heard the sentry's "Qui vive!" It was the regiments of the Third corps arriving. At daybreak I fell asleep, and Klipfel had to shake me to arouse me. On every side they were beating the reveille; the bridges were finished, and we were going to cross the Saale.
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