The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (137 page)

While thinking over these things, Materne kept continually meeting herds of cattle, sheep and goats, which were being led into the mountain. Some came from Wisch, Urmatt, and even from Mutzig; the poor beasts could scarcely stand.

“Where the devil are you running so fast?” shouted the old hunter to the melancholy herdsmen. “Have you then no confidence in the proclamation of the Austrians and Russians?”

And they angrily answered: “It is easy for you to laugh. Proclamations! we know what they are worth now. They pillage and rob everything, make forced contributions, carry off the horses, cows, oxen, and carts.”

“Nonsense! impossible! What are you talking about?” said Materne. “You astound me! Such worthy people, such good friends, the saviours of France. I cannot believe you. Such a beautiful proclamation as it was.”

“Well, go down to Alsace, and you will see.”

The poor creatures went on, shaking their heads in extreme indignation, and he laughed slyly.

The farther Materne advanced, the number of herds became greater. There were not only troops of cattle bellowing and lowing, but flocks of geese, as far as the eye could reach, screeching and cackling, dragging themselves along the road with wings spread and half-frozen feet: it was piteous to see.

It was worse still on approaching Schirmeck. The people were flying in crowds, with their great wagons loaded with barrels, smoked meats, furniture, women and children. They were lashing their horses almost to death on the road, and screaming in terrified voices: “We are lost; the Cossacks are coming.”

The cry of “The Cossacks! the Cossacks!” ran along the whole line like a puff of wind; the women turned round open-mouthed, and the children stood up on the wagons to get a better view. You never beheld anything like it before; and Materne, angered, blushed for the terror of these people, who might have defended themselves; while selfishness and their desire to save their property, made them fly like cowards.

At the crossing of the Fond-des-Saules quite close to Schirmeck, Kasper and Frantz rejoined their father, and the three entered the “Golden Key” tavern, kept by the Widow Faltaux, on the right side of the road. The poor woman and her two daughters were watching from a window the great migration with streaming eyes and clasped hands.

In fact, the tumult increased every minute; the cattle, wagons, and people seemed eager to get away over each other’s shoulders. They no longer had any command of themselves: they were howling and striking about them in their desire to escape.

Materne pushed the door open, and seeing the women more dead than alive, white and dishevelled, he shouted, striking his stick on the ground: “What, mother, have you too gone mad? What! you, who owe a good example to your daughters,—have you lost courage? it is a shame.”

The old woman turned round and said in a broken voice: “Ah, my poor Materne, if you only knew—if you only knew!”

“Well, what then? The enemy is coming: they won’t eat you.”

“No; but they devour everything without mercy. Old Ursula, of Schlestadt, came here yesterday evening. She says that the Austrians only want ‘Knöpfe’ and ‘Nudel,’ the Russians ‘Schnapps,’ and the Bavarians ‘Sauerkraut.’ And when they have stuffed all that down their throats, they cry out with their mouths still full, ‘Schocolat! schocolat!’ O Lord, how can we feed all these people?”

“I know well that is difficult,” said the old hunter: “you can never satisfy a jay with white cheese. But, first of all, where are these Cossacks, these Bavarians, these Austrians? All the way from Grandfontaine we have not met even one.”

“They are in Alsace, on the Urmatt side, and they are coming here.”

“While waiting for them,” said Kasper, “give us a bottle of wine. Here is a three-crown piece: you will hide it easier than your barrels.”

One of the girls went to the cellar, and, at the same time, several other persons entered: an almanac-seller from Strasbourg, a wagoner from Sarrebrück in a blouse, and two or three townspeople from Hutzig, Wisch, and Schirmeck, who were flying with their herds, and were exhausted with shouting.

All sat down at the same table, before the windows overlooking the road. Wine was served them, and each began to relate what he knew. One said the allies were in such numbers that they had to sleep side by side in the valley of Hirschenthal, and they were so covered with vermin that, after their departure, the dead leaves walked of themselves in the woods; another, that the Cossacks had set fire to a village in Alsace, because they had been refused candles for dessert after dinner; that some of them, especially the Calmucks, ate soap like cheese and bacon-rind like cake; that many drank brandy by the pint, after having taken care to season it with handfuls of pepper; and that it was necessary to hide everything from them, for nothing came amiss to them for eating and drinking.

The wagoner said, at this point, that three days before, a Russian corps-d’armée having passed the night under the ramparts of Bitsch, it had been compelled to remain more than an hour on the ice in the little village of Rorbach, and that the whole of this army corps had drunk out of a warming-pan left on the window-sill of an old woman’s house; that this race of savages broke the ice to bathe, and afterward crept into the brick-kilns to dry; lastly, that they only feared Corporal Knout.

These worthy folks communicated such singular things to each other, which they pretended to have seen with their own eyes, or heard from trustworthy sources, that one could with difficulty believe them.

Outside, the tumult, rolling of wagons, lowing of herds, shouts of the drivers, and clamors of the fugitives, continued unceasingly, and produced the effect of a vast murmur.

Toward noon Materne and his sons were going to leave, when a more prolonged shout than any of the others was heard: “The Cossacks! the Cossacks!”

Then everybody rushed outside, except the hunters, who contented themselves with opening a window and looking out: they all ran away across the fields: men, herds, wagons and all, were dispersed like leaves in autumn. In less than two minutes the road was deserted, except in Schirmeck, which was so encumbered, that it would have been impossible to walk four steps. Materne, gazing far away along the road, cried, “I look in vain—I can see nothing.”

“Nor do I,” rejoined Kasper.

“Come, come,” cried the old hunter, “I see clearly that the fear of all these people gives more strength to the enemy than he in fact possesses. It is not in such a way we shall receive the Cossacks in the mountains; they will find who they have to deal with.”

Then, shrugging his shoulders with an expression of disgust, he said: “Fear is an odious thing, and after all we have only one poor life to lose. Let us go.”

They quitted the inn, and the old man having taken the road to the valley, in order to climb the summit of the Hirschberg in front of them, his sons followed him. They soon reached the outskirts of the wood, when Materne said that they must mount as high as possible, so as to see the whole plain, and bring back some positive news to the bivouac; that all the accounts of those cowards were not worth one good look by themselves.

Kasper and Frantz agreed, and all three began to climb the slope, which forms a sort of advanced promontory commanding the plain. When they reached the peak they distinctly saw the enemy’s position, three leagues distant, between Urmatt and Lutzelhouse. They formed great black lines on the snow: farther off were a few dark masses—no doubt, the artillery and baggage. Other masses surrounded the villages, and, notwithstanding the distance, the sparkling of the bayonets announced that a column had just commenced marching toward Visch.

After having contemplated this spectacle in silence for some minutes, the old man said, “We have decidedly thirty thousand men under our eyes. They are advancing in our direction; we shall be attacked to-morrow, or the day after at the latest. It will not be a trumpery affair, my boys; but if they are numerous we have the best of the position. And then it is always agreeable to fire into a heap; there are no balls lost.”

Having made these judicious reflections, he looked at the height of the sun, and added: “It is now two o’clock; we know all we want. Let us return to the bivouac.”

The youths slung their carbines crossways, and leaving to their left the valley of the Brocque, Schirmeck, and Framont, they climbed the steep banks of the Hengsbach, which overlook the Little Donon—two leagues distant—and came down again on the other side, without following any regular path through the snow, and only guiding themselves by the peaks in order to take a short cut.

They continued thus for about two hours: the winter sun was going down to the horizon, night was approaching, bright and calm. They had now only to descend, and then mount, on the other side, the solitary gorge of Kiel, forming a large circular basin in the midst of the woods, and enclosing a bluish pond, where the deer came sometimes to quench their thirst.

Suddenly, as they were coming out from the underwood, not dreaming of anything, the old man, stopping behind a thick screen of shrubs, said “Chut!” and lifting his hand, pointed to the little lake, which was covered with thin clear ice.

The two young fellows needed only to glance toward it to be greeted by a most strange sight. About twenty Cossacks, with yellow shaggy beards, heads covered with old fur caps in the shape of stove-pipes, their lean legs draped in long rags, and their feet in rope stirrups, were seated on their little horses, with long floating manes and thin tails, their bodies speckled yellow, black and white, like goats. Some had for their only weapon a long lance, others a sword, others an axe suspended by a cord to their saddle, and a large horse-pistol passed through their belts. Several were looking upward with ecstasy on the green tops of the pines, rising by stages above each other into the clouds. One great lanky fellow had broken the ice with the butt-end of his lance; and his little horse was drinking with outstretched neck and overhanging mane. A few having dismounted, were clearing the snow and pointing to the wood—no doubt to indicate that it was a good place for encamping. Their comrades on horseback were conversing and pointing to the bottom of the valley on their right, which descends in the form of a gap toward Grinderwald.

Anyway it was a halt. It is impossible to describe the strange and picturesque aspect of these fellows from a strange country, with their copper-colored faces, long beards, black eyes, flat heads, squat noses, and grayish tatters, on the banks of this lake, under the lofty perpendicular rocks lifting up their green pines to the skies.

It seemed a new world in ours,—a sort of unknown and strange game, which the three red hunters at first contemplated with intense interest. Having remained so for about five minutes, Kasper and Frantz fixed their long bayonets at the muzzle of their carbines, and then retired about twenty paces into the underwood. They reached a rock, fifteen or twenty feet high, which Materne climbed, having no arms; then, after a few words exchanged in whispers, Kasper examined his priming and raised his musket slowly to his shoulder, while his brother stood by in readiness.

One of the Cossacks—he who was letting his horse drink—was about two hundred paces from them. The gun went off, awakening the deep echoes of the gorge; and the Cossack, spinning over his horse’s head, plunged through the ice of the lake.

It is impossible to describe the stupor of the party at this report. They looked round them in every direction: the echo replied as though it had been a general fusillade; while a puff of smoke rose above the clump of trees where the hunters were hiding.

Kasper had reloaded his piece in a moment; but in the same space of time the dismounted Cossacks had bounded on their horses, and all took flight over the slope of the Hartz, one after the other, like roebucks, screaming wildly, “Hourah! hourah!”

This flight was but the work of a moment: the instant Kasper took aim for the second time, the tail of the last horse disappeared in the bushes.

The horse of the dead Cossack alone remained at the water’s edge, held there by a singular circumstance: his master, whose head and part of whose body was in the water, had his foot still in the stirrup.

Materne listened from his rock, then said joyously—“They are gone! Well, let us go and see. Frantz, remain here. Suppose any of them should return—?”

Notwithstanding this recommendation, they all three approached near the horse. Materne immediately took the bridle, saying:—“Come, old fellow, we are going to teach you to speak French.”

“Let us be off,” exclaimed Kasper.

“No, we must see what we have shot. Don’t you see that will be good for our comrades? Dogs who have not sniffed the skin of the game are never well trained.”

Whereupon they fished the Cossack out of the pool, and having placed him across the horse, began to climb the side of the Donon by such a steep path, that Materne repeated, a hundred times at least, “The horse will never go up there.” But the horse, with its long goat-like legs, passed more easily than they did; so that the old hunter wound up by remarking—“These Cossacks have famous horses. If ever I grow old, I will keep him to go after the deer with. We have a famous horse, my boys; with all his look of a cow, he is strong as a cart-horse.”

From time to time he also made reflections on the Cossack:—“What a queer face, eh! A round nose and a forehead like a cheese-box. There are certainly queer folks in the world! Thou hast hit him well, Kasper; right in the middle of the chest. And look! the ball came out at the back. Capital powder! Divès always keeps good articles.”