At the end of three weeks my shoulder had begun to heal, and Zunnier's wounds were also doing well, and they allowed us to walk in the large garden, full of elms, behind the hospital. There were benches under the trees, and we walked the paths like millionaires in our gray great-coats and forage-caps. The increasing heat presaged a fine year, and often, when looking at the beautiful scenery around, I thought of Phalsbourg, and the tears came to my eyes.
"I would like to know what makes you cry so," said Zunnier. "Instead of catching a fever in the hospital, or losing a leg or arm, like hundreds of others, here we are quietly seated in the shade; we are well fed, and can smoke when we have any tobacco; and still you cry. What more do you want, Josephel?"
Then I told him of Catharine; of our walks at Quatre-Vents; of our promises; of all my former life, which then seemed a dream. He listened, smoking his pipe.
"Yes, yes," said he; "all this is very sad. Before the conscription of 1798, I too was going to marry a girl of our village, who was named Margrédel, and whom I loved better than all the world beside. We had promised to marry each other; and all through the campaign of Zurich, I never passed a day without thinking of her. But when I first received a furlough and reached home, what did I hear? Margrédel had been three months married to a shoemaker, named Passauf.
"You may imagine my wrath, Josephel; I could not see clearly; I wanted to demolish everything; and, as they told me that Passauf was at the Grand-Cerf brewery, thither I started, looking neither to the right nor left. There I saw him drinking with three or four other rogues. As I rushed forward, he cried, 'There comes Christian Zunnier! How goes it, Christian! Margrédel sends you her compliments.' I seized a glass which I hurled at his head, and broke to pieces, saying, 'Give her that for my wedding present, you beggar!' The others, seeing their friend thus maltreated, very naturally fell upon me. I knocked two of three of them over with a jug, jumped on a table, sprang through a window, and beat a retreat."
"It was time," I thought
"But that was not all," he continued, "I had scarcely reached my mother's when the gendarmerie arrived, and they arrested me. They put me on a wagon and conducted me from my brigade to my regiment, which was at Strasbourg. I remained six weeks at Finckmatt, and would probably have received the ball and chain, if we did not have to cross the Rhine to Hohenlinden.
"From that day, Josephel, the thought of marriage never troubled me. Don't talk to me of a soldier who has a wife to think of. Look at our generals who are married, do they fight as they used to?"
I could not answer, for I did not know; but day after day I waited anxiously to hear from home, and my joy can be more easily imagined than described when, one day, a large, square letter was handed me. I recognized Monsieur Goulden's handwriting.