Explore "The Blockade of Phalsburg" by Erckmann-Chatrian on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
After this story of the landwehr, we were afraid of the sergeant, though he did not know it, and came regularly to take his glass of cherry-brandy. Sometimes in the evening he would hold the bottle before our lamp, and exclaim:
"It is getting low, Father Moses, it is getting low! We shall soon be put upon half-rations, and then quarter, and so on. It is all the same; if a drop is left, anything more than the smell, in six months, Trubert will be very glad."