After some talk in low tones they changed their direction, but to what place they decided to go Hans could not discover.
One of the men addressed him in French.
"For safety's sake," he muttered to his neighbour.
Hans feigned ignorance.
"I do not understand, monsieur," he said stupidly, in German.
With relief the two raised their voices and talked steadily as they flew over the snow.
Dantzic must fall. It grew daily weaker.
"The Emperor," said one, "will wipe Prussia out of existence."
Then he told how it was believed that Napoleon meant to make a new kingdom.
"His brother, Jerome, has nothing yet," he said, and he laughed at the Prussians and called them pigs and cowards, and made jokes about the generals, and said things that Napoleon had invented about the Queen.