Discharged soldiers travel on foot. It is the more expeditious way if the roads are bad, for a wagon is heavier than a man. The man has only two feet to draw from the mud; while the wagon has four wheels. Besides to travel on foot is cheaper.
When I arrived in Andernach I had, remaining from the money I had saved during my year's campaigning, only one thaler; but my heart was so light, the lightness of my pocket did not trouble me.
How glad I was when I caught sight of the familiar towers of the palace, and the ruins on the Templeberg. How often, when a lad, I had clambered among those ruins, in search of hawks' nests, and Roman coins. If I had only broken my neck on one of those innocent quests. Everything was so familiar; the large mill-stone factory; the cranes on the quay; the rafts on the river; the long avenues—yes, even the old receivers of customs at the Coblentz gate! I recognized the old fellows at once; but they did not remember me. I might stray through the entire town without hearing a single voice call to me: "Welcome, welcome! Why that is Hugo!" I was so changed in appearance!
But I remembered everybody and everything! I did not need to ask my way through the narrow streets to the tanneries on the banks of the river. I remembered the names of all the families that lived in those narrow streets.
At last I came in sight of the house in which dwelt my parents—the dear, familiar home of my boyhood! There it stood; and beside it, the same tall mulberry tree with its branches shading the street.
Perched among those branches, I had learned to decline the classical formula: "Hic gallus cantans in arbore sedens, kukuriku dicens!" At the moment of my arrival, however, instead of a gallus cantans on the tree, an auctioneer's assistant was standing under it, and vigorously beating a cracked drum.
"What is going on here?" I asked of the man, in whom I recognized an acquaintance of my boyhood.
"There's going to be an auction, Master Soldier."
"What is to be sold?"
"Everything that belonged to the old tanner. You may take a look inside if you like," he added, nodding toward the house. "It won't cost you anything."