s pleasant mess and good bread, regular rations, the
neat warm uniform, the stout linen shirts, seemed to him delightful.
He had never dreamed that he could be so comfortable, and his strongest
desire was to let his two younger brothers, Gaspard and Jacob, know how
delighted he was, in order that they might enlist as soon as they were
old enough.

"Yes," said I, "that is all very well,--but the English and
Prussians,--you do not think of that."

"I despise them," said he, "my sabre cuts like a butcher's knife, and
my bayonet is sharp as a needle. It is they who should be afraid to
encounter me."

We were the best friends in the world, and I liked him almost as well
as my old comrades Klipfel, Furst, and Zebede. And he liked me too. I
believe he would have let himself be cut to pieces to save me from
danger. Old comrades and bed-fellows never forget each other. In my
time, old Harwig whom I knew in Pfalzbourg, always received a pension
from his old comrade Bernadotte, King of Sweden. If I had been a king,
Jean Buche should have had a pension, for if he had not a great mind he
had a good heart, which is better still.

While we were talking, Zebede came and tapped me on the shoulder.

"You do not smoke, Joseph?"

"I have no tobacco."

Then he gave me half of a package which he had and I saw that he loved
me still, in spite of the difference in our rank, and that touched me.
He was beside himself with delight at the thought of attacking the
Prussians.

"We'll be revenged!" he cried. "No quarter! they shall pay for all,
from Katzbach even to Soissons."

You would have thought that those English and Prussians were not going
to defend themselves, and that we ran no risk of catching bullets and
canister as at Lutzen and at Gross-Beren, at Leipzig and everywhere
else. But what could you say to a man who remembered nothing and who
always looked on the bright side?

I smoked my pipe quietly and replied, "Yes! yes! we'll settle the
rascals, we'll push them! They'll see enough of us!"

I left Jean Buche with his pipe, and as we were on guard, Zebede went
about nine o'clock to relieve the sentinels at the head of the picket.
I stepped a little out of the circle and stretched myself in a furrow a
few steps in the rear with my knapsack under my head. The weather was
warm, and we heard the crickets long after the sun went down. A few
stars shone in the heavens. There was not a breath of air stirring
over the p