mes
just in season, for there's not a cutlet left in Raucourt. When a man's
hungry he'll eat anything, won't he?" And very well pleased at heart,
he called to Silvine, who just then came in from putting Charlot to bed:
"Let's have some glasses; we are going to drink to the downfall of old
Bismarck."

Fouchard maintained amicable relations with these francs-tireurs from
Dieulet wood, who for some three months past had been emerging at
nightfall from the fastnesses where they made their lurking place,
killing and robbing a Prussian whenever they could steal upon him
unawares, descending on the farms and plundering the peasants when there
was a scarcity of the other kind of game. They were the terror of
all the villages in the vicinity, and the more so that every time a
provision train was attacked or a sentry murdered the German authorities
avenged themselves on the adjacent hamlets, the inhabitants of which
they accused of abetting the outrages, inflicting heavy penalties on
them, carrying off their mayors as prisoners, burning their poor hovels.
Nothing would have pleased the peasants more than to deliver Sambuc
and his band to the enemy, and they were only deterred from doing so by
their fear of being shot in the back at a turn in the road some night
should their attempt fail of success.

It had occurred to Fouchard to inaugurate a traffic with them. Roaming
about the country in every direction, peering with their sharp eyes into
ditches and cattle sheds, they had become his purveyors of dead animals.
Never an ox or a sheep within a radius of three leagues was stricken
down by disease but they came by night with their barrow and wheeled it
away to him, and he paid them in provisions, most generally in bread,
that Silvine baked in great batches expressly for the purpose. Besides,
if he had no great love for them, he experienced a secret feeling of
admiration for the francs-tireurs, a set of handy rascals who went their
way and snapped their fingers at the world, and although he was making
a fortune from his dealings with the Prussians, he could never refrain
from chuckling to himself with grim, savage laughter as often as he
heard that one of them had been found lying at the roadside with his
throat cut.

"Your good health!" said he, touching glasses with the three men. Then,
wiping his mouth with the back of his hand: "Say, have you heard of the
fuss they're making over the two headless uhlans that they picked up
o