Those who pass the frontier before their service begins are naturally not known, only the soldiers serving in the Alsace-Lorraine regiments and who desert in uniform. "Yes; I have seen several poor fellows who had been too severely punished or whose tempers were too proud. You will say that some desert from our side too, and it is true; but then they are not so many——"
Shaking his head and looking tenderly at the sleeping forests:
"When one belongs to this side, you see, one can speak ill of it, but one is not satisfied elsewhere. You do not know the country, sir, and yet to look at you one would swear you belonged to it."
Jean felt himself getting red; his throat was dry; he could not answer. And the man, thinking that he had taken a liberty, said:
"Excuse me, sir; one never knows whom one meets; and it is better not to talk about these things. I must continue my rounds and go down again."
He was going to salute in military fashion; Jean took his hand and pressed it.
"You are not mistaken, my friend," he said.
Then, feeling in his pocket, he held out his cigar-case to him.
"Come, take a cigar!"
And then, with a kind of childish joy, he emptied his case into the hand which the Custom House official held out.