And, without listening to what might be answered, he threw sous on the table in payment for his cup of milk, and went out abruptly.
He was scarcely outside the door when all who were present burst out laughing. I signed to them to be quiet, for that the captain could still hear them; then they held their sides and snuffled through their noses, saying:
"What fun! what fun! The Germans coming to attack us!"
Father Baure, while wiping his eyes with his handkerchief, said:
"He is a good fellow; but he got a rap at the Malakoff, and since then his clock has been out of order, and it always strikes noon at fourteen o'clock."
The others recommenced laughing, like real madmen, so that I thought, George, myself, that the captain had not common sense.
All that comes back to me as if it had taken place yesterday, and two or three days later, having learned that the captain had caused the wood-cutters to be arrested in a body at the Lutzelbourg station, and that, their papers being all right, they had obtained authorization to continue their journey into Lorraine, notwithstanding all the representations and the observations of M. Rondeau, I believed decidedly that the worthy man was cracked.
Every time that Baure came to the forester's house he would begin upon the chapter of the German spies, and made me very merry over it. But to-day we have ceased laughing, and I am sure that the jokers of Phalsbourg no longer rub their hands when the feldwebel makes his rod whistle while calling to the conscripts on the parade ground, "Gewehr auf!—Gewehr ab!" I am sure that this sight has more than once recalled to them the captain's warning.
IX
This took place at the end of the autumn of 1869; the valley was already filled with mist; then came the winter: the snow began to whirl before the panes, the fire to crackle in the furnace, and the spinning-wheel of Marie-Rose to hum from morning till night, to the accompaniment of the monotonous ticking of the old clock.