Weiss had hastened to Mulhausen on the eve of hostilities, having suddenly become desirous of settling some family affair; and if he had availed himself of Colonel de Vineuil's kindness, in order to shake hands with his brother-in-law, Maurice, it was because the colonel happened to be the uncle of young Madame Delaherche, a pretty widow, whom the cloth merchant of Sedan had married the year before, and whom both Maurice and Henriette had known when she was a child, her parents then being neighbours of their own. Besides the colonel, Maurice had come across another of Madame Delaherche's connections in the person of Captain Beaudoin, who commanded his company, and who had been this lady's most intimate friend, it was insinuated, at the time when she was Madame Maginot of Mézières, wife of M. Maginot, inspector of the State forest.
'Mind you kiss Henriette for me,' said Maurice, again and again—he was, indeed, passionately fond of his sister—'tell her she will have every reason to be pleased, and that I want to make her proud of me.'
Tears filled his eyes as he thought of his foolish conduct in Paris; but his brother-in-law, touched in his turn, changed the conversation by saying to Honoré Fouchard, the artilleryman: 'The first time I pass by Remilly I shall run up and tell uncle Fouchard that I saw you and found you well.'
Uncle Fouchard, a peasant with a little land of his own, who plied the calling of itinerant village butcher, was a brother of Maurice's mother. He lived at Remilly, right at the top of the hill, at four miles or so from Sedan.
'All right,' said Honoré, quietly; 'the old man doesn't care a rap about me, but, if it pleases you, you can go to see him.'
Just at that moment there was a stir in front of the farmhouse, and they saw the prowler—the man accused of being a Prussian spy—come out, accompanied by an officer. He had no doubt produced some papers, related some plausible tale or other, for he was no longer under arrest—the officer was simply turning him out of the camp. At that distance, in the impending darkness, one could only vaguely distinguish his huge, square-built figure and tawny head. Maurice, however, impetuously exclaimed: 'Look there, Honoré. Isn't that fellow like the Prussian—you know the man I mean—Goliath?'
The quartermaster started on hearing this name, and fixed his ardent eyes upon the supposed spy. This mention of Goliath Steinberg, the slaughterman, the rascal who had made bad blood between himself and his father, who had robbed him of his sweetheart Silvine, had revived all the horrible story—the filthy abomination that still caused him so much suffering—and he felt a sudden impulse to run after the man and strangle him. But the spy, if such he was, had already passed beyond the camp lines, and, walking rapidly away, soon vanished in the darkness of the night.
'Oh! Goliath,' muttered Honoré; 'it isn't possible. He must be over there with the others. Ah! if ever I meet him——'
And with a threatening gesture he pointed to the darkening horizon, the violet-tinted eastern sky which to him meant Prussia.