The next morning, when I threw back the shutters of our room,
everything was white with snow; the old elms of the square, the street,
the roofs of the mayoralty and market and church. Some of our
neighbors, Recco the tinman, Spick the baker, and old Durand the
mattress-maker, opened their doors and looked as if dazzled, while they
exclaimed:
"He! Winter has come!"
Although we see it every year yet it is like a new existence. We
breathe better out of doors, and within it is a pleasure to sit in the
corner of the fireplace and smoke our pipes, while we watch the
crackling of the red fire. Yes, I have always felt so for seventy-five
years, and I feel so still!
I had scarcely opened the shutters when Safel sprang from his bed like
a squirrel, and came and flattened his nose against a pane of glass,
his long hair dishevelled and his legs bare.
"Oh! snow! snow!" he exclaimed. "Now we can have some slides!"
Sorle, in the next room, made haste to dress herself and run in. We
all looked out for some minutes; then I went to make the fire, Sorle
went to the kitchen, Safel dressed himself hastily, and everything fell
back into the ordinary channel.
Notwithstanding the falling snow, it was very cold. You need only to
see the fire kindle at once, and hear it roar in the stove, to know
that it was freezing hard.
As we were eating our soup, I said to Sorle, "The poor sergeant must
have passed a dreadful night. His little glass of cherry-brandy will
taste good."
"Yes," she said, "it is well you thought of it."
She went to the closet, and filled my little pocket-flask from the
bottle of cherry-brandy.
You know, Fritz, that we do not like to go into public houses when we
are on our way to our own business. Each of us carries his own little
bottle and crust of bread; it is the best way and most conformed to the
law of the Lord.
Sorle then filled my flask, and I put it in my pocket, under my
great-coat, to go to the guard-house. Safel wanted to follow me, but
his mother told him to stay, and I went down alone, well pleased at
being able to do the sergeant a kindness.
It was about seven o'clock. The snow falling from the roofs at every
gust of wind was enough to blind you. But going along the walls, with
my nose in my great-coat, which was well drawn up on the shoulders, I
reached the German gate, and was about going down the three steps of
the guard-house, under the arch at the left, when the sergeant himself
opened the heavy door and exclaimed:
"Is it you, Father Moses! What the devil has brought you here in this
cold?"
The guard-house was full of mist; we could hardly see some men
stretched on camp-beds at the farther end, and five or six veterans
near the red-hot stove.