[#] Quick! quick!
"Yes," cried Margredel, "they are sly hypocrites; they strike you heavy blows without warning. In the morning they smile at you, they sit by the fire like good apostles, they kiss your children with tears in their eyes; and then all at once they change their tone, they collar you, and turn you out of doors without mercy. Ah! those good Germans; we know those honest people now! But they will not always be so proud. Wait a bit; Heaven is just! Our own people will come back; Jean will be with them. You will see, Father Frederick! We will go back to the forest house; we will celebrate the wedding there! That is all I can say. Don't you see, you must trust in God. Now we are suffering for our sins. But God will put everything to rights, when we will have finished expiating our faults. It cannot be otherwise. He uses the Prussians to punish us. But their turn will come; we will go to their country. They will see how agreeable it is to be invaded, robbed, pillaged. Let them have a care! Every dog has his day!"
She spoke with so much confidence that it infected me; I said to myself:
"What she says is very possible. Yes, justice will be done, sooner or later! After all, we may take Alsace again. Those Germans do not like each other. We would only have to win one great battle; the break-up would begin at once. The Bavarians, the Hessians, the Würtembergers, the Saxons, the Hanoverians, they would all go home again. We would have it all our own way!"
But, in the meantime, we were in a very sad position. Margredel said that they had enough rye and potatoes to last till the end of the war, and that, with a few sous' worth of salt, would be sufficient for them.
Master Daniel compressed his lips and looked thoughtful.
So, having seen how things were getting along at Felsberg, I took leave of my old friends about eleven o'clock, wishing them all the good things in the world.
I avoided passing by the forest house, and I descended the hill of Graufthal by the forest of fir trees among the rocks, leaning on my stick in the steepest places.
I remember meeting, about two-thirds of my way down, old Roupp, an incorrigible thief, with his faded little blouse, his cotton cravat rolled like a rope round his lean neck, and his hatchet in his hand.
He was chopping away right and left, at everything that suited him; huge branches, small fir trees, everything went into his magnificent fagot, which was lying across the path, and as I called to him: