The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories

by Émile Erckmann

  He would have made me laugh with his jokes if the litters had not been constantly passing.

  At the end of three weeks my shoulder began to heal, and Zimmer’s wounds were also doing well. They gave us every morning some good boiled beef which warmed our hearts, and in the evening a little beef with half a glass of wine, the sight alone of which rejoiced us and made the future look hopeful.

  About this time, too, they allowed us to walk in the large garden, full of elms, behind the hospital. There were benches under the trees, and we walked the paths like millionnaires in our gray great-coats and forage-caps. The weather was magnificent; and we could see far along the poplar bordered Partha. This river falls into the Elster, on the left, forming a long blue line. On the same side stretches a forest of beech trees, and in front are three or four great white roads, which cross fields of wheat, barley and hay, and hop plantations; no sight could be pleasanter, or richer, especially when the breeze falls upon it and these harvests rise and fall in the sunlight like waves of the sea. The increasing heat presaged a fine year and often, when looking at the beautiful scenery around, I thought of Phalsbourg, and the tears came to my eyes.

  “I would like to know what makes you cry so, Josephel,” said Zimmer. “Instead of catching a fever in the hospital, or losing a leg or arm, like hundreds of others, here we are quietly seated in the shade; we are well fed, and can smoke when we have any tobacco; and still you cry. What more do you want, Josephel?”

  Then I told him of Catharine; of our walks at Quatre-Vents; of our promises; of all my former life, which then seemed a dream. He listened, smoking his pipe.

  “Yes, yes,” said he; “all this is very sad. Before the conscription of 1798, I too was going to marry a girl of our village, who was named Margrédel, and whom I loved better than all the world beside. We had promised to marry each other, and all through the campaign of Zurich, I never passed a day without thinking of her. But when I first received a furlough and reached home, what did I hear? Margrédel had been three months married to a shoemaker, named Passauf.”

  “You may imagine my wrath, Josephel; I could not see clearly; I wanted to demolish everything; and, as they told me that Passauf was at the Grand-Cerf brewery, thither I started, looking neither to the right nor left. There I saw him drinking with three or four rogues. As I rushed forward, he cried, ‘There comes Christian Zimmer! How goes it, Christian? Margrédel sends you her compliments.’ He winked his eye. I seized a glass, which I hurled at his head, and broke to pieces, saying, ‘Give her that for my wedding present, you beggar!’ The others, seeing their friend thus maltreated, very naturally fell upon me. I knocked two or three of them over with a jug, jumped on a table, sprang through a window, and beat a retreat.

  “‘It was time,’ I thought.

  “But that was not all,” he continued; “I had scarcely reached my mother’s when the gendarmerie arrived, and they arrested me. They put me on a wagon and conducted me from brigade to brigade until we reached my regiment, which was at Strasbourg. I remained six weeks at Finckmatt, and would probably have received the ball and chain, if we had not had to cross the Rhine to Hohenlinden.

  “The Commandant Courtaud himself said to me:

  “‘You can boast of striking a hard blow, but if you happen again to knock people over with jugs, it will not be well for you—I warn you. Is that any way to fight, animal? Why do we wear sabres, if not to use them and do our country honor?’

  “I had no reply to make.

  “From that day, Josephel, the thought of marriage never troubled me. Don’t talk to me of a soldier who has a wife to think of. Look at our generals who are married, do they fight as they used to? No, they have but one idea, and that is to increase their store and to profit by their wealth by living well with their duchesses and little dukes at home. My grandfather Yéri, the forester, always said that a good hound should be lean, and I think the same of good generals and good soldiers. The poor fellows are always in working order, but our generals grow fat from their good dinners at home.”

  So spoke my friend Zimmer in the honesty of his heart, and all this did not lessen my sadness.

  As soon as I could sit up, I hastened to inform Monsieur Goulden, by letter, that I was in the hospital of Halle, in one of the five buildings of Leipzig, slightly wounded in the arm, but that he need fear nothing for me, for I was growing better and better. I asked him to show my letter to Catharine and Aunt Grédel to comfort them in the midst of such fearful war. I told him, too, that my greatest happiness would be to receive news from home and of the health of all whom I loved.

  From that moment I had no rest; every morning I expected an answer, and to see the postmaster distribute twenty or thirty letters in our ward, without my receiving one, almost broke my heart; I hurried to the garden and wept. There was a little dark corner where they threw broken pottery—a place buried in shade, which pleased me much, because no one ever came there—there I passed my time dreaming on an old moss-covered bench. Evil thoughts crossed my brain—I almost believed that Catharine could forget her promises, and I muttered to myself, “Ah! if you had not been picked up at Kaya! All would then have been ended! Why were you not abandoned? Better to have been, than to suffer thus!”

  To such a pass did I finally arrive, that I no longer wished to recover, when one morning the letter-carrier, among other names, called that of Joseph Bertha. I lifted my hand without being able to speak, and a large, square letter, covered with innumerable post-marks, was handed me. I recognized Monsieur Goulden’s handwriting, and turned pale.

  “Well,” said Zimmer, laughing, “it is come at last.”

  I did not answer, but thrust the letter in my pocket, to read it at leisure and alone. I went to the end of the garden and opened it. Two or three apple-blossoms dropped upon the ground, with an order for money, on which Monsieur Goulden had written a few words. But what touched me most was the handwriting of Catharine, which I gazed at without reading a word, while my heart beat as if about to burst through my bosom.

  At last I grew a little calmer and read the letter slowly, stopping from time to time to make sure that I made no mistake—that it was indeed my dear Catharine who wrote, and that I was not in a dream.

  I have kept that letter, because it brought, so to speak, life back to me. Here it is as I received it on the eighth day of June, 1813:

  “MY DEAR JOSEPH:—I write you to tell you I yet love you alone, and that, day by day, I love you more.

  “My greatest grief is to know that you are wounded, in a hospital, and that I cannot take care of you. Since the conscripts departed, we have not had a moment’s peace of mind. My mother says I am silly to weep night and day, but she weeps as much as I, and her wrath falls heavily on Pinacle, who dared not come to the market-place, because she carried a hammer in her basket.

  “But our greatest grief was when we heard that the battle had taken place, and that thousands of men had fallen; mother ran every morning to the post-office, while I could not move from the house. At last your letter came, thank heaven! to cheer us. Now I am better, for I can weep at my ease, thanking God that He has saved your life.

  “And when I think how happy we used to be, Joseph—when you came every Sunday, and we sat side by side without stirring and thought of nothing! Ah! we did not know how happy we were; we knew not what might happen—but God’s will be done. If you only recover! if we may only hope to be once again as happy as we were!

  “Many people talk of peace, but the Emperor so loves war, that I fear it is far off.

  “What pleases me most is to know that your wound is not dangerous, and that you still love me. Ah! Joseph, I will love you forever—that is all I can say. I can say it from the bottom of my heart; and I know my mother loves you too!

  “Now, Monsieur Goulden wishes to say a few words to you, so I will close. The weather is beautiful here, and the great apple-tree in the garden is full of flowers; I have plucked a few, which I shall put in this letter when M. Goulden ha
s written. Perhaps with God’s blessing we shall yet eat together one of those large apples. Embrace me as I embrace you, Joseph, Farewell! Farewell!”

  As I finished reading this, Zimmer arrived, and in my joy, I said:

  “Sit down, Zimmer, and I will read you my sweetheart’s letter. You will see whether she is a Margrédel.”

  “Let me light my pipe first,” he answered; and having done so, he added: “Go on, Josephel, but I warn you that I am an old bird, and do not believe all I hear; women are more cunning than we.”

  Notwithstanding this bit of philosophy, I read Catharine’s letter slowly to him. When I had ended, he took it, and for a long time gazed at it dreamily, and then handed it back, saying:

  “There! Josephel. She is a good girl, and a sensible one, and will never marry any one but you.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  “Yes; you may rely upon her; she will never marry a Passauf. I would rather distrust the Emperor than such a girl.”

  I could have embraced Zimmer for these words; but I said:

  “I have received a bill for one hundred francs. Now for some white wine of Alsace. Let us try to get out.”

  “That is well thought of,” said he, twisting his mustache and putting his pipe in his pocket. “I do not like to mope in a garden when there are taverns outside. We must get permission.”

  We arose joyfully and went to the hospital, when, the letter-carrier, coming out, stopped Zimmer, saying:

  “Are you Christian Zimmer, of the Second horse artillery?”

  “I have that honor, monsieur the carrier.”

  “Well, here is something for you,” said the other, handing him a little package and a large letter.

  Zimmer was stupefied, never having received anything from home or from anywhere else. He opened the packet—a box appeared—then the box—and saw the cross of honor. He became pale; his eyes filled with tears, he staggered against a balustrade, and then shouted “Vive l’Empereur!” in such tones that the three halls rang and rang again.

  The carrier looked on smiling.

  “You are satisfied,” said he.

  “Satisfied! I need but one thing more.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Permission to go to the city.”

  “You must ask Monsieur Tardieu, the surgeon-in-chief.”

  He went away laughing, while we ascended arm-in-arm, to ask permission of the surgeon-major, an old man, who had heard the “Vive l’Empereur!” and demanded gravely:

  “What is the matter?”

  Zimmer showed his cross and replied:

  “Pardon, major; but I am more than usually merry.”

  “I can easily believe you,” said Monsieur Tardieu; “you want a pass to the city?”

  “If you will be so good; for myself and my comrade, Joseph Bertha.”

  The surgeon had examined my wound the day before. He took out his portfolio and gave us passes. We left as proud as kings—Zimmer of his cross, I, of my letter.

  Downstairs in the great vestibule the porter cried:

  “Hold on there! Where are you going?”

  Zimmer showed him our passes, and we sallied forth, glad to breathe the free air, without, once more. A sentinel showed us the post-office, where I was to receive my hundred francs.

  Then, more gravely, for our joy had sunk deeper in our hearts, we reached the gate of Halle about two musket shots to the left, at the end of a long avenue of lindens. Each faubourg is separated from the old ramparts only by these avenues, and all around Leipzig passes another very wide one, also bordered with lindens. The ramparts are very old—such as we see at Saint Hippolyte, on the upper Rhine,—crumbling, grass-grown walls; at least such they are if the Germans have not repaired them since 1813.

  CHAPTER XVI

  How much were we to learn that day! At the hospital no one troubled himself about anything: when every morning you see fifty wounded come in, and when every evening you see as many depart upon the bier, you have the world before you in a narrow compass, and you think—

  “After us comes the end of the universe!”

  But without, these ideas change. When I caught the first glimpse of the street of Halle,—that old city with its shops, its gateways filled with merchandise, its old peaked roofs, its heavy wagons laden with bales, in a word, all its busy commercial life,—I was struck with wonder; I had never seen anything like it, and I said to myself:

  “This is indeed a mercantile city, such as they talk of—full of industrious people trying to make a living, or competence, or wealth; where every one seeks to rise, not to the injury of others, but by working—contriving night and day how to make his family prosperous; so that all profit by inventions and discoveries. Here is the happiness of peace in the midst of a fearful war!”

  But the poor wounded, wandering about with their arms in slings, or perhaps dragging a leg after them as they limped on crutches, were sad sights to see.

  I walked dreamily through the streets, led by Zimmer, who recognized every corner, and kept repeating:

  “There—there is the church of Saint Nicholas; that large building is the university: that on yonder is the Hôtel de Ville.”

  He seemed to remember every stone, having been there in 1807, before the battle of Friedland, and continued:

  “We are the same here as if we were in Metz, or Strasbourg, or any other city in France. The people wish us well. After the campaign of 1806, they used to do all they could for us. The citizens would take three or four of us at a time to dinner with them. They even gave us balls and called us the heroes of Jena. Go where we would they everywhere received us as benefactors of the country. We named their elector King of Saxony, and gave him a good slice of Poland.”

  Suddenly he stopped before a little, low door and cried:

  “Hold! Here is the Golden Sheep Brewery. The front is on the other street, but we can enter here. Come!”

  I followed him into a narrow, winding passage which led to an old court, surrounded by rubble walls, with little moss-covered galleries under the roof and a weathercock upon the peak, as in the Tanner’s Lane in Strasbourg. To the right was the brewery, and in a corner a great wheel, turned by an enormous dog, which pumped the beer to every story of the house.

  The clinking of glasses was heard coming from a room which opened on the Rue de Tilly, and under the windows of this was a deep cellar resounding with the cooper’s hammer. The sweet smell of the new March beer filled the air, and Zimmer, with a look of satisfaction, cried:

  “Yes, here I came six years ago with Ferré and stout Rousillon. How glad I am to see it all again, Josephel! It was six years ago. Poor Rousillon! he left his bones at Smolensk last year! and Ferré must now be at home in his village near Toul, for he lost his left leg at Wagram. How everything comes back as I think of it!”

  At the same time he pushed open the door, and we entered a lofty hall, full of smoke. I saw, through the thick, gray atmosphere, a long row of tables, surrounded by men drinking—the greater number in short coats and little caps, the remainder in the Saxon uniform. The first were students, young men of family who came to Leipzig to study law, medicine, and all that can be learned by emptying glasses and leading a jolly life, which they call Fuchs-commerce. They often fight among themselves with a sort of blade rounded at the point and only its tip sharpened, so that they slash their faces, as Zimmer told me, but life is never endangered. This shows the good sense of these students, who know very well that life is precious, and that one had better get five or six slashes, or even more, than lose it.

  Zimmer laughed as he told me these things; his love of glory blinded him; he said they might as well load cannon with roasted apples, as fight with swords rounded at the point.

  But we entered the hall, and we saw the oldest of the students—a tall withered-looking man with a red nose and long flaxen beard, stained with beer—standing upon a table, reading the gazette aloud which hung from his hand like an apron. He held the paper in one ha
nd, and in the other a long porcelain pipe. His comrades, with their long, light hair falling upon their shoulders, were listening with the deepest interest; and as we entered, they shouted, “Vaterland! Vaterland!”

  They touched glasses with the Saxon soldiers, while the tall student bent over to take up his glass, and the round, fat brewer cried:

  “Gesundheit! Gesundheit!”

  Scarcely had we made half a dozen steps toward them, when they became silent.

  “Come, come, comrades!” cried Zimmer, “don’t disturb yourselves. Go on reading. We do not object to hear the news.”

  But they did not seem inclined to profit by our invitation, and the reader descended from the table, folding up his paper, which he put in his pocket.

  “We are done,” said he, “we are done.”

  “Yes; we are done,” repeated the others, looking at each other with a peculiar expression.

  Two or three of the German soldiers rose and left the room, as if to take the air in the court. And the fat landlord said:

  “You do not perhaps know that the large hall is on the Rue de Tilly?”

  “Yes; we know it very well,” replied Zimmer; “but I like this little hall better. Here I used to come, long ago, with two old comrades, to empty a few glasses in honor of Jena and Auerstadt. I know this room of old.”

  “Ah! as you please, as you please,” returned the landlord. “Do you wish some March beer?”

  “Yes; two glasses and the gazette.”

  “Very good.”

  The glasses were handed us, and Zimmer, who observed nothing, tried to open a conversation with the students; but they excused themselves, and, one after another, went out. I saw that they hated us, but dared not show it.

  The gazette, which was from France, spoke of an armistice, after two new victories at Bautzen and Wurtschen. This armistice commenced on the sixth of June, and a conference was then being held at Prague, in Bohemia, to arrange on terms of peace. All this naturally gave me pleasure. I thought of again seeing home. But Zimmer, with his habit of thinking aloud, filled the hall with his reflections, and interrupted me at every line.