w handfuls of gold scattered upon their road; they were
all nobles, who took a pride in showing their prodigality.

From morning until night, and even during the night, the "Red Ox" kept
its tables in readiness. Through the long windows on the first story
nothing was to be seen but great white table-cloths, glittering with
silver and covered with game, fish, and other rare viands, around which
the travellers sat side by side. In the yard behind, horses neighed,
postilions shouted, maid-servants laughed, coaches rattled. Ah! the
hotel of the "Red Ox" will never see such prosperous times again.

Sometimes, too, people of the city stopped there, who in other times
were known to gather sticks in the forest or to work on the highway.
But now they were commandants, colonels, generals, and had won their
grades by fighting in every land on earth. Old Melchior, with his
black silk cap pulled over his ears, his weak eyelids, his nose pinched
between great horn spectacles, and his lips tightly pressed together,
could not sometimes avoid putting aside his magnifying-glass and punch
upon the workbench, and throwing a glance toward the inn, especially
when the cracking of the whips of the postilions, with their heavy
boots, little jackets, and perukes of twisted hemp, awoke the echoes of
the ramparts and announced a new arrival. Then he became all
attention, and from time to time would exclaim:

"Hold! It is the son of Jacob, the slater," or of "the old scold, Mary
Ann," or of "the cooper, Frantz Sepel! He has made his way in the
world; there he is, colonel and baron of the empire into the bargain.
Why don't he stop at the house of his father, who lives yonder in the
_Rue des Capucins_?"

But when he saw them shaking hands right and left in the street with
those who recognized them, his tone changed; he wiped his eyes with his
great spotted handkerchief, and murmured:

"How pleased poor old Annette will be! Good! good! _He_ is not proud;
he is a man. God preserve him from cannon-balls!"

Others passed as if ashamed to recognize their birth-place; others went
gayly to see their sisters or cousins, and everybody spoke of them.
One would imagine that all Phalsbourg wore their crosses and their
epaulettes; while the arrogant were despised even more than when they
swept the roads.

Nearly every month _Te Deums_ were chanted, and the cannon at the
arsenal fired their salutes of twenty-one rounds for some new victory,
maki