The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (82 page)

But we had great anxiety, for naturally when the palisades were newly planted on the glacis, and the half-moons filled with fascines, when cannon were placed in every nook and corner, we knew that there must be soldiers to guard and serve them.

Often as we heard these decrees read at night, Catherine and I looked at each other in mute apprehension. I felt beforehand that instead of remaining quietly at home, cleaning and mending clocks, I would be obliged to be again on the march, and that always made me sad; and this melancholy increased from day to day. Sometimes Father Goulden, seeing this, would say cheerfully:

“Come! Joseph, courage! all will come right at last.”

He wished to raise my spirits, but I thought: “Yes, he says that to encourage me, but any one who is not blind can see what turn affairs will take.”

Events followed each other so rapidly, that the decrees came like hail, always with sounding phrases and grand words to embellish them.

And we learned too that the regiments were to take their old numbers, “illustrious in so many glorious campaigns.” Without being very malicious, we could understand that the old numbers which had no regiments would soon find them again. And not only that, but we learned that the skeletons of the third, fourth, and fifth battalions of infantry, the fourth and fifth squadrons of cavalry, and thirty battalions of artillery trains were to be filled up, and twenty regiments of the Young Guard, ten battalions of military equipages, and twenty regiments of marines were to be formed, ostensibly to give employment to all the half-pay officers of both arms of the service, land and naval. That was very well to say; but when they are created they are to be filled up, and when they are full the soldiers must go. When I saw that, my confidence vanished, but yet everybody cried, “Peace, peace, peace! We accept the treaty of Paris. The kings and emperors convened at Vienna are our friends. Marie Louise and the King of Rome are coming.”

The more I heard of these things, the more my distrust increased. In vain Mr. Goulden would say, “He has taken Carnot into his counsels. Carnot is a good patriot; Carnot will prevent him from going to war, or if we are forced to go to war, he will show him that the enemy must come here to find us, the nation must be roused, declare the country in danger, etc.”

In vain did he tell me these things, I always said to myself, “all these new regiments are to be filled; that is certain.” We heard also that ten thousand picked men were to be added to the Old Guard, and that the light artillery was to be reorganized. Everybody knows that light artillery follows the army. To remain behind the ramparts or for defence at home, it is useless.

I came to this conclusion at once, and though I was generally careful to conceal my anxiety from Catherine, yet this night I could not help telling her so. She said nothing, which shows plainly that she had good sense and that she thought so too.

All these things diminished my enthusiasm for the Emperor very much indeed, and I sometimes said to myself as I was at work, “I would rather see processions going past my windows, than to go and fight against people whom I never saw.” At least the sight would cost me neither leg nor arm, and if it annoyed me too much I could make an excursion to Quatre Vents. My vexation increased the more, as since the dispute with Mr. Goulden, Aunt Grédel did not come to see us. She was a very wilful woman and would not listen to reason, and would hold resentment against a person for years and years. But she was our mother, and it was our duty to yield something to her as she wished us only good. But how could we be reconciled to her ideas and those of Mr. Goulden?

This was what embarrassed us, for if we were bound to love Aunt Grédel, we owed also the most profound respect to him, who looked upon us as his own children, and who loaded us every day with his benefits.

These thoughts made us sad, and I had resolved to tell Mr. Goulden, that Catherine and I were Jacobins like himself, but without doing injustice to Jacobin ideas, or abandoning them, we ought to honor our mother, and go and inquire after her health.

I did not know how he would receive this declaration, when one Sunday morning, as we went down about eight o’clock, we found him dressed, and in excellent humor. He said to us, “Children, here it is more than a month since Aunt Grédel has been to see us. She is obstinate. I wish to show her that I can yield. Between friends like us, there should not be even a shadow of difference. After breakfast we will go to Quatre Vents, and tell her that she is prejudiced, and that we love her in spite of her faults. You will see how ashamed she will be.” He laughed, but we were quite touched by his generosity.

“Ah! Mr. Goulden, how good and kind you are,” said Catherine, “they who do not love you, must have very bad hearts.”

“Ha!” he exclaimed, “is not what I have done quite natural? must we let a few words separate us? Thank God! age teaches us to be more reasonable and to be willing to take the first step,—that you know is one of the principles of the Rights of Man,—in order to maintain concord between reasonable persons.”

Everything was summed up, when he had quoted the “Rights of Man.” You can hardly imagine our satisfaction. Catherine could hardly wait till breakfast was over, she was here and there and everywhere, to bring his hat and cane and his shoes and the box which held his beautiful peruke. She helped him on with his brown coat, while he laughed as he watched her, and at last he kissed her saying, “I knew this would make you happy, so do not let us lose a minute, let us go.”

We all set off together, Father Goulden gravely giving his arm to Catherine, as he always did in the street, and I marched on behind as happy as possible. Those I loved best in the world were here before my eyes, and as I went on I thought of what I should say to Aunt Grédel.

The weather was splendid, and on we went beyond the wall and the glacis, and in twenty minutes, without hurrying, we stood before Aunt Grédel’s door. It might have been ten o’clock, and as I had gained a little on them at the “Roulette” I went in by the alley of elders that ran along the side of the house, and looked into the little window to see what aunt was doing. She was seated right opposite me near the fireplace, in which a little fire was smouldering, she had on her short skirt, striped with blue, with great pockets on the outside, and her linen corsage with shoulder-straps, and her old shoes. She was spinning away, with her eyes cast down, looking very sober, her great thin arms naked to the elbow, and her gray hair twisted up in her neck without any cap. “Poor Aunt Grédel,” thought I, “she is thinking of us no doubt—and she is so obstinate in her vexation. It is sad though, all the same, to live alone and never see her children.” It made me sad to see her.

At that moment the door opened on the side next the street, and Father Goulden walked in with Catherine, as happy as possible, exclaiming:

“Ha! Mother Grédel, you do not come to see us any more, therefore I have brought your children to see you, and have come myself to embrace you. You will have to get us a good dinner, do you hear? and that will teach you a lesson.” He seemed a little grave with all his joy.

On seeing them, aunt sprang up and embraced Catherine, and then she fell into Mr. Goulden’s arms and hung on his neck:

“Ah! Mr. Goulden, how happy I am to see you. You are a good man; you are worth a thousand of me.”

Seeing that matters had taken a pleasant turn, I ran round to the door and found them both with their eyes full of tears. Father Goulden said:

“We will talk no more politics!”

“No! but whether one is Jacobin or anything else you will, the principal thing is to keep in good temper.”

She then came and embraced me, and said:

“My poor Joseph! I have been thinking of you from morning till night. But all is well now and I am satisfied.”

She ran into the kitchen and commenced bustling among the kettles to prepare something to regale us with, while Mr. Goulden placed his cane in a corner and hung his great hat upon it, and sat down with an air of contentment near the hearth.

“What fine weather!” he exclaimed, “how green and flourishing everything is! How happy I should be to live in the fields, to see the hedges and apple-trees and plum-trees from my windows, covered with their red and white blossoms!”

He was gay as a lark, and we all should have been except for the thoughts of the war which were constantly coming into our heads.

“Leave all that, mother,” said Catherine, “I will get the dinner to-day as I used to do; go and sit down quietly with Mr. Goulden.”

“But you do not know where anything is, I have disarranged everything,” said aunt.

“Sit down, I beg you,” said Catherine, “I shall find the butter and the eggs and the flour and everything that is necessary.”

“Well, well! I am going to obey you,” said she, as she went down to the cellar.

Catherine took off her pretty shawl and hung it on the back of my chair, then she put some wood on the fire and some butter in a saucepan and looked into the kettles to see that everything was in order. Aunt came in at that moment with a bottle of white wine.

“You will first refresh yourselves a little before dinner, and while Catherine looks after the kitchen I will go and put on my sacque and give my hair a touch with the comb, for certainly it needs it, and you—go into the orchard;—here, Joseph, take these glasses and the bottle and go and sit in the bee-house, the weather is fine, in an hour all will be in order and I will come and drink with you.”

Father Goulden and I went out through the tall grass and the yellow dandelions which came up to our knees. It was very warm and the air was full of soft murmurs. We sat down in the shade and looked at the glorious sunshine.

Mr. Goulden took off his peruke in order to be more at his ease and hung it up behind him, and I opened the bottle and we drank some of the good white wine.

“Well! all goes on even though man does commit follies; the Lord God watches over all his works. Look at the grain, Joseph, how it grows! What a harvest there will be in three or four months. And those turnips and cabbages, and the shrubs, and the bees, how busy everything is, how they live and grow! what a pity it is that men do not follow so good an example! what a pity that some must labor to support the others in idleness. What a pity that there must be always idlers of every kind, who treat us like Jacobins because we wish for order and peace and justice!”

There was nothing he liked so much to see as industry, not only that of man but even of the smallest insect that runs about in the grass, as in an endless forest, which builds and pairs and covers its eggs, heaps them up in its places of deposit, exposes them to the sunshine, protects them from the chills of night, and defends them from its enemies; in short, all that great universe of life where everything sings, everything is in its place; from the lark which fills the air with his joyous music to the ant which goes and comes and runs and mows and saws and pulls and is master of all trades.

This was what pleased Mr. Goulden, but he never spoke of it except in the fields, when this grand spectacle was right under his eyes, and naturally he then spoke of God, whom he called the “Supreme Being,” as in the time of the Republic, and he said, He was reason and wisdom and goodness and love; justice, order, and life. The ideas of the almanac-makers came back to him also, and it was splendid to hear him talk of the “Pluviose” the season of rains, of “Nivose” the season of snows, of “Ventose” season of winds, and “Floreal, Prairial, and Fructidor.” He said the ideas of men in those times were more closely allied to God’s, while July, September, and October meant nothing, and were only invented to confuse and obscure everything. Once on this subject it was plain that he could not exhaust it. Unfortunately I have not the learning that that good man had, otherwise it would give me real pleasure to recount his sayings to you. We were just here when Mother Grédel, well washed and combed and in her Sunday dress, came round the corner of the house toward us. He stopped instantly that she might not be disturbed.

“Here I am,” she said, “all in order.”

“Sit down,” said Father Goulden, making a place for her beside him on the bench.

“Do you know what time it is?” said she. “Does it not seem long to you? Listen!” and we heard the city clock slowly strike twelve.

“What! is it noon already! I would not have believed that we had been here more than ten minutes.”

“Yes, it is noon, and dinner is waiting.”

“So much the better,” said Mr. Goulden, offering his arm to her, “since you have told me the hour I find I have a good appetite.”

They went along the alley arm in arm, and when we were at the door a most charming sight met our eyes, the great tureen with its red flowers was smoking on the table, a breast of stuffed veal filled the room with a delicious odor. A great plate of cinnamon cakes stood on the edge of the old oak buffet, two bottles of wine, and glasses clear as crystal, shone on the white cloth beside the plates. The very sight of it made you feel that it is the joy of the Lord to shower blessings on His children.

Catherine, with her rosy cheeks and white teeth, laughed to see our satisfaction, and during the whole dinner our anxiety for the future was forgotten. We laughed and were as happy as if the world were in the best condition possible. But as we were taking coffee our sadness returned, and without knowing why, we were all very grave. Nobody wished to speak of politics, when suddenly Aunt Grédel herself asked if there was anything new. Mr. Goulden then said that the Emperor desired peace, and that he wished to put himself in a condition of defence, in order to warn our enemies that we were not afraid. He said that in any case, in spite of the ill-feeling of the allies they would not dare to attack us, that the Emperor Francis, though he had not much heart, would not wish to overthrow his son-in-law and his own daughter and grandson a second time, that it would be contrary to nature, and besides that, the nation would rise
en masse
, that they would declare the country to be in danger, and that it would not be a war of soldiers alone, but of all Frenchmen against those who wished to oppress them, that this would make the allied sovereigns reflect, etc., etc.