able to employ the good offices of Colonel de Vineuil to afford him an
opportunity of shaking hands with his brother-in-law was owing to the
circumstance that that officer was own uncle to young Mme. Delaherche,
a pretty young widow whom the cloth manufacturer had married the year
previous, and whom Maurice and Henriette, thanks to their being
neighbors, had known as a girl. In addition to the colonel, moreover,
Maurice had discovered that the captain of his company, Beaudoin, was
an acquaintance of Gilberte, Delaherche's young wife; report even had
it that she and the captain had been on terms of intimacy in the days
when she was Mme. Maginot, living at Meziere, wife of M. Maginot, the
timber inspector.

"Give Henriette a good kiss for me, Weiss," said the young man, who
loved his sister passionately. "Tell her that she shall have no reason
to complain of me, that I wish her to be proud of her brother."

Tears rose to his eyes at the remembrance of his misdeeds. The
brother-in-law, who was also deeply affected, ended the painful scene
by turning to Honore Fouchard, the artilleryman.

"The first time I am anywhere in the neighborhood," he said, "I will
run up to Remilly and tell Uncle Fouchard that I saw you and that you
are well."

Uncle Fouchard, a peasant, who owned a bit of land and plied the trade
of itinerant butcher, serving his customers from a cart, was a brother
of Henriette's and Maurice's mother. He lived at Remilly, in a house
perched upon a high hill, about four miles from Sedan.

"Good!" Honore calmly answered; "the father don't worry his head a