"Brussels cigars, three sous apiece, two for five!"
Customs regulations were in abeyance since the battle of Sedan, and the imports of Belgian merchandise had been greatly stimulated. The old man had been making a handsome profit from his traffic, but that did not prevent him from driving a sharp bargain when he understood the reason why the two men wanted to buy his hat, a greasy old affair of felt with a great hole in its crown. He finally consented to part with it for two five-franc pieces, grumbling that he should certainly have a cold in his head.
Then Jean had another idea, which was neither more nor less than to buy out the old fellow's stock in trade, the two dozen cigars that remained unsold. The bargain effected, he pulled his hat down over his eyes and began to cry in the itinerant hawker's drawling tone:
"Here you are, Brussels cigars, two for three sous, two for three sous!"
Their safety was now assured. He signaled Maurice to go on before. It happened to the latter to discover an umbrella lying on the grass; he picked it up and, as a few drops of rain began to fall just then, opened it tranquilly as they were about to pass the line of sentries.
"Two for three sous, two for three sous, Brussels cigars!"
It took Jean less than two minutes to dispose of his stock of merchandise. The men came crowding about him with chaff and laughter: a reasonable fellow, that; he didn't rob poor chaps of their money! The Prussians themselves were attracted by such unheard-of bargains, and he was compelled to trade with them. He had all the time been working his way toward the edge of the enceinte, and his last two cigars went to a big sergeant with an immense beard, who could not speak a word of French.
"Don't walk so fast, confound it!" Jean breathed in a whisper behind Maurice's back. "You'll have them after us."
Their legs seemed inclined to run away with them, although they did their best to strike a sober gait. It caused them a great effort to pause a moment at a cross-roads, where a number of people were collected before an inn. Some villagers were chatting peaceably with German soldiers, and the two runaways made a pretense of listening, and even hazarded a few observations on the weather and the probability of the rain continuing during the night. They trembled when they beheld a man, a fleshy gentleman, eying them attentively, but as he smiled with an air of great good-nature they thought they might venture to address him, asking in a whisper:
"Can you tell us if the road to Belgium is guarded, sir?"
"Yes, it is; but you will be safe if you cross this wood and afterward cut across the fields, to the left."
Once they were in the wood, in the deep, dark silence of the slumbering trees, where no sound reached their ears, where nothing stirred and they believed their safety was assured them, they sank into each other's arms in an uncontrollable impulse of emotion. Maurice was sobbing violently, while big tears trickled slowly down Jean's cheeks. It was the natural revulsion of their overtaxed feelings after the long-protracted ordeal they had passed through, the joy and delight of their mutual assurance that their troubles were at an end, and that thenceforth suffering and they were to be strangers. And united by the memory of what they had endured together in ties closer than those of brotherhood, they clasped each other in a wild embrace, and the kiss that they exchanged at that moment seemed to them to possess a savor and a poignancy such as they had never experienced before in all their life; a kiss such as they never could receive from lips of woman, sealing their undying friendship, giving additional confirmation to the certainty that thereafter their two hearts would be but one, for all eternity.
When they had separated at last: "Little one," said Jean, in a trembling voice, "it is well for us to be here, but we are not at the end. We must look about a bit and try to find our bearings."
Maurice, although he had no acquaintance with that part of the frontier, declared that all they had to do was to pursue a straight course, whereon they resumed their way, moving among the trees in Indian file with the greatest circumspection, until they reached the edge of the thicket. There, mindful of the injunction of the kind-hearted villager, they were about to turn to the left and take a short cut across the fields, but on coming to a road, bordered with a row of poplars on either side they beheld directly in their path the watch-fire of a Prussian detachment. The bayonet of the sentry, pacing his beat, gleamed in the ruddy light, the men were finishing their soup and conversing; the fugitives stood not upon the order of their going, but plunged into the recesses of the wood again, in mortal terror lest they might be pursued. They thought they heard the sound of voices, of footsteps on their trail, and thus for over an hour they wandered at random among the copses, until all idea of locality was obliterated from their brain; now racing like affrighted animals through the underbrush, again brought up all standing, the cold sweat trickling down their face, before a tree in which they beheld a Prussian. And the end of it was that they again came out on the poplar-bordered road not more than ten paces from the sentry, and quite near the soldiers, who were toasting their toes in tranquil comfort.
"Hang the luck!" grumbled Jean. "This must be an enchanted wood."
This time, however, they had been heard. The sound of snapping twigs and rolling stones betrayed them. And as they did not answer the challenge of the sentry, but made off at the double-quick, the men seized their muskets and sent a shower of bullets crashing through the thicket, into which the fugitives had plunged incontinently.
"Nom de Dieu!" ejaculated Jean, with a stifled cry of pain.
He had received something that felt like the cut of a whip in the calf of his left leg, but the impact was so violent that it drove him up against a tree.
"Are you hurt?" Maurice anxiously inquired.
"Yes, and in the leg, worse luck!"
They both stood holding their breath and listening, in dread expectancy of hearing their pursuers clamoring at their heels; but the firing had ceased and nothing stirred amid the intense stillness that had again settled down upon the wood and the surrounding country. It was evident that the Prussians had no inclination to beat up the thicket.
Jean, who was doing his best to keep on his feet; forced back a groan. Maurice sustained him with his arm.
"Can't you walk?"
"I should say not!" He gave way to a fit of rage, he, always so self-contained. He clenched his fists, could have thumped himself. "God in Heaven, if this is not hard luck! to have one's legs knocked from under him at the very time he is most in need of them! It's too bad, too bad, by my soul it is! Go on, you, and put yourself in safety!"
But Maurice laughed quietly as he answered:
"That is silly talk!"
He took his friend's arm and helped him along, for neither of them had any desire to linger there. When, laboriously and by dint of heroic effort, they had advanced some half-dozen paces further, they halted again with renewed alarm at beholding before them a house, standing at the margin of the wood, apparently a sort of farmhouse. Not a light was visible at any of the windows, the open courtyard gate yawned upon the dark and deserted dwelling. And when they plucked up their courage a little and ventured to enter the courtyard, great was their surprise to find a horse standing there with a saddle on his back, with nothing to indicate the why or wherefore of his being there. Perhaps it was the owner's intention to return, perhaps he was lying behind a bush with a bullet in his brain. They never learned how it was.