Downstairs in the great vestibule the porter cried:
"Hold on there! Where are you going?"
Zimmer showed him our passes, and we sallied forth, glad to breathe the free air, without, once more. A sentinel showed us the post-office, where I was to receive my hundred francs.
Then, more gravely, for our joy had sunk deeper in our hearts, we reached the gate of Halle about two musket shots to the left, at the end of a long avenue of lindens. Each faubourg is separated from the old ramparts only by these avenues, and all around Leipzig passes another very wide one, also bordered with lindens. The ramparts are very old—such as we see at Saint Hippolyte, on the upper Rhine,—crumbling, grass-grown walls; at least such they are if the Germans have not repaired them since 1813.
XVI
How much were we to learn that day! At the hospital no one troubled himself about anything: when every morning you see fifty wounded come in, and when every evening you see as many depart upon the bier, you have the world before you in a narrow compass, and you think—
"After us comes the end of the universe!"
But without, these ideas change. When I caught the first glimpse of the street of Halle,—that old city with its shops, its gateways filled with merchandise, its old peaked roofs, its heavy wagons laden with bales, in a word, all its busy commercial life,—I was struck with wonder; I had never seen anything like it, and I said to myself:
"This is indeed a mercantile city, such as they talk of—full of industrious people trying to make a living, or competence, or wealth; where every one seeks to rise, not to the injury of others, but by working—contriving night and day how to make his family prosperous; so that all profit by inventions and discoveries. Here is the happiness of peace in the midst of a fearful war!"