“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.”