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Updated: May 9, 2025
Morissot placed his ear to the ground, to ascertain, if possible, whether footsteps were coming their way. He heard nothing. They seemed to be utterly alone. Their confidence was restored, and they began to fish. Before them the deserted Ile Marante hid them from the farther shore. The little restaurant was closed, and looked as if it had been deserted for years.
Then he rose quickly, went over to the two Frenchmen, took Morissot by the arm, led him a short distance off, and said in a low voice: "Quick! the password! Your friend will know nothing. I will pretend to relent." Morissot answered not a word. Then the Prussian took Monsieur Sauvage aside in like manner, and made him the same proposal. Monsieur Sauvage made no reply.
As Monsieur Morissot, watchmaker by profession and idler for the nonce, was strolling along the boulevard one bright January morning, his hands in his trousers pockets and stomach empty, he suddenly came face to face with an acquaintance Monsieur Sauvage, a fishing chum.
"Suppose we were to meet any of them?" said Morissot. "We'd offer them some fish," replied Monsieur Sauvage, with that Parisian light-heartedness which nothing can wholly quench. Still, they hesitated to show themselves in the open country, overawed by the utter silence which reigned around them. At last Monsieur Sauvage said boldly: "Come, we'll make a start; only let us be careful!"
But suddenly a rumbling sound, which seemed to come from the bowels of the earth, shook the ground beneath them: the cannon were resuming their thunder. Morissot turned his head and could see toward the left, beyond the banks of the river, the formidable outline of Mont-Valerien, from whose summit arose a white puff of smoke.
He stopped suddenly, saying: "Suppose we go there?" "Where?" "Fishing." "But where?" "Why, to the old place. The French outposts are close to Colombes. I know Colonel Dumoulin, and we shall easily get leave to pass." Morissot trembled with desire. "Very well. I agree." And they separated, to fetch their rods and lines. An hour later they were walking side by side on the-highroad.
And Morissot, who had just caught a bleak, declared: "And to think that it will be just the same so long as there are governments!" "The Republic would not have declared war," interposed Monsieur Sauvage. Morissot interrupted him: "Under a king we have foreign wars; under a republic we have civil war."
In the autumn, toward the close of day, when the setting sun shed a blood-red glow over the western sky, and the reflection of the crimson clouds tinged the whole river with red, brought a glow to the faces of the two friends, and gilded the trees, whose leaves were already turning at the first chill touch of winter, Monsieur Sauvage would sometimes smile at Morissot, and say: "What a glorious spectacle!"
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