ejoin Father Goulden
and Aunt Gredel and all our dear friends. Otherwise we should be too
unhappy in growing old. God would not send us pain without hope. And
Catherine believes it too. Well! at that time we were perfectly happy,
everything was beautiful to us, nothing troubled our joy.

It was when the allies were passing through our city by hundreds of
thousands on their way home. Cavalry, artillery, infantry, foot and
horse, with oak leaves in their shakos, on their caps, and on the ends
of their muskets and lances. They shouted so that you could hear them
a league away. Just as you hear the chaffinches, thrushes, and
blackbirds, and thousands of other birds in the autumn. At any other
time this would have made me sad, because it was the sign of our
defeat, but I consoled myself by thinking that they were going away,
never to return. And when Zebede came to tell me that every day the
Russian, Austrian, Prussian, and Bavarian officers crossed the city to
visit our new commandant, Mons. de la Faisanderie, who was an old
emigre, and who covered them with honors--that such an officer of the
battalion had provoked one of these strangers, and that such another
half-pay officer had killed two or three in duels at the "Roulette," or
the "Green Tree," or the "Flower Basket," for they were everywhere--our
soldiers could not bear the sight of the foreigners, there were fights
everywhere, and the litters of the hospital were constantly going and
coming--when Zebede told me all these things, and when he said that so
many officers had been put upon half-pay in order to replace them by
officers from Coblentz, and that the soldiers were to be compelled to
go to mass in full uniform, that the priests were everything and
epaulettes nothing any more; instead of being vexed, I only said, "Bah!
all these things will get settled by and by. So long as we can have
quiet, and can live and labor in peace, we will be satisfied."

I did not think that it is not enough that one is satisfied; to
preserve peace and tranquillity, all must be so likewise. I was like
Aunt Gredel, who found everything right now that we were married. She
came very often to see us, with her basket full of fresh eggs, fruits,
vegetables, and cakes for our housekeeping, and she would say:

"Oh! Mr. Goulden, there is no need to ask if the children are well,
you have only to look at their faces."

And to me she would say: "There is some difference, Joseph, b