They fought for their colors the whole time; the Bergenheim livery was red, the Corandeuil green.

There were two flags; each exalted his own while throwing that of his adversaries in the mud.
Greenhorn and crab were jokes; cucumber and lobster were insults.
Such were the gracious terms exchanged every day between the two parties.

In the midst of this civil war, which was carefully concealed from their masters' eyes, whose severity they feared, lived one rather singular personage.

Leonard Rousselet, Pere Rousselet, as he was generally called, was an old peasant who, disheartened with life, had made various efforts to get out of his sphere, but had never succeeded in doing so.

Having been successively hairdresser, sexton, school-teacher, nurse, and gardener, he had ended, when sixty years old, by falling back to the very point whence he started.