"These cows suit me," said the station-master to the sergeant; "I will take them; we can go."
"Do they belong to you?" said I, angrily, and clutching my stick.
"That is no affair of mine," said he, in the tone of a bandit, without heart and without honour. "I have my choice of all the cows in the country to replace those that the rascals from Phalsbourg carried off from me at their last sortie. I choose these. They are Swiss cows. I always liked Swiss cows."
"And who gave you the choice?" I cried. "Who can give you other people's property?"
"The hauptmann, my friend, the hauptmann!" said he, turning up the brim of his hat with an air of importance.
Then several of the crowd began to laugh, saying, "The hauptmann is a generous man; he pays those well who give him pleasure."
My indignation overcame me; and the sergeant having ordered his squad of men to go on, at the moment when the station-master, crying "Hue!" was dragging my poor cows after him by the horns, I was about to fall upon him like a wolf, when Marie-Rose took hold of my hands and whispered to me with a terrified look:
"Father, do not stir, they would kill you. Think of grandmother."
My cheeks were quivering, my teeth clenched, red flames were dancing before my eyes; but the thought of my daughter alone in the world, abandoned at this terrible time, and of the grandmother dying of hunger, gave me the strength to keep down my rage, and I only cried:
"Go, scoundrel! Keep the property you have stolen from me, but beware of ever meeting me alone in the forest!"