"Come, Father Zébédé, sit at the head of the table, and you there, Zébédé, that I may have you on my right and my left, Joseph will sit farther down, opposite Catherine, and Madame Grédel at the other end to watch over all."
Each one was satisfied with his place, and Zébédé smiled and looked at me as if he would say: "If we had had the quarter of such a dinner as this at Hanau, we should never have fallen by the roadside." Joy and a good appetite shone on every face. Father Goulden dipped the great silver ladle into the soup as we all looked on, and served first the old grave-digger, who said nothing and seemed touched by this honor, then his son, and then Catherine, Aunt Grédel, himself, and me. And the dinner was begun quietly.
Zébédé winked and looked at me from time to time with great satisfaction. We uncorked the first bottle and filled the glasses. This was very good wine, but there was better coming, so we did not drink each other's health yet, we each ate a good slice of beef, and Father Goulden said:
"Here is something good, this beef is excellent." He found the fricassee very good also, and then I saw that Catherine was a woman of spirit, for she said:
"You know, Mr. Zébédé, that we should have invited your grandmother Margaret, whom I go to see from time to time, only she is too old to go out, but if you wish, she shall at least eat a morsel with us, and drink her grandson's health in a glass of wine. What do you say, Father Zébédé?"
"I was just thinking of that," said the old man.
Father Goulden looked at Catherine with tears in his eyes, and as she rose to select a suitable piece for the old woman, he kissed her, and I heard him call her his daughter.
She went out with a bottle and a plate; and while she was gone Zébédé said to me:
"Joseph, she who is soon to be your wife deserves to be perfectly happy, for she is not only a good girl, not only a woman who ought to be loved, but she deserves respect also, for she has a good and feeling heart. She saw what my father and I thought of this excellent dinner, and she knew it would give us a thousand times more pleasure if grandmother could share it. I shall love her for it, as if she were my sister." Then he added in a low voice: "It is when we are happy that we feel the bitterness of poverty. It is not enough to give our blood to our country, but there is suffering at home in consequence, and when we return we must have misery before our eyes."
I saw that he was growing sad, so I filled his glass and we drank, and his melancholy vanished. Catherine came back and said, "the grandmother was very happy, and that she thanked Mr. Goulden, and said it had been a beautiful day for her." And this roused everybody. As the dinner continued, Aunt Grédel heard the bells for vespers, and she went out to church, but Catherine remained, and the animation which good wine inspires had come, and we began to speak of the last campaign; of the retreat from the Rhine to Paris, of the fighting of the battalion at Bibelskirchen and at Saarbruck, where Lieutenant Baubin swam the Saar when it was freezing as hard as stone, to destroy some boats which were still in the hands of the enemy; of the passage at Narbefontaine, at Courcelles, at Metz, at Enzelvin, and at Champion and Verdun, and, still retreating, the battle of Brienne. The men were nearly all destroyed, but on the 4th of February the battalion was re-formed from the remnant of the 5th light infantry, and from that moment they were every day under fire; on the 5th, 6th, and 7th at Méry-sur-Seine; on the 8th at Sézanne, where the soldiers died in the mud, not having strength enough to get out; the 9th and 10th at Mürs, where Zébédé was buried at night in the dung-heap of a farmhouse in order to get warm, and the terrible battle of Marché on the 11th, in which the Commandant Philippe was wounded by a bayonet-thrust; the encounter on the 12th and 13th at Montmirail, the battle of Beauchamp on the 14th, the retreat on Montmirail on the 15th and 16th, when the Prussians returned: the combats at the Ferté-Gauché, at Jouarre, at Gué-à-Train, at Neufchettes, and so on. When the Prussians were beaten, then came the Russians, after them the Austrians, the Bavarians, the Wurtemburgers, the Hessians, the Saxons, and the Badois.