"No, but monsieur ordered me to let no one in."
"You are very cheerful here."
"Ah! yes," she said; "and it is for the first time in years; I don't know what is the matter."
My work done, I left the house, meditating on these occurrences, which seemed to me strange. The idea never entered my mind that they were rejoicing at our defeat.
Then I turned the corner of the street to go to Father Féral's, who was called the "Standard-bearer," because, at the age of forty-five, he, a blacksmith, and for many years the father of a family, had carried the colors of the volunteers of Phalsbourg in '92, and only returned after the Zurich campaign. He had his three sons in the army of Russia, Jean, Louis, and George Féral. George was commandant of dragoons; the two others, officers of infantry.
I imagined the grief of Father Féral while I was going, but it was nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old comrades of the times of the Republic—Father Desmarets, Father Nivoi, old Paradis, and tall old Froissard—had come to console him. They sat around him in silence, smoking their pipes, and looking as if they themselves needed comfort.
From time to time one or the other would say: "Come, come, Féral! are we no longer veterans of the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse?"
Or,
"Courage, Standard-bearer: courage! Did we not carry the battery at Fleurus?"
Or some other similar remark.