"I am lame, Monsieur the Sub-Prefect."
The surgeon examined me, and the one from the hospital, to whom Monsieur the Commandant had doubtless spoken of me, said:
"The left leg is a little short."
"Bah!" said the other; "it is sound."
Then placing his hand upon my chest he said, "The conformation is good.
Cough."
I coughed as feebly as I could; but he found me all right, and said again:
"Look at his color. How good his blood must be!"
Then I, seeing that they would pa.s.s me if I remained silent, replied:
"I have been drinking vinegar."
"Ah!" said he; "that proves you have a good stomach; you like vinegar."
"But I am lame!" I cried in my distress.
"Bah! don"t grieve at that," he answered; "your leg is sound. I"ll answer for it."
"But that," said Monsieur the Mayor, "does not prevent his being lame from birth; all Phalsbourg knows that."
"The leg is too short," said the surgeon from the hospital; "it is doubtless a case for exemption."
"Yes," said the Mayor; "I am sure that this young man could not endure a long march; he would drop on the road the second mile."
The first surgeon said nothing more.
I thought myself saved, when Monsieur the Sub-Prefect asked:
"You are really Joseph Bertha?"
"Yes, Monsieur the Sub-Prefect," I answered.
"Well, gentlemen," said he, taking a letter out of his portfolio, "listen."
He began to read the letter, which stated that, six months before, I had bet that I could go to Laverne and back quicker than Pinacle; that we had run the race, and I had won.
It was unhappily too true. The villain Pinacle had always taunted me with being a cripple, and in my anger I laid the wager. Every one knew of it. I could not deny it.
While I stood utterly confounded, the first surgeon said:
"That settles the question. Dress yourself." And turning to the secretary, he cried, "Good for service."
I took up my coat in despair.
Werner called another. I no longer saw anything. Some one helped me to get my arms in my coat-sleeves. Then I found myself upon the stairs, and while Catharine asked me what had poised, I sobbed aloud and would have fallen from top to bottom if Aunt Gredel had not supported me.
We went out by the rear-way and crossed the little court. I wept like a child, and Catharine did too. Out in the hall, in the shadow, we stopped to embrace each other.
Aunt Gredel cried out:
"Oh the robbers! They are taking the lame and the sick. It is all the same to them; next they will take us."
A crowd began collecting, and Sepel the butcher, who was cutting meat in the stall, said:
"Mother Gredel, in the name of Heaven keep quiet. They will put you in prison."
"Well, let them put me there!" she cried, "let them murder me. I say that men are fools to allow such outrages!"
But the _sergent-de-ville_ was coming up, and we went on together weeping. We turned the corner of Cafe Hemmerle, and went into our own house. People looked at us from the windows and said, "There is another one who is going."
Monsieur Goulden knowing that Aunt Gredel and Catharine would come to dine with us the day of the revision, had had a stuffed goose and two bottles of good Alsace wine sent from the "Golden Sheep." He was sure that I would be exempted at once. What was his surprise, then, to see us enter together in such distress.
"What is the matter?" said he, raising his silk cap over his bald forehead, and staring at us with eyes wide open.
I had not strength enough to answer. I threw myself into the arm-chair and burst into tears. Catharine sat down beside me, and our sobs redoubled.
Aunt Gredel said:
"The robbers have taken him."
"It is not possible!" exclaimed Monsieur Goulden, letting fall his arms by his side.
"It shows their villainy," replied my aunt, and growing more and more excited, she cried, "Will a revolution never come again? Shall those wretches always be our masters?"
"Calm yourself, Mother Gredel," said Monsieur Goulden. "In the name of Heaven don"t cry so loud. Joseph, tell me how it happened. They are surely mistaken; it cannot be otherwise. Did Monsieur the Mayor and the hospital surgeon say nothing?"
I told the history of the letter between my sobs, and Aunt Gredel, who until then knew nothing of it, again shrieked with her hands clinched.
"O the scoundrel! G.o.d grant that he may cross my threshold again. I will cleave his head with my hatchet."
Monsieur Goulden was astounded.
"And you did not say that it was false. Then the story was true?""
And as I bowed my head without replying he clasped his hands, saying:
"O youth! youth! it thinks of nothing. What folly! what folly!"
He walked around the room; then sat down to wipe his spectacles, and Aunt Gredel exclaimed:
"Yes, but they shall not have him yet! Their wickedness shall yet go for nothing. This very evening Joseph shall be in the mountains on the way to Switzerland."