the citizens to make case-shot and canister.

Father Goulden, in spite of his threescore years, had aimed the pieces
on the Magazine bastion on the Bichelberg side, and I often imagined I
could see him with his black silk cap and spectacles on, in the act of
aiming a twenty-four pounder. Then this would make us both laugh and
helped to pass away the time.

We had resumed all our old habits. I laid the table and made the soup.
I was occupying my little chamber again and dreamed of Catherine day
and night. But now, instead of being afraid of the conscription as I
was in 1813, I had something else to trouble me. Man is never quite
happy, some petty misery or other assails him. How often do we see
this in life? My peace was disturbed by this.

You know I was to marry Catherine; we were agreed, and Aunt Gredel
desired nothing better. Unhappily, however, the conscripts of 1815
were disbanded, while those of 1813 still remained soldiers. It was no
longer so dangerous to be a soldier as it was under the Empire, and
many of these had returned to their homes and were living quietly, but
that did not prevent the necessity of my having a permit in order to be
married. Mr. Jourdan, the new mayor, would never allow me to register
without this permission, and this made me anxious.

Father Goulden, as soon as the city gates were opened, had written to
the minister of war, Dupont, that I was at Pfalzbourg and still unwell,
that I had limped from my birth, and that I had in spite of this been
pressed into the service, that I was a poor soldier, but that I could
make a good father of a family, that it would be a real crime to
prevent me from marrying, that I was ill-formed and weak and should be
obliged to go into the hospital, etc.

It was a beautiful letter, and it told the truth too. The very idea of
going away again made me ill. So we waited from day to day--Aunt
Gredel, Father Goulden, Catherine, and I, for the answer from the
minister.

I cannot describe the impatience I felt when the postman Brainstein,
the son of the bell-ringer, came into the street. I could hear him
half a mile away, and then I could not go on with my work, but must
lean out of the window and watch him as he went from house to house.
When he would stay a little too long, I would say to myself, "What can
he have to talk about so long? why don't he leave his letters and come
away? he is a regular tattler, that Brainstein!" I was ready to pounce