back with him appeared on the table, the wife brought in the rest of
the supper. She gave to the dishes and to the room generally the
glance of a mistress, and then, sure of having attended to all the
wants of the travellers, she returned to the kitchen.

The four men, for the landlord was invited to drink, did not hear her
go to bed, but later, during the intervals of silence which came into
their talk, certain strongly accentuated snores, made the more
sonorous by the thin planks of the loft in which she had ensconced
herself, made the guests laugh and also the husband. Towards midnight,
when nothing remained on the table but biscuits, cheese, dried fruit,
and good wine, the guests, chiefly the young Frenchmen, became
communicative. The latter talked of their homes, their studies, and of
the war. The conversation grew lively. Prosper Magnan brought a few
tears to the merchant's eyes, when with the frankness and naivete of a
good and tender nature, he talked of what his mother must be doing at
that hour, while he was sitting drinking on the banks of the Rhine.

"I can see her," he said, "reading her prayers before she goes to bed.
She won't forget me; she is certain to say to herself, 'My poor
Prosper; I wonder where he is now!' If she has won a few sous from her
neighbors--your mother, perhaps," he added, nudging Wilhelm's elbow
--"she'll go and put them in the great red earthenware pot, where she
is accumulating a sum sufficient to buy the thirty acres adjoining her
little estate at Lescheville. Those thirty acres are worth at least
sixty thousand francs. Such fine fields! Ah! if I had them I'd live
all my days at Lescheville, without other ambition! How my father used
to long for those thirty acres and the pretty brook which winds
through the meadows! But he died without ever being able to buy them.
Many's the time I've played there!"