The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (112 page)

Four hundred were found scattered in the ditches of the road.

This I saw myself.

And if you want to see the place where those savages were buried, you have only to go up the cemetery lane.

On the other side, at the right, in M. Adam Ottendorf’s orchard, you will see a stone cross in the middle of the fence; they were all buried there, with their horses, in one great trench.

You can imagine the delight of our gunners at seeing this massacre. They lifted up their sponges and shouted, “Vive l’Empereur!”

The soldiers shouted back from the covered ways, and the air was filled with their cries.

Our sergeant, with his thirty men, their guns on their shoulders, quietly reached the glacis. The barrier was quickly opened for them, but the two companies descended together to the moat and came up again by the postern.

I was waiting for them above.

When our sergeant came up I took him by the arm, “Ah, sergeant!” said I, “how glad I am to see you out of danger!”

I wanted to embrace him. He laughed and squeezed my hand.

“Then you saw the engagement, Father Moses!” said he, with a mischievous wink. “We have shown them what stuff the Fifth is made of!”

“Oh, yes! yes! you have made me tremble.”

“Bah!” said he, “you will see a good deal more of it; it is a small affair.”

The two companies re-formed against the wall of the
chemin de ronde
, and the whole city shouted, “Vive l’Empereur!”

They went down the rampart street in the midst of the crowd. I kept near our sergeant.

As the detachment was turning our corner, Sorlé, Zeffen, and Sâfel called out from the windows, “Hurrah for the veterans! Hurrah for the Fifth!”

The sergeant saw them and made a little sign to them with his head. As I was going in I said to him, “Sergeant, don’t forget your glass of cherry-brandy.”

“Don’t worry, Father Moses,” said he.

The detachment went on to break ranks at the Place d’Armes as usual, and I went up home at a quarter to four. I was scarcely in the room before Zeffen, Sorlé, and Sâfel threw their arms round me as if I had come back from the war; little David clung to my knee, and they all wanted to know the news.

I had to tell them about the attack, the grape-shot, the routing of the Cossacks. But the table was ready. I had not had my breakfast, and I said, “Let us sit down. You shall hear the rest by and by. Let me take breath.”

Just then the sergeant entered in fine spirits, and set the butt-end of his musket on the floor. We were going to meet him when we saw a tuft of red hair on the point of his bayonet, that made us tremble.

“Mercy, what is that?” said Zeffen, covering her face.

He knew nothing about it, and looked to see, much surprised.

“That?” said he, “oh! it is the beard of a Cossack that I touched as I passed him—it is not much of anything.”

He took the musket at once to his own room; but we were all horror-struck, and Zeffen could not recover herself. When the sergeant came back she was still sitting in the arm-chair, with both hands before her face.

“Ah, Madame Zeffen,” said he sadly, “now you are going to detest me!”

I thought, too, that Zeffen would be afraid of him, but women always like these men who risk their lives at random. I have seen it a hundred times. And Zeffen smiled as she answered: “No, sergeant, no; these Cossacks ought to stay at home and not come and trouble us! You protect us—we love you very much!”

I persuaded him to breakfast with us, and it ended by his opening a window, and calling out to some soldiers passing by to give notice at the cantine that Sergeant Trubert was not coming to breakfast.

So we were all calmed down, and seated ourselves at the table. Sorlé went down to get a bottle of good wine, and we began to eat our breakfast.

We had coffee, too, and Zeffen wanted to pour it out herself for the sergeant. He was delighted.

“Madame Zeffen,” said he, “you load me with kindness!”

She laughed. We had never been happier.

While he was taking his cherry-brandy, the sergeant told us all about the attack in the night; the way in which the Wurtemberg troops had stationed themselves at La Roulette, how it had been necessary to dislodge them as they were forcing open the two large gates, the arrival of the Cossacks at daybreak, and the sending out two companies to fire at them.

He told all this so well that we could almost think we saw it. But about eleven o’clock, as I took up the bottle to pour out another glassful, he wiped his mustache, and said, as he rose: “No, Father Moses, we have something to do besides taking our ease and enjoying ourselves; to-morrow, or next day, the shells will be coming; it is time to go and screen the garret.”

We all became sober at these words.

“Let us see!” said he; “I have seen in your court some long logs of wood which have not been sawed, and there are three or four large beams against the wall. Are we two strong enough to carry them up? Let us try!”

He was going to take off his cape at once; but, as the beams were very heavy, I told him to wait and I would run for the two Carabins, Nicolas, who was called the
Greyhound
, and Mathis, the wood-sawyer. They came at once, and, being used to heavy work, they carried up the timber. They had brought their saws and axes with them; the sergeant made them saw the beams, so as to cross them above in the form of a sentry-box. He worked himself like a regular carpenter, and Sorlé, Zeffen, and I looked on. As it took some time, my wife and daughter went down to prepare supper, and I went down with them, to get a lantern for the workmen.

I was going up again very quietly, never thinking of danger, when, suddenly, a frightful noise, a kind of terrible rumbling, passed along the roof, and almost made me drop my lantern.

The two Carabins turned pale and looked at each other.

“It is a ball!” said the sergeant.

At the same time a loud sound of cannon in the distance was heard in the darkness.

I had a terrible feeling in my stomach, and I thought to myself, “Since one ball has passed, there may be two, three, four!”

My strength was all gone. The two Carabins doubtless thought the same, for they took down at once their waistcoats, which were hanging on the gable, to go away.

“Wait!” said the sergeant. “It is nothing. Let us keep at our work—it is going on well. It will be done in an hour more.”

But the elder Carabin called out, “You may do as you please!
I
am not going to stay here—I have a family!”

And while he was speaking, a second ball, more frightful than the first, began to rumble upon the roof, and five or six seconds after we heard the explosion.

It was astonishing! The Russians were firing from the edge of the Bois-de-Chênes, more than a half-hour distant, and yet we saw the red flash pass before our two windows, and even under the tiles.

The sergeant tried to keep us still at work.

“Two bullets never pass in the same place,” said he. “We are in a safe spot, since that has grazed the roof. Come, let us go to work!”

It was too much for us. I placed the lantern on the floor and went down, feeling as if my thighs were broken. I wanted to sit down at every step.

Out of doors they were shouting as if it were morning, and in a more frightful way. Chimneys were falling, and women running to the windows; but I paid no attention to it, I was so frightened myself.

The two Carabins had gone away paler than death.

All that night I was ill. Sorlé and Zeffen were no more at ease than myself. The sergeant kept on alone, placing the logs and making them fast. About midnight he came down.

“Father Moses,” said he, “the roof is screened, but your two men are cowards; they left me alone.”

I thanked him, and told him that we were all sick, and as for myself I had never felt anything like it. He laughed.

“I know what that is,” said he. “Conscripts always feel so when they hear the first ball; but that is soon over—they only need to get a little used to it.”

Then he went to bed, and everybody in the house, except myself, went to sleep.

The Russians did not fire after ten o’clock that night; they had only tried one or two field-pieces, to warn us of what they had in store.

All this, Fritz, was but the beginning of the blockade; you are going to hear now of the miseries we endured for three months.

CHAPTER XIII

A DESERTER CAPTURED

The city was joyful the next day, notwithstanding the firing in the night. A number of men who came from the ramparts about seven o’clock, came down our street shouting: “They are gone! There is not a single Cossack to be seen in the direction of Quatre-Vents, nor behind the barracks of the Bois-de-Chênes!
Vive l’Empereur
!”

Everybody ran to the bastions.

I had opened one of our windows, and leaned out in my nightcap. It was thawing, the snow was sliding from the roofs, and that in the streets was melting in the mud. Sorlé, who was turning up our bed, called to me: “Do shut the window, Moses! We shall catch cold from the draught!”

But I did not listen. I laughed as I thought: “The rascals have had enough of my old bars and rusty nails; they have found out that they fly a good way: experience is a good thing!”

I could have stayed there till night to hear the neighbors talk about the clearing away of the Russians, and those who came from the ramparts declaring that there was not one to be seen in the whole region. Some said that they might come back, but that seemed to me contrary to reason. It was clear that the villains would not quit the country at once, that they would still for a long time pillage the villages, and live on the peasants; but to believe that the officers would excite their men to take our city, or that the soldiers would be foolish enough to obey them, never entered my head.

At last Zeffen came into our room to dress the children, and I shut the window. A good fire roared in the stove. Sorlé made ready our breakfast, while Zeffen washed her little Esdras in a basin of warm water.

“Ah, now, if I could only hear from Baruch, it would all be well,” said she.

Little David played on the floor with Sâfel, and I thanked the Lord for having delivered us from the scoundrels.

While we were at breakfast, I said to my wife: “It has all gone well! We shall be shut up for a while until the Emperor has carried the day, but they will not fire upon us, they will be satisfied with blockading us; and bread, wine, meats, and brandies, will grow dearer. It is the right time for us to sell, or else we might fare like the people of Samaria when Ben-Hadad besieged their city. There was a great famine, so that the head of an ass sold for four-score pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s-dung for five pieces. It was a good price; but still the merchants were holding back, when a noise of chariots and horses and of a great host came from heaven, and made the Syrians escape with Ben-Hadad, and after the people had pillaged their camp, a measure of fine flour sold for only a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel. So let us try to sell while things are at a reasonable price; we must begin in good season.”

Sorlé assented, and after breakfast I went down to the cellar to go on with the mixing.

Many of the mechanics had gone back to their work. Klipfel’s hammer sounded on his anvil. Chanoine put back his rolls into his windows, and Tribolin, the druggist, his bottles of red and blue water behind his panes.

Confidence was restored everywhere. The citizen-gunners had taken off their uniforms, and the joiners had come back to finish our counter; the noise of the saw and plane filled the house.

Everybody was glad to return to his own business, for war brings nothing but harm; the sooner it is over the better.

As I carried my jugs from one tun to another, in the cellar, I saw the passers-by stop before our old shop, and heard them say to each other, “Moses is going to make his fortune with the brandy; these rascals of Jews always have good scent; while we have been selling this month past, he has been buying. Now that we are shut up he can sell at any price he pleases.”

You can judge whether that was not pleasant to hear! A man’s greatest happiness is to succeed in his business; everybody is obliged to say: “This man has neither army, nor generals, nor cannon, he has nothing but his own wit, like everybody else; when he succeeds he owes it to himself, and not to the courage of others. And then he ruins no one; he does not rob, or steal, or kill; while, in war, the strongest crushes the weakest and often the best.”

So I worked on with great zeal, and would have kept on till night if little Sâfel had not come to call me to dinner. I was hungry, and was going upstairs, glad in the thought of sitting down in the midst of my children, when the call-beat began on the Place d’Armes, before the town-house. During a blockade a court-martial sits continually at the mayoralty to try those who do not answer to the call. Some of my neighbors were already leaving their houses with their muskets on their shoulders. I had to go up very hastily, and swallow a little soup, a morsel of meat, and a glass of wine.