The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (139 page)

From time to time, Doctor Lorquin opened one of the windows in the large room and looked out. Nothing was stirring; the fires had smouldered away; all was still.

In front of the farm, on a bank, about a hundred feet distant, the Cossack could be seen who had been killed the previous evening by Kasper. He was white with the frost, and as hard as a stone.

In the interior, a fire had been made in the great iron stove.

Louise sat near her father, looking at him with an inexpressible affection, as though she feared never to see him again. Her red eyes showed that she had been crying.

Hullin, though firm, looked not a little moved. The doctor and the anabaptist, both grave and serious, talked over the present position of affairs, and Lagarmitte, from behind the stove, listened to them with deep interest.

“We are not only right, but it is our duty to defend ourselves,” said the doctor. “Our fathers cleared these woods and cultivated them: they are our legitimate inheritance.”

“No doubt,” returned the anabaptist, sententiously; “but it is written, ‘Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not shed thy brother’s blood!’”

Catherine Lefèvre, who was in the act of cutting a slice of ham, evidently felt impatient at this conversation, and, turning round sharply, replied to him: “If that were true, and your religion were right, the Germans, Russians, and all these red men might take the clothes off our backs. ‘Tis fine, that religion of yours; yes, fine, for it gives the rogues such an advantage! It helps them to pillage people of substance. I am sure the allies would wish for us no better religion than yours. Unfortunately, everybody does not care to live like sheep. As for me, Pelsly—and I say it without wishing to annoy you—I consider it folly to grow rich for the benefit of others. But, after all, you are honest folks; one cannot be angry with you: you have been brought up from father to son in the same notions: what the grandfather thought, the grandson thinks also. But we will defend you in spite of yourselves; and afterward we will let you tell us of the peace eternal. I am fond of discourses on peace, when I have nothing else to do, and when I am thinking after dinner: then it rejoices my heart.”

After having said this, she turned round and went on carving her ham.

Pelsly opened his mouth and eyes, and Doctor Lorquin burst out laughing.

Just then the door opened, and one of the sentries who had been stationed on the edge of the plateau, cried out, “Master Jean-Claude, come and see. I believe they are mounting the hill.”

“It is well, Simon; I am coming,” said Hullin, rising. “Louise, kiss me. Have courage, my child. Do not fear; all will go well.”

He pressed her to his breast, her eyes swollen with tears. She seemed more dead than alive.

“Above all,” said the worthy man, addressing Catherine, “let no one go outside or near the windows.”

Then he darted out into the road.

All those present turned pale.

When Master Jean-Claude had reached the verge of the hill, and cast his eyes over Grandfontaine and Framont, three thousand mètres below, the following sight presented itself to his eyes:

The Germans, who had arrived the evening before, a few hours after the Cossacks, and had passed the night (about five or six thousand of them) in the barns, stables, and sheds, were moving about like ants. They appeared on all sides in bodies of ten, fifteen, and twenty, buckling their knapsacks and swords, and fixing their bayonets.

Besides these, the cavalry—the Uhlans, Cossacks, Hussars—in green, blue, and gray uniforms striped with red and yellow—with their glazed linen and sheepskin caps, colbacks, and helmets—were saddling their horses and hastily rolling up their long cloaks.

Meanwhile the officers, in their great military cloaks, came down the small staircase: some were looking up at the country; others were embracing the women on the doorsteps.

Trumpeters, with their hands on their sides, were sounding the roll-call at all the corners of the streets, and the drummers tightening the cords of their instruments.

In short, through the broad expanse, one could see all their military attitudes as they were on the point of starting.

A few peasants, leaning out of their windows, were watching the scene; women were showing themselves at the loopholes of the garrets; and the innkeepers were filling the gourds, Corporal Knout watching them meanwhile.

Hullin’s sight was keen, and nothing escaped him; besides, for years he had been accustomed to this sort of thing; but Lagarmitte, who had never seen anything like it, was stupefied: “There are great numbers of them,” he exclaimed, shaking his head.

“Bah! what does that matter?” said Hullin. “In my days we exterminated three armies of them, of fifty thousand each, in six months; we were not one against four. All that thou seest there would not have been a breakfast for us. And besides, you may be sure, we shall not have to kill them all; they will run like hares. I have seen it before.”

After these remarks, he resolved to inspect his men. “Come on,” he said to the herdsman.

Then the two made their way behind the abatis, following a trench made two days before in the snow, which had been frozen as hard as ice: the felled trees in front of it, formed an insurmountable barrier, which extended about six hundred mètres. Below this was the broken-up road.

On coming near, Jean-Claude saw the mountaineers of Dagsburg crouching at distances of twenty paces from each, other, in a sort of round nests which they had dug out for themselves.

All these fine fellows were sitting on their knapsacks, with their gourds to their right hand, their felts or foxskin caps drawn down upon their heads, and their guns between their knees. They had only to rise to have a clear view of the road fifty feet below, at the foot of a slippery descent.

Jean-Claude’s arrival pleased them much.

“Ho, Master Hullin, shall we soon begin?”

“Yes, my boys, never fear; before an hour we shall be at it.”

“Ah, so much the better!”

“Yes, but take care to aim at the breast: do not hurry, and show yourselves no more than you can help.”

“You may rest assured, Master Jean-Claude.”

He passed on; but everywhere he met with a like reception.

“Do not forget,” said he, “to stop firing when Lagarmitte sounds his horn: it would be only powder lost.”

Coming up to old Materne, who commanded all these men—numbering about two hundred and fifty—he found him smoking his pipe, his nose fiery red, and his beard stiffened with the cold.

“At, it is thou, Jean-Claude.”

“Yes, I have come to shake your hand.”

“In good time. But why are they so slow in coming—tell me that? Are they going to march off in another direction?”

“Don’t be afraid: they need the road for their artillery and baggage. Hark! they are sounding ‘to horse.’”

“Yes, I have seen already that they are preparing.” Then, chuckling to himself: “Thou dost not know, Jean-Claude, what a funny thing I saw, a few minutes ago, as I was looking toward Grandfontaine.”

“What was it, my old friend?”

“I saw four Germans lay hold of big Dubreuil, the friend of the allies: they stretched him on the stone bench by his door, and one great lanky fellow gave him I know not how many cuts with a stick across his back. Ha, ha, ha, he must have yelled, the old rascal! I will wager that he refused something to his good friends,—his wine of the year XI. for instance.”

Hullin heard no more: for, casting his eyes accidentally down the valley, he caught sight of an infantry regiment coming up the road. Farther back in the street, cavalry were seen coming, five or six officers galloping in front of them.

“Ah, ah! there they come!” cried the old soldier, whose face glowed suddenly with an expression of strange energy and enthusiasm. “At last they have made up their minds!” Then he rushed out of the trench, shouting: “Attention, my children!”

Passing by, he saw Riffi, the little tailor of Charmes, bending over a long musket: the little man had been piling up the snow to give him a better position for aiming. Farther up, he saw the old wood-cutter Rochart, his great shoes trimmed with sheepskin: he had taken a gulp at his gourd, and was rising deliberately, having his carbine under his arm and his cotton cap over his ears.

That was all: for in order to command the whole of the action, he had to climb almost to the summit of the Donon, where there is a rock.

Lagarmitte followed, striding till his long legs looked like stilts. Ten minutes after, when they had reached the top of the rock, half-breathless, they perceived, fifteen hundred mètres below them, the enemy’s column, three thousand strong, with white great-coats, leather belts, cloth gaiters, tall shakos, and red mustaches; and in the spaces formed by the companies, the young officers, with flat caps, waving their swords, and shouting in shrill voices: “Forward! forward!”

These troops were bristling with bayonets, and advancing at the charge toward the breastworks.

Old Materne, his beaked nose rising above a juniper branch and his brow erect, was also watching the arrival of the Germans; and as he was very clear-sighted, he could distinguish even faces among the crowd, and choose the man he wished to knock over.

In the centre of the column, on a large bay horse, an old officer was advancing right ahead, with a white wig, a three-cornered hat trimmed with gold, his waist encircled with a yellow scarf, and his breast decorated with ribbons. When this personage raised his head, the peak of his hat, surmounted by a tuft of black plumes, formed a vizor. He had great wrinkles along his cheeks, and looked sufficiently stern.

“There is my man!” thought the old hunter, deliberately taking aim.

He fired, and when he looked again the old officer had disappeared.

Immediately the whole hill-side became enveloped in fire all along the intrenchment; but the Germans, without replying, continued to advance toward the breastworks, their guns on their shoulders, and as steadily as though on parade.

To tell the truth, more than one brave mountaineer, father of a family, seeing this forest of bayonets coming up, and notwithstanding the excitement of battle, felt that he would have done better had he remained in his village, than to have mixed himself up in such an affair. But, as the proverb says, “The wine was drawn, and it had to be drunk.”

Riffi, the little tailor, recalled the words of his wife Sapience: “Riffi, you will get yourself crippled, and it will serve you right.”

He vowed a costly offering to St. Leon’s Chapel should he return from the war; but at the same time he resolved to make good use of his musket.

When they were about two hundred feet from the breastworks, the Germans halted and began a rolling fire, such as had never been heard in the mountain before. It was a regular storm of shot: the balls in hundreds tore away the branches, sent bits of broken ice flying in all directions, or flattened themselves on the rocks on every side, leaping up with a strange hissing noise, and passing by like flocks of pigeons.

All this did not stop the mountaineers from continuing their fire, but it could no longer be heard. The whole hill-side was wrapped in blue smoke, which prevented their taking any aim.

About ten minutes later, there was the rolling of a drum, and all this mass of men made a rush at the breastworks, their officers shouting, “Forward!”

The earth shook with them.

Materne, springing up in the trench, with quivering lips and in a terrible voice, cried out, “To your feet! to your feet!”

It was time: for a good number of these Germans,—nearly all students in philosophy, law, and medicine, heroes of the taverns of Munich, Jena, and other places—who fought against us, because they had been promised great things after Napoleon’s fall—all these intrepid fellows were climbing the icy slope, and endeavoring to jump into the intrenchment.

But they were received with the butt-end of the musket, and fell back in disorder.

It was then that the gallant conduct of the old wood-cutter Rochart was observable, knocking over, as he did, more than ten “kaiserlichs,” whom he took by the shoulder and hurled down the incline. Old Materne’s bayonet was red with blood; and little Riffi never ceased loading his musket and firing into the mass of Germans with great spirit. Joseph Larnette, who unluckily received a bullet in his eye; Hans Baumgarten, who had his shoulder smashed; Daniel Spitz, who lost two fingers by a sabre-cut, and many others, whose names should be honored and revered for ages—all these never once left off firing and reloading their guns.

Below the slope fearful cries were heard, while above nothing but bristling bayonets and men on horseback were to be seen.

This lasted a good quarter of an hour. No one knew what the Germans would do, since there was no passage; when they suddenly decided on going away. Most of the students had fallen, and the others—old campaigners used to honorable retreats—no longer fought with the same steadiness.

At first they retreated slowly, then more quickly. Their officers struck them from behind with the flat end of their swords; the musketry-fire pursued them; and, finally, they ran away with as much precipitation as they had been orderly in advancing.

Materne, and fifty others, rose upon the barricades, the old hunter brandishing his carbine, and bursting into hearty roars of laughter.