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

by Émile Erckmann

  From time to time I heard some one behind me laughing and jeering at the journal. On turning round, I saw that it was Professor Burguet and two or three other noted men who had been taken after the “Hundred days,” and had been forced to remain at Bourges because, as Father Goulden said, they had too much spirit. That shows plainly that it is better to keep still at such times, if one does not wish to fight on either side; for words are of no use, but to get us into difficulty.

  But there was something worse still toward the end, when the commandant commenced to read the decrees.

  The first indicated the movement of the troops, and the second, commanded all Frenchmen to fall upon Bonaparte, to arrest and deliver him dead or alive, because he had put himself out of the pale of law.

  At that moment the commandant, who had until then only laughed when he read the name of Bonaparte, and whose bony face had only trembled a little as it was lighted up by the lamp—at that moment his aspect changed completely, I never saw anything more terrible; his face contracted, fold upon fold, his little eyes blazed like those of a cat, and his mustaches and whiskers stood on end; he seized the gazette and tore it into a thousand pieces, and then pale as death he raised himself to his full height, extended his long arms, and shouted in a voice so loud that it made our flesh creep, Vive l’Empereur! Immediately all the half-pay officers raised their three-cornered hats, some in their hands and some on the end of their sword-canes, and repeated with one voice, Vive l’Empereur!

  You would have thought the roof was coming down. I felt just as if some one had thrown cold water down my back. I said to myself, “It is all over now. What is the use in preaching peace to such people?”

  Outside among the groups of citizens, the soldiers of the post repeated the cry, Vive l’Empereur. And as I looked in great anxiety to see what the gendarmes would do, they retired without saying a word, being old soldiers also.

  But it was not yet over. As the commandant was getting down from the table, an officer suggested that they should carry him in triumph. They seized him by the legs, and forcing the crowd aside, carried him around the room, screaming like madmen, Vive l’Empereur. He was so affected by the honor shown him by his comrades and by hearing them shout what he so much loved to hear, that he sat there with his long hairy hands on their shoulders, and his head above their great hats, and wept. No one would have believed that such a face could weep; that alone was sufficient to upset you and make you tremble. He said not a word; his eyes were closed and the tears ran down his nose and his long mustaches. I was looking on with all my eyes, as you can imagine, when Father Goulden got down from his chair and pulled me by the arm, saying: “Joseph, let us go, it is time.”

  Behind us the hall was already empty. Everybody had hurried out by the brewer Klein’s alley for fear of being mixed up in a disagreeable affair, and we went that way also.

  As we crossed the square, Father Goulden said, “There is danger that matters will take a bad turn. To-morrow the gendarmerie may commence to act, the Commandant Margarot and the others have not the air of men who will allow themselves to be arrested. The soldiers of the third battalion will take their part, if they have not already. The city is in their power.”

  He was talking to himself, and I thought as he did.

  When we reached home, Catherine was waiting anxiously for us in the workshop. We told her all that had happened. The table was set, but nobody was inclined to eat. Mr. Goulden drank a glass of wine, and then as he took off his shoes he said to us:

  “My children, after what we have just heard we may be sure that the Emperor will reach Paris; the soldiers wish it, and the peasants desire it, and if he has considered well since he has been on his island and will give up his ideas about war, and will respect the treaties, the bourgeoise will ask nothing better, especially if we have a good Constitution that will guarantee to everyone his liberty, which is the best of all good things. Let us wish it for ourselves and for him. Good-night.”

  CHAPTER XI

  The next day was Friday and market day, and there was nothing talked of in the whole town but the great news. Great numbers of peasants from Alsace and Lorraine came filing into town on their carts, some in blouses, some in their waistcoats, some in three-cornered hats, and some in their cotton caps, under pretence of selling their grain, their barley and oats, but in reality to find out what was going on.

  You could hear nothing but “Get up, Fox! gee ho, Gray!” and the rolling of the wheels and the cracking of the whips. And the women were not behindhand, they arrived from the Houpe, from Dagsberg, Ercheviller, and Baraques, with their scanty skirts and with great baskets on their heads, striding and hurrying along. Everybody passed under our windows, and Mr. Goulden said, “What an excitement there is, what a rush! It is easy to see that there is another spirit in the land. Nobody is marching now with candles in his hand and a surplice on his back.”

  He seemed to be satisfied, and that proved how much all these ceremonies had annoyed him. At last about eight o’clock it was necessary to set about our work again, and Catherine went out as usual to buy our butter and eggs and vegetables for the week. At ten o’clock she came back again.

  “Oh! Heavens!” said she, “everything is topsy-turvy.” And then she related how the half-pay officers were promenading with their sword-canes, with the Commandant Margarot in their midst, that on the square, in the market, in the church, and around the stands, everywhere the peasants and citizens were shaking hands and taking snuff together, and saying, “Ah! now trade is brisk again.”

  And she told us also that during the night proclamations had been posted up at the town-house and on the three doors of the church, and even against the pillars of the market, but that the gendarmes had torn them down early in the morning, in fact, that everything was in commotion. Father Goulden had risen from the counter in order to listen to her, and I turned round on my chair and thought:

  “All that is good, very good, but at this rate your leave of absence will soon be recalled. Everything is moving and you must also move, Joseph! Instead of remaining here quietly with your wife, you will have to take your cartridge-box and knapsack and musket and two packages of cartridges on your back.”

  As I looked at Catherine, who did not think of the bad side of affairs, Weissenfels, Lutzen, and Leipzig passed through my mind, and I was quite melancholy. While we were all so sober, the door opened and Aunt Grédel walked in. At first you would have thought she was quite composed.

  “Good-morning, Mr. Goulden; good-morning, my children,” said she, putting down her basket behind the stove.

  “Are you well too, Mother Grédel?” asked Mr. Goulden.

  “Ah! well! well!” said she.

  I saw that she had set her teeth, and that two red spots burned on her cheeks. She crammed her hair which was hanging down over her ears, with a single thrust into her cap, and looked at us one after the other with her gray eyes to see what we thought, and then she commenced.

  “It seems that the rascal has escaped from his island.”

  “Of what rascal do you speak?” asked Mr. Goulden calmly.

  “Oh! you know very well of whom I speak, I speak of your Bonaparte.”

  Mr. Goulden, seeing her anger, turned round to his counter to avoid a dispute. He seemed to be examining a watch, and I followed his example.

  “Yes,” said she, speaking still louder, “his evil deeds are commencing again; just as we thought all was finished! and he comes back again worse than ever! What a pest!”

  I could hear her voice tremble. Mr. Goulden kept on with his work, and asked, without turning round, “Whose fault is it, Mother Grédel? Do you think that those processions, atonements, and the sermons in regard to the national domains and the ‘rebellion of twenty-five years,’ these continual menaces of establishing the old order of things, the order to close the shops during the service, do you think all that could continue? Did any one, let me ask, ever see since the world began, anything more calculated to rouse a n
ation against those who attempt to degrade it! You would have said that Bonaparte himself had whispered in the ears of those Bourbons, all the stupidities which would be likely to disgust the people. Tell me, might we not expect just what has come to pass?”

  He kept on looking at the watch through his glass in order to keep calm. While he was speaking I had looked at Aunt Grédel out of the corner of my eye. She had changed color two or three times, and Catherine, who was behind us near the stove, made signs to her not to make trouble in our house, but the wilful woman disregarded all signs.

  “You, too, are satisfied then, are you? you change from one day to another like the rest of them, you always bring out your republic when it suits you.”

  On hearing this, Mr. Goulden coughed softly, as if he had something in his throat, and for half a minute he seemed to be considering, while aunt looked on. He recovered himself at last and said slowly: “You are wrong, Madame Grédel, to reproach me, for if I had wished to change I should have begun sooner. Instead of being a clock-maker in Pfalzbourg I should have been a colonel or a general, like the others, but I always have been, I am now, and shall remain till I die, for the Republic and the Rights of Man.”

  Then he turned suddenly round, and looking at aunt from head to foot, and raising his voice; he went on: “And that is the reason why I like Bonaparte better than the Comte d’Artois, the émigrés, the missionaries, and the workers of miracles; at least he is forced to keep something of the Revolution, he is forced to respect the national domain, to guarantee to every one his property, his rank, and everything he has acquired under the new laws. Without that, what right would he have to be Emperor? If he had not maintained equality why should the nation wish to have him? The others, on the contrary, have attacked everything; they want to destroy everything that we have done. Now you understand why I like him better than the others.

  “Ah!” said Mother Grédel, “that is new!” and she laughed contemptuously. I would have given anything if she had been at Quatre Vents.

  “There was a time when you talked otherwise, when he re-established the bishops and the archbishops and the cardinals, when he had himself crowned by the Pope, and consecrated with oil from the holy ampoule,8 when he recalled the émigrés, when he gave up the chateaux and forests to the great families, when he made princes and dukes and barons by the dozen; how many times have I heard you say that all that was atrocious, that he had betrayed the Revolution, that you would have preferred the Bourbons, because they did not know any other way, that they were like blackbirds, who only whistle one tune because they know no other, and because they think it the most beautiful air in the world. While he, the result of the Revolution, whose father had only a few dozens of goats on the mountains of Corsica, should have known that all men are equal, that courage and genius alone elevate them above their fellows,—that he should have despised all those old notions, and that he should have made war only to defend the new rights, the new ideas, which are just and which nothing can arrest: did you not say that, when you were talking with old Colin in the rear of our garden, for fear of being arrested—did you not say that between yourselves and before me?”

  Father Goulden had grown quite pale. He looked down at his feet and turned his snuff-box round and round in his fingers as if he were thinking, and I saw his emotion in his face.

  “Yes, I said it,” he replied, “and I think so still—you have a good memory, Mother Grédel. It is true that for ten years Colin and I have been obliged to hide ourselves if we spoke of events that will certainly be accomplished, and it is the despotism of one man born among us, whom we have sustained with our own blood, which compelled us to do that. But to-day everything is changed. The man, to whom you cannot deny genius, has seen his sycophants abandon and betray him; he has seen that his strength lies in the people, and that those alliances of which he had the weakness to be so proud, were the cause of his ruin. He has come now to rid us of the others, and I am glad.”

  “Then you have no faith in yourself, eh? Have you any need of him?” exclaimed Aunt Grédel. “If the processions annoyed you, and if you were, as you say, ‘the people,’ why do you need him?”

  Father Goulden smiled, and said, “If everybody had the courage to follow his own conscience, and if so many persons who joined the processions had not done so from vanity or to show their fine clothes, and if others had not joined from interest, from the hope of getting a good office, or to obtain permits, then Madame Grédel you would be right, and we should not have needed Bonaparte to overturn all that, and you would have seen that three-quarters of the people had common-sense, and perhaps even the Comte d’Artois himself would have cried, Hold! But as hypocrisy and interest hide and obscure everything and make night out of the broad day, unhappily we must have thunder-bolts to make us see clearly. It is you, and those who are like you, who have caused those who have never changed their opinions, to rejoice when fever takes the place of colic.”

  Father Goulden rose and walked up and down in great agitation, and as Aunt Grédel was going on again, he took his cap and went out, saying:

  “I have given you my opinions. Now talk to Joseph; he thinks you are always right.”

  As soon as he had gone, Mother Grédel cried out:

  “He is an old fool, and he has been, always! Now, as for you, if you do not go to Switzerland, I warn you, you will be obliged to go, God knows where. But we will talk about that another time, the principal thing is to warn you. We will wait and see what happens; perhaps Bonaparte will be arrested, but if he reaches Paris, we will go somewhere else.”

  She embraced us and took her basket and went away. A few minutes afterward, Father Goulden came in and we sat down to our work and said no more about these things. We were very sober, and at night I was more than ever surprised, when Catherine said:

  “We will always listen to Mr. Goulden, he is right and will give us good counsel.”

  On hearing that, I thought that she agreed with Father Goulden because they read the gazette together. That gazette always says what just pleases them, but that does not prevent it being very terrible if we are obliged to take our guns and knapsacks again, and it would be better to be in Switzerland, either at Geneva, or at Father Rulle’s manufactory or at Chaux-de-Fonds, than at Leipzig, and those other places. I did not wish to contradict Catherine, but her remarks annoyed me greatly.

  CHAPTER XII

  From that moment there was confusion everywhere, the half-pay officers shouted, “Vive l’Empereur.” The commandant gave orders to arrest them, but the battalion did the same thing, and the gendarmes seemed to be deaf. Nobody was at work; the tax-gatherers and overseers, the mayor and his counsellors, grew gray with uncertainty, not knowing on which foot they should dance. Nobody dared to come out for Bonaparte, or for Louis XVIII., except the slaters and masons and knife-grinders, who could not lose their offices and who wished for nothing better than to see others in their places. With their hatchets stuck in their leather belts and a bag of chips on their shoulders, they did not hesitate to shout, “Down with the émigrés,” they laughed at the troubles, which increased visibly.

  One day the gazette said, the usurper is at Grenoble, the next he is at Lyons, the next at Mâcon, and the next at Auxerre, and so on. Father Goulden was in good-humor as he read the news at night, and he would say:

  “They can see now that the Frenchmen are for the Revolution, and that the others cannot hold out. Everybody says, ‘Down with the émigrés.’ What a lesson for those who can see clearly! Those Bourbons wanted to make us all Vendéeans, they ought to rejoice that they have succeeded so well.”

  But one thing troubled him still, that was the great battle which was announced between Ney and Napoleon.

  “Although Ney has kissed the hand of the King, yet he is an old soldier, and I will never believe that he will fight against the will of the people. No, it is not possible, he will remember the old cooper of Saar-Louis, who would break his head with his hammer, if he were still living, o
n learning that Michel had betrayed the country in order to please the King.”

  That was what Mr. Goulden said, but that did not prevent people from being uneasy, when suddenly the news arrived that he had followed the example of the army and the bourgeoisie and all those who wished to be rid of the atonements, and that he had rallied with them. Then there was greater confidence, but still prudent men were silent in view of what might happen.

  On the 21st of March, between five and six in the evening, Mr. Goulden and I were at work; it had begun to grow dark, and Catherine was lighting the lamp, a gentle rain was falling on the panes, when Theodore Roeber, who had charge of the telegraph, passed under our windows, riding a big dapple-gray horse at the top of his speed, his blouse filled out by the air, he went so fast, and he was holding his great felt hat on with one hand, while he kept striking his horse with a whip which he held in the other, though he was galloping like the wind. Father Goulden wiped the glass and leaned over to see better, and said:

  “That is Roeber, who is coming from the telegraph, some great news has arrived.” His pale cheeks reddened, and I felt my heart beat violently. Catherine came and placed the lamp near us, and I opened the window to close the shutter. That took me some moments, as I was obliged to disarrange the glasses on the work-table, and take down the watches before I could do it. Mr. Goulden seemed lost in thought. Just as I had fastened the window, we heard the assembly beat from both sides of the city at once, from the bastion of the Mittelbronn and from Bigelberg, the echoes from the ramparts and from the target valley responded, and a dull rumbling filled the air, Mr. Goulden rose, saying:

  “The matter is decided at last,” in a tone which made me shudder. “Either they are fighting near Paris, or the Emperor is in his old palace as he was in 1809.”

  Catherine ran for his cloak, for she saw plainly he was going out in spite of the rain. He was speaking with his great gray eyes wide open, and took no notice as she slipped on the sleeves, and as he went out Catherine touched me on the shoulder—I was still sitting—and said: