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

by Émile Erckmann

  “Yes, thank God, they are very good still.”

  “Well, sit down then and refresh yourself. It is hard work to be always walking.”

  “Yes, indeed, Madame Bertha, one earns the thirty sous that one gets.”

  I placed the chairs.

  “Sit down, Anna-Marie, and give me your stick.”

  “Well, I must listen to you, I suppose, but I cannot stay long, I will only take a mouthful and then go.”

  “Yes, yes, that is settled, Anna-Marie,” said Mr. Goulden; “we will not hinder you long.”

  We sat down, and Mr. Goulden served us at once. Catherine looked at me and smiled, and I said to myself, “Women are more ingenious than we,” and I was very happy. What more could a man wish for than to have a wife with sense and spirit? It is a real treasure, and I have often seen that men are happy when they allow themselves to be guided by such a woman. You can easily believe that when once seated at the table near the fire, instead of being out in the mud, with the sharp November wind whistling in her thin skirts, she no longer thought of her journey. She was a good creature sixty years old, who still supported two children of her son who died some years before. To travel round the country at that age, with the sun and rain and snow on your back, to sleep in barns and stables on straw, and three-quarters of the time have only potatoes to eat and not enough of them, does not make one despise a plate of good hot soup, a piece of smoked bacon and cabbage, with two or three glasses of wine to warm the heart. No, you must look at things as they are, the life of these poor people is very hard, every one would do well to try a pilgrimage on his own account.

  Anna-Marie understood the difference between being at table and on the road, she ate with a good appetite, and she took real pleasure in telling us what she had seen during her last round.

  “Yes,” said she, “everything is going on well now. All the processions and expiations which you have seen are nothing, they will grow larger and more imposing from day to day. And you know there are missionaries coming among us, as they used to do among the savages, to convert us. They are coming from Mr. de Forbin-Janson and Mr. de Ranzan, because the corruption of the times is so great. And the convents are to be rebuilt, and the gates along the roads restored, as they were before the twenty-five years’ rebellion. And when the pilgrims arrive at the convents, they will only have to ring and they will be admitted at once, when the brothers who serve, will bring them porringers of rich soup with meat on ordinary days, and vegetable soup with fish on Fridays and Saturdays and during Lent. In that way piety will increase, and everybody will make pilgrimages. But the pious women of Bischoffsheim say, that only those who have been pilgrims from father to son, like us, ought to go; that each one ought to attend to his work, that the peasants should belong to the soil, and that the lords should have their chateaux again, and govern them. I heard this with my own ears from these pious women, who are to have their properties again because they have returned from exile, and that they must have their estates in order to build their chapels is very certain. Oh! if that were only done now, so I could profit by it in my old age! I have fasted long enough, and my little grandchildren also. I would take them with me, and the priests would teach them, and when I die I should have the consolation of seeing them in a good way.”

  On hearing her recount all these things so contrary to reason we were much moved, for she wept as she imagined her little girls begging at the door of the convent and the brother bringing them soup.

  “And you know, too, that Mr. de Ranzan and the Reverend Father Tarin want the chateaux rebuilt, and the woods and meadows and fields given up to the nobles, and in the meantime that the ponds are to be put in good condition, because they belong to the reverend fathers, who have no time to plough or sow or reap. Everything must come to them of itself.”

  “But tell us, Anna-Marie, is all this quite certain? I can hardly believe that such great happiness is in store for us.”

  “It is quite certain, Mr. Goulden. The Count d’Artois wishes to secure his salvation, and in order to do that everything must be set in order. Mons. le Vicar Antoine of Marienthal said the same things last week. They come from above,—these things,—and the hearts of the people must be accustomed to them by the sermons and expiations. Those who will not submit, like the Jews and Lutherans, will be forced to do so, and the Jacobins”—in speaking of the Jacobins Anna-Marie looked suddenly at Mr. Goulden and blushed up to her ears, for he was smiling.

  But she recovered herself, and went on:

  “Among the Jacobins there are some very good people, but the poor must live. The Jacobins have taken the property of the poor and that is not right.”

  “When and where have they taken the property of the poor?”

  “Listen, Mr. Goulden, the monks and the Capuchins had the estates of the poor, and the Jacobins have divided them amongst themselves.”

  “Ah! I understand, I understand, the monks and Capuchins had your property, Anna-Marie; I never should have guessed that.”

  Mr. Goulden was all the time in good-humor, and Anna-Marie said:

  “We shall be in accord at last.”

  “Oh! yes, we are, we are,” said he pleasantly.

  I listened without saying anything, as I was naturally curious to hear what was coming. It was easy to see that this was what she had heard on her last journey.

  She said also that miracles were coming again and that Saint Quirin, Saint Odille, and the others would not work miracles under the usurper, but that they had commenced already; that the little black St. John at Kortzeroth, on seeing the ancient prior return had shed tears.

  “Yes, yes, I understand,” said Mr. Goulden, “that does not astonish me in the least, after all these processions and atonements the saints must work miracles; and it is natural, Anna-Marie, quite natural.”

  “Without doubt, Mr. Goulden, and when we see miracles, faith will return. That is clear, that is certain.”

  The dinner was finished, and Anna-Marie seeing that nothing more was coming, remembered that she was late, and exclaimed:

  “Oh! Lord, that is one o’clock striking. The others must be near Ercheviller; now I must leave you.”

  She rose and took her stick with a very important air.

  “Well! bon voyage, Anna-Marie, don’t make us wait so long next time.”

  “Ah! Mr. Goulden, if I do not sit every day at your table it is not my fault.”

  She laughed, and as she took up her bundle she said:

  “Well, good-by, and for the kindness you have shown me I will pray the blessed Saint Quirin to send you a fine fat boy as fresh and rosy as a lady-apple. That is the best thing, Madame Bertha, that an old woman like me can do for you.”

  On hearing these good wishes, I said, “That old woman is a good soul. There is nothing I so much wish for in the world. May God hear her prayer!” I was touched by that good wish.

  She went downstairs, and as she shut the door, Catherine began to laugh, and said:

  “She emptied her budget this time.”

  “Yes, my children,” replied Mr. Goulden, who was quite grave, “that is what we may call human ignorance. You would believe that poor creature had invented all that, but she has picked it up right and left, it is word for word what those émigrés think, and what they repeat every day in their journals, and what the preachers say every day openly in all the churches. Louis XVIII. troubles them, he has too much good sense for them, but the real king is Monseigneur the Duke d’Artois, who wants to secure his salvation, and in order that this may be done everything must be put back where it was before the ‘rebellion of twenty-five years,’ and all the national property must be given up to its ancient owners, and the nobles must have their rights and privileges as in 1788; they must occupy all the grades of the army, and the Catholic religion must be the only religion in the state. The Sabbath and fête days must be observed, and heretics driven from all the offices, and the priests alone have the right to instruct the children of the people, and
this great and terrible country, which carried its ideas of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity everywhere by means of its good sense and its victories, and which never would have been vanquished if the Emperor had not made an alliance with the kings at Tilsit, this nation, which in a few years produced so many more great captains and orators, learned men and geniuses of all kinds, than the noble races produced in a thousand years, must surrender everything and go back to tilling the earth, while the others, who are not one in a thousand, will go on from father to son, taking everything and gladdening their hearts at the expense of the people! Oh! no doubt the fields and meadows and ponds will be given up as Anna-Marie said, and that the convents will be rebuilt in order to please Mons. le Comte d’Artois and help him to gain his salvation—that is the least the country could do for so great a prince!”

  Then Father Goulden, joining his hands, looked upward saying:

  “Lord God, Lord God, who hast wrought so many miracles by the little black St. John of Kortzeroth, if thou wouldst permit even a single ray of reason to enter the heads of Monseigneur and his friends, I believe it would be more beautiful than the tears of the little saint! And that other one on his island, with his clear eyes like the sparrow-hawk who pretends to sleep as he watches the unconscious geese in a pool,—O Lord, a few strokes of his wing and he is upon them, the birds may escape, while we shall have all Europe at our heels again!”

  He said all this very gravely, and I looked at Catherine to know whether I should laugh or cry.

  Suddenly he sat down, saying:

  “Come! Joseph, this is not at all cheerful, but what can we do? It is time to be at work. Look, and see what is the matter with Mr. Jacob’s watch.”

  Catherine took off the cloth, and each one went to his work.

  CHAPTER IX

  It was winter. Rain fell constantly, mingled with snow. There were no gutters, and the wind blew the rain as it fell from the tiles quite into the middle of the street. We could hear it pattering all day while Catherine was running about, watching the fire, and lifting the covers of the saucepans, and sometimes singing quietly to herself as she sat down to her spinning. Father Goulden and I were so accustomed to this kind of life that we worked on without thinking. We troubled ourselves about nothing, the table was laid and the dinner served exactly on the stroke of noon. At night Mr. Goulden went out after supper to read the gazette at Hoffman’s, with his old cloak wrapped closely round his shoulders and his big fox-skin cap pulled down over his neck.

  But in spite of that, often when he came in at ten o’clock, after we had gone to bed, we heard him cough; he had dampened his feet. Then Catherine would say, “He is coughing again, he thinks he is as young as he was at twenty,” and in the morning she did not hesitate to reproach him.

  “Monsieur Goulden,” she would say, “you are not reasonable; you have an ugly cold, and yet you go out every evening.”

  “Ah! my child, what would you have? I have got the habit of reading the gazette, and it is stronger than I. I want to know what Benjamin Constant and the rest of them say, it is like a second life to me and I often think ‘they ought to have spoken further of such or such a thing. If Melchior Goulden had been there he would have opposed this or that, and it would not have failed to produce a great effect.’”

  Then he would laugh and shake his head and say:

  “Every one thinks he has more wit and good sense than the others, but Benjamin Constant always pleases me.”

  We could say nothing more, his desire to read the gazette was so great. One day Catherine said to him:

  “If you wish to hear the news, that is no reason why you should make yourself sick, you have only to do as the old carpenter Carabin does, he arranged last week with Father Hoffman, and he sends him the journal every night at seven o’clock, after the others have read it, for which he pays him three francs a month. In this way, without any trouble to himself, Carabin knows everything that goes on, and his wife, old Bevel, also; they sit by the fire and talk about all these things and discuss them together, and that is what you should do.”

  “Ah! Catherine, that is an excellent idea, but—the three francs?”

  “The three francs are nothing,” said I, “the principal thing is not to be sick, you cough very badly and that cannot go on.”

  These words, far from offending, pleased him, as they proved our affection for him and that he ought to listen to us.

  “Very well! we will try to arrange it as you wish, and the rather as the café is filled with half-pay officers from morning till night, and they pass the journals from one to the other so that sometimes we must wait two hours before we can catch one. Yes, Catherine is right.”

  He went that very day to see Father Hoffman, so that after that, Michel, one of the waiters at the café brought us the gazette every night at seven o’clock, just as we rose from the table. We were happy always when we heard him coming up the stairs, and we would say, “There comes the gazette.”

  Catherine would hurry off the cloth and I would put a big bullet of wood in the stove, and Mr. Goulden would draw his spectacles from their case, and while Catherine spun and I smoked my pipe like an old soldier, and watched the blaze as it danced in the stove, he would read us the news from Paris.

  You cannot imagine the happiness and satisfaction we had in hearing Benjamin Constant and two or three others maintain the same opinions which we held ourselves. Sometimes Mr. Goulden was forced to stop to wipe his spectacles, and then Catherine would exclaim:

  “How well these people talk. They are men of good sense. Yes, what they say is right—it is the simple truth.”

  And we all approved it. Sometimes Father Goulden thought that they ought to have spoken of this or that a little more, but that the rest was all very well. Then he would go on with his reading, which lasted till ten o’clock, and then we all went to bed, reflecting on what we had just heard. Outside the wind blew, as it only can blow at Pfalzbourg, and vanes creaked as they turned, and the rain beat against the walls, while we enjoyed the warmth and comfort, and thanked God till sleep came, and we forgot everything. Ah! how happily we sleep with peace in our souls, and when we have strength and health, and the love and respect of those whom we love.

  Days, weeks, and months went by, and we became, after a manner, politicians, and when the ministers were going to speak, we thought:

  “Now the beggars want to deceive us! the miserable race! they ought to be driven out, every one of them!”

  Catherine above all could not endure them, and when Mother Grédel came and talked as before about our good King, Louis XVIII., we allowed her to talk out of respect, but we pitied her for being so blind to the real interests of the country.

  It must be remembered, too, that these émigrés, ministers, and princes, conducted themselves in the most insolent manner possible toward us. If the Count d’Artois and his sons had put themselves at the head of the Vendéeans and Bretons, and marched on Paris and had been victorious, they would have had reason to say, “We are masters, and will make laws for you.” But to be driven out at first, and to be brought back by the Prussians and the Russians, and then to come and humiliate us, that was contemptible, and the older I grow the more I am confirmed in that idea—it was shameful!

  Zébédé came to see us from time to time, and he knew all that was in the gazette. It was from us that he first learned that the young émigrés had driven General Vandamme from the presence of the King. This old soldier, who had just returned from a Russian prison, and whom all the army respected in spite of his misfortune at Kulm, they conducted from the royal presence, and told him that was not his place. Vandamme had been colonel of a regiment at Pfalzbourg, and you cannot imagine the indignation of the people at this news.

  And it was Zébédé who told us, that processes had been made out against the generals on half-pay, and that their letters were opened at the post, that they might appear like traitors. He told us a little afterward that they were going to send away the daughters of th
e old officers who were at the school of St. Denis and give them a pension of two hundred francs; and later still, that the émigrés alone would have the right to put their sons in the schools at “St. Cyr” and “la Flèche” to be educated as officers, while the people’s sons would remain soldiers at five centimes (one cent) a day for centuries to come.

  The gazettes told the same stories, but Zébédé knew a great many other details—the soldiers knew everything.

  I could not describe Zébédé’s face to you as he sat behind the stove, with the end of his black pipe between his teeth, recounting all these misfortunes. His great nose would turn pale, and the muscles would twitch around the corners of his light gray eyes, and he would pretend to laugh from time to time, and murmur, “It moves, it moves.”

  “And what do the other soldiers think of all this?” said Father Goulden.

  “Ha! they think it is pretty well when they have given their blood to France for twenty years, when they have made ten, fifteen, and twenty campaigns, and wear three chevrons, and are riddled with wounds, to hear that their old chiefs are driven from their posts, their daughters turned out of the schools, and that the sons of those people are to be their officers forever—that delights them, Father Goulden!” and his face quivered even to his ears as he said this.

  “That is terrible, certainly,” said Father Goulden, “but discipline is always discipline there. The marshals obey the ministers, and the officers the marshals, and the soldiers the officers.”

  “You are right,” said Zébédé, “but there, they are beating the assembly.”

  And he shook hands and hurried off to the barracks.

  The winter passed in this way, while the indignation increased every day. The city was full of officers on half-pay, who dared not remain in Paris,—lieutenants, captains, commandants, and colonels of infantry and cavalry,—men who lived on a crust of bread and a glass of wine a day, and who were the more miserable because they were forced to keep up an appearance—think of such men with their hollow cheeks and their hair closely cropped, with sparkling eyes and their big mustaches and their old uniform cloaks, of which they had been forced to change the buttons, see them promenading by threes and sixes and tens on the square, with their sword-canes at their button-holes, and their three-cornered hats so old and worn, though still well brushed; you could not help thinking that they had not one quarter enough to eat.