No, he was in Captain Ravaud's, he replied; but all the same he knew Corporal Jean Macquart, and he felt certain that the latter's squad had not yet taken part in the fighting. This information, vague as it was, sufficed to make the young woman quite cheerful: her brother was alive and she would feel altogether at her ease as soon as she had kissed her husband, whose arrival she was still every minute expecting.
At this moment, however, as she raised her head she was thunderstruck to see Delaherche standing in a group a few paces off, engaged in recounting all the terrible dangers through which he had just passed on his way back from Bazeilles. How did he happen to be there? She had not seen him come in.
'Isn't my husband with you?' she asked.
Delaherche, however, whom his mother and wife were complaisantly questioning, was in no hurry to answer her. 'Wait a bit,' said he, and returning to his narrative he continued: 'I was nearly killed a score of times between Bazeilles and Balan. There was a perfect hurricane of bullets and shells. And I met the Emperor—oh! he was very brave—and then I ran from Balan here——'
'My husband?' asked Henriette, shaking his arm.
'Weiss? Why, he stopped there.'
'Stopped there!'
'Yes; he picked up a dead soldier's chassepot, and he's fighting!'
'Fighting, how's that?'