Doctor Lorquin, at the sight of such a vigorous appetite, gleefully rubbed his hands, as he muttered from under his thick beard: "What a fellow it is! What a digestion! What a set of teeth! Why, he could crack pebbles like nuts!"
And even old Materne said to his boys: "In my time, after a two or three days' hunt on the mountain tops in winter, I have known what it was, too, to have the appetite of a wolf, and to eat the haunch of a roe-buck at a sitting; now I am grown old, a pound or two of meat is enough for me. Age makes all the difference!"
Hullin had lit his pipe, and seemed absent and thoughtful; it was plain that he was uneasy about something. After a few moments, seeing Gaspard's appetite begin to relax, he abruptly exclaimed: "But tell us, Gaspard, if I may make so bold as to ask, how does it happen that you are here? We thought you were still on the Strasbourg side of the Rhine!"
"Ah! ha! old boy, I understand," said young Lefévre, with a knowing wink; "there are so many deserters; is it not so?"
"Oh! such an idea as that would never enter my head! and yet——"
"You would not be sorry to know if we are all right and correct! I don't blame you, Papa Jean-Claude; you are quite right; those who don't answer to the muster-roll when the kaiserlicks are in France, richly deserve to be shot! Make your mind happy; there's my leave."
Hullin, who had no false delicacy, read: "Twenty-four hours' leave of absence to Grenadier Gaspard Lefévre, of the 2nd company of the 1st regiment.—January the 3rd, 1814. Gemeau, chief of the battalion." "Good, good," said he; "put it up in your knapsack; you might chance to lose it."
All his good-humour had returned.
"Look you, my children," said he, "I know what love is; there is bad and good about it; but it is bad in particular for young soldiers who come too near their homes after a campaign. They are capable of forgetting all and everything till they find themselves brought back with two or three gendarmes at their heels. I've seen that happen before now. But, however, since everything is clear and straightforward here, let's drain a bumper of rikevir. What say you, Catherine? The men of the Sarre may arrive from one moment to the next, and we have not an instant to lose."
"You say well, Jean-Claude," replied the old farm-mistress, sadly. "Go down and bring up three bottles from the little cellar, Annette."