got a letter from Remilly yesterday and was intending to start out and
hunt you up. Let's go and have a glass of white wine."

For the sake of privacy he conducted his cousin to the little
farmhouse that the soldiers had looted the day before, where the old
peasant, undeterred by his losses and allured by the prospect of
turning an honest penny, had tapped a cask of wine and set up a kind
of public bar. He had extemporized a counter from a board rested on
two empty barrels before the door of his house, and over it he dealt
out his stock in trade at four sous a glass, assisted by the strapping
young Alsatian whom he had taken into his service three days before.

As Honore was touching glasses with Maurice his eyes lighted on this
man. He gazed at him a moment as if stupefied, then let slip a
terrible oath.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ Goliah!"

And he darted forward and would have caught him by the throat, but the
peasant, foreseeing in his action a repetition of his yesterday's
experience, jumped quickly within the house and locked the door behind
him. For a moment confusion reigned about the premises; soldiers came
rushing up to see what was going on, while the quartermaster-sergeant
shouted at the top of his voice:

"Open the door, open the door, you confounded idiot! It is a spy, I
tell you, a Prussian spy!"

Maurice doubted no longer; there was no room for mistake now; the
Alsatian was certainly the man whom he had seen arrested at the camp