"I ask your pardon," repeated the young man. "I was in the wrong—I acknowledge it. You are good Frenchmen."
"I forgive you," said George, scrutinizing him; "but how old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"Well, go where you ought to be, and show that you, too, are as good a Frenchman as we are. There are no young men left in Alsace. You understand my meaning."
Everybody was listening. The young man went out, and as cousin was asking for another bottle, the landlady whispered to him over his shoulder: "You are good Frenchmen; but you have spoken before a great many people—strangers, that I know nothing of. You had better go."
Immediately, George recovered his senses; he laid a cent-sous piece on the table, the woman gave him two francs fifty centimes change, and we went out.
Once out, George said to me: "Let us step out: anger makes a fool of a man."
And we set off down one little street, then up another, till we came out into the open fields. Night was approaching; if we had been taken again, it would have been a worse business than the first; and we knew that so well, that that night and the next day we dared not even enter the villages, for fear of being seized and brought back to our battalion.
At last, fatigue obliged us to enter an enclosure. It was very cold for the season; but we had become accustomed to our wretchedness, and we slept against a wall, upon a bit of straw matting, just as in our own beds. Rising in the morning at the dawn of day, we found ourselves covered with hoar-frost, and George, straining his eyes in the distance, asked: "Do you know that place down there, Christian?"
I looked.