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

by Émile Erckmann

  And a thousand cries of “Vive l’Empereur!” filled the air.

  I trembled to the ends of my hair; my spirits of wine were still on the road; I considered myself a ruined man.

  The immediate distribution of cartridges, and the order to the battalion to go and forage for provisions, and bring in cattle from the surrounding villages for the supply of the city, prevented me from thinking of my misfortune.

  I had also to think of my own life, for, in receiving such an order, we supposed of course that the peasants would resist, and it is abominable to have to fight the people you are robbing.

  I was very pale as I thought of all this.

  But when Commandant Thomas cried out, “Charge!” and I tore off my first cartridge, and put it in the barrel, and, instead of hearing the ramrod I felt a ball at the bottom!—when they ordered us: “By file—left! left! forward! quick step! march!” and we set out for the barracks of the Bois-de-Chênes, while the first battalion went on to Quatre-Vents and Bichelberg, the second to Wechern and Metting; when I thought that we were going to seize and carry away everything, and that the court-martial was at the mayoralty to pass sentence upon those who did not do their duty;—all these new and terrible things completely upset me. I was troubled as I saw the village in the distance, and pictured to myself beforehand the cries of the women and children.

  You see, Fritz, to take from the poor peasant all his living at the beginning of winter; to take from him his cow, his goats, his pigs, everything in short, it is dreadful! and my own misfortune made me feel more for that of others.

  And then, as we marched, I thought of my daughter Zeffen, and Baruch, and their children, and I exclaimed to myself:

  “Mercy on us! if the enemy comes, what will they do in an exposed town like Saverne? They will lose everything. We may be beggared any day.”

  These thoughts took away my breath, and in the midst of them I saw some peasants, who, from their little windows, watched our approach over the fields and along their street, without stirring. They did not know what we were coming for.

  Six mounted soldiers preceded us; Commandant Thomas ordered them to pass to the right and left of the barracks, to prevent the peasants from driving their cattle into the woods, when they had found out that we had come to rob them.

  They set off on a gallop.

  We came to the first house, where there is the stone crucifix. We heard the order:

  “Halt!”

  Then thirty men were detached to act as sentinels in the little streets, and I was among the number, which I liked, for I preferred being on duty to going into their stables and barns.

  As we filed through the principal street the peasants asked us:

  “What is going on? Have they been cutting wood? Have they been making arrests?” and such like questions. But we did not answer them, and hastened on.

  Monborne placed me in the third street to the right, near the large house of Father Franz, who raised bees on the slope of the valley behind his house. We heard the sheep bleating and the cattle lowing; that wretch of a Monborne said, winking at me:

  “It will be jolly! We will make the Baraquois open their eyes.”

  He had no mercy in him. He said to me:

  “Moses, thou must stay there. If any one tries to pass, cross your bayonet. If any one resists, prick him well and then fire. The law must be supported by force.”

  I don’t know where the cobbler picked up that expression; but he left me in the street, between two fences white with frost, and went on his way with the rest of the guard.

  I waited there nearly twenty minutes, considering what I should do if the peasants tried to save their property, and thinking it would be much better to fire upon the cattle than upon their owners.

  I was much perplexed and was very cold, when I heard a great shouting; at the same time the drum began to beat. Some men went into the stables and drove the cattle. The Baraquins swore and wept; some tried to defend themselves. Commandant Thomas cried out:

  “To the square! Drive them to the square!”

  Some cows escaped through the fences, and you can’t imagine what a tumult there was. I congratulated myself that I was not in the midst of this pillage. But this did not last long, for suddenly a herd of goats, driven by two old women, filed down the street on their way to the valley.

  Then I had to stop them with my bayonet and call out:

  “Halt!”

  One of the women, Mother Migneron, knew me; she had a pitchfork, and was very pale.

  “Let me pass, Moses,” said she.

  I saw that she was coming slowly toward me, meaning to throw me down with her pitchfork. The other tried to drive the goats into a little garden at the side, but the slats were too near together, and the fence too high.

  I should have liked to let them go by, and deny having seen anything; but, unfortunately, Lieutenant Rollet came up and called out:

  “Attention!”

  And two men of the company followed: Mâcry and Schweyer, the brewer.

  Old Migneron, seeing me cross the bayonet, began to grind her teeth, saying:

  “Ah! wretch of a Jew, thou’lt pay for this!”

  She was so angry that she had no fear of my musket, and three times she tried to thrust her pitchfork into me; then I found the benefit of my drilling, for I parried all her attacks.

  Two goats escaped between my legs; the rest were taken. The soldiers pushed back the old women, broke their pitchforks, and finally regained the chief street, which was full of cattle, lowing and kicking.

  Old Migneron sat down on the fence and tore her hair.

  Just then two cows came along, their tails in the air, leaping over the fences and upsetting everything, the baskets of bees and their old keeper. Fortunately, as it was winter, the bees remained as if dead in their baskets, or else I believe they would have routed our whole battalion.

  The horn of the hardier* sounded in the village. He had been summoned in the name of the law. This old hardier, Nickel, passed along the street, and the animals became quiet, and could be put in some order. I saw the procession go along the street; the oxen and cows in front, then the goats, and the pigs behind.

  * Herdsman.

  The Baraquins followed, flinging stones and throwing sticks. I saw that, if I should be forgotten, these wretches would fall upon me, and I should be murdered; but Sergeant Monborne, with other comrades, came and relieved me. They all laughed and said:

  “We have shaved them well! There is not a goat left at the Barracks; we have taken everything at one haul.”

  We hastened to rejoin the column, which marched in two lines at the right and left of the road, the cattle in the middle, our company behind, and Nickel, with Commandant Thomas, in front. This formed a file of at least three hundred paces. On every animal a bundle of hay had been tied for fodder.

  In this way we passed slowly into the cemetery lane.

  Upon the glacis we halted, and tied up the animals, and the order came to take them down into the fosses behind the arsenal.

  We were the first that returned; we had seized thirty oxen, forty-five cows, a quantity of goats and pigs, and some sheep.

  All day long the companies were coming back with their booty, so that the fosses were filled with cattle, which remained in the open air. Then the governor said that the garrison had provisions for six months, and every inhabitant must prove that he had enough to last as long, and that domiciliary visits were to begin.

  We broke ranks before the city hall. I was going up the main street, my gun on my shoulder, when some one called me:

  “Hey! Father Moses!”

  I turned and saw our sergeant.

  “Well,” said he, laughing, “you have made your first attack; you have brought us back some provisions. Well and good!”

  “Yes, sergeant, but it is very sad!”

  “What, sad? Thirty oxen, forty-five cows, some pigs and goats—it is magnificent!”

  “To be sure, but if you had he
ard the cries of these poor people, if you had seen them!”

  “Bah! bah!” said he. “Primo, Father Moses, soldiers must live; men must have their rations if they are going to fight. I have often seen these things done in Germany and Spain and Italy! Peasants are selfish; they want to keep their own; they do not regard the honor of the flag; that is trash! In some respects they would be worse than townspeople, if we were foolish enough to listen to them; we must be strict.”

  “We have been, sergeant,” I replied; “but if I had been master, we should not have robbed these poor wretches; they are in a pitiable condition enough already.”

  “You are too compassionate, Father Moses, and you think that others are like yourself. But we must remember that peasants, citizens, civilians, live only by the soldiers, and have all the profit without wanting to pay any of the cost. If we followed your advice we should die of hunger in this little town; our peasants would support the Russians, the Austrians, and Bavarians at our expense. This pack of scoundrels would be having a good time from morning to night, and the rest of us would be as poor as church-mice. That would not do—there is no sense in it!”

  He laughed aloud. We had now come into our passage, and I went upstairs.

  “Is it thou, Moses?” asked Sorlé in the darkness, for it was nightfall.

  “Yes, the sergeant and I.”

  “Ah, good!” said she; “I was expecting you.”

  “Madame Moses,” exclaimed the sergeant, “your husband can boast now of being a real soldier; he has not yet seen fire, but he has charged with his bayonet.”

  “Ah!” said Sorlé, “I am very glad to see him back.”

  In the room, through the little white door-curtains, we saw the lamp burning, and smelt the soup. The sergeant went to his room, as usual, and we into ours. Sorlé looked at me with her great black eyes, she saw how pale I was, and knew what I was thinking about. She took from me my cartridge-box, and placed my musket in the closet.

  “Where is Sâfel?” I asked.

  “He must be in the square. I sent him to see if you had come back. Hark! There he is coming up!”

  Then I heard the child come up the stairs; he opened the door at once and ran joyfully to embrace me.

  We sat down to dinner, and, in spite of my trouble, I ate with a good appetite, having taken nothing since morning.

  Suddenly Sorlé said: “If the invoice does not come before the city gates are closed we shall not have to pay anything, for goods are at the risk of the merchant until they are delivered. And we have not received the inventory.”

  “Yes,” I replied, “you are right; M. Quataya, instead of sending us the spirits of wine at once, waited a week before answering us. If he had sent the twelve pipes that day or the day after, they would be here by this time. The delay is not our fault.”

  You see, Fritz, how anxious we were; but, as the sergeant came to smoke his pipe at the corner of the stove, as usual, we said no more about it.

  I spoke only of my fears in regard to Zeffen, Baruch, and their children, in an exposed town like Saverne. The sergeant tried to put my mind at ease, and said that in such places they made, to be sure, all sorts of requisitions in wines, brandies, provisions, carriages, carts, and horses, but, except in case of resistance, the people were let alone, and the soldiers even tried to keep on good terms with them.

  We kept on talking till nearly ten o’clock; then the sergeant, who had to keep guard at the German gate, went away, and we went to bed.

  This was the night of the twenty-second and twenty-third of December, a very cold night.

  CHAPTER IX

  APPROACH OF THE ENEMY

  The next morning, when I threw back the shutters of our room, everything was white with snow; the old elms of the square, the street, the roofs of the mayoralty and market and church. Some of our neighbors, Recco the tinman, Spick the baker, and old Durand the mattress-maker, opened their doors and looked as if dazzled, while they exclaimed:

  “He! Winter has come!”

  Although we see it every year yet it is like a new existence. We breathe better out of doors, and within it is a pleasure to sit in the corner of the fireplace and smoke our pipes, while we watch the crackling of the red fire. Yes, I have always felt so for seventy-five years, and I feel so still!

  I had scarcely opened the shutters when Sâfel sprang from his bed like a squirrel, and came and flattened his nose against a pane of glass, his long hair dishevelled and his legs bare.

  “Oh! snow! snow!” he exclaimed. “Now we can have some slides!”

  Sorlé, in the next room, made haste to dress herself and run in. We all looked out for some minutes; then I went to make the fire, Sorlé went to the kitchen, Sâfel dressed himself hastily, and everything fell back into the ordinary channel.

  Notwithstanding the falling snow, it was very cold. You need only to see the fire kindle at once, and hear it roar in the stove, to know that it was freezing hard.

  As we were eating our soup, I said to Sorlé, “The poor sergeant must have passed a dreadful night. His little glass of cherry-brandy will taste good.”

  “Yes,” she said, “it is well you thought of it.”

  She went to the closet, and filled my little pocket-flask from the bottle of cherry-brandy.

  You know, Fritz, that we do not like to go into public houses when we are on our way to our own business. Each of us carries his own little bottle and crust of bread; it is the best way and most conformed to the law of the Lord.

  Sorlé then filled my flask, and I put it in my pocket, under my great-coat, to go to the guard-house. Sâfel wanted to follow me, but his mother told him to stay, and I went down alone, well pleased at being able to do the sergeant a kindness.

  It was about seven o’clock. The snow falling from the roofs at every gust of wind was enough to blind you. But going along the walls, with my nose in my great-coat, which was well drawn up on the shoulders, I reached the German gate, and was about going down the three steps of the guard-house, under the arch at the left, when the sergeant himself opened the heavy door and exclaimed:

  “Is it you, Father Moses! What the devil has brought you here in this cold?”

  The guard-house was full of mist; we could hardly see some men stretched on camp-beds at the farther end, and five or six veterans near the red-hot stove.

  I stood and looked.

  “Here,” I said to the sergeant as I handed him my little bottle, “I have brought you your drop of cherry-brandy; it was such a cold night, you must need it.”

  “And you have thought of me, Father Moses!” he exclaimed, taking me by the arm, and looking at me with emotion.

  “Yes, sergeant.”

  “Well, I am glad of it.”

  He raised the flask to his mouth and took a good drink. At that moment there was a distant cry. “Who goes there?” and the guard of the outpost ran to open the gate.

  “That is good!” said the sergeant, tapping on the cork, and giving me the bottle; “take it back, Father Moses, and thank you!”

  Then he turned toward the half-moon and asked, “News! What is it?”

  We both looked and saw a hussar quartermaster, a withered, gray old man, with quantities of chevrons on his arm, arrive in great haste.

  All my life I shall have that man before my eyes; his smoking horse, his flying sabretash, his sword clinking against his boots; his cap and jacket covered with frost; his long, bony, wrinkled face, his pointed nose, long chin, and yellow eyes. I shall always see him riding like the wind, then stopping his rearing horse under the arch in front of us, and calling out to us with a voice like a trumpet: “Where is the governor’s house, sergeant?”

  “The first house at the right, quartermaster. What is the news?”

  “The enemy is in Alsace!”

  Those who have never seen such men—men accustomed to long warfare, and hard as iron—can have no idea of them. And then if you had heard the exclamation, “The enemy is in Alsace!” it would have made you trembl
e.

  The veterans had gone away; the sergeant, as he saw the hussar fasten his horse at the governor’s door, said to me: “Ah, well, Father Moses, now we shall see the whites of their eyes!”

  He laughed, and the others seemed pleased.

  As for myself, I set forth quickly, with my head bent, and in my terror repeating to myself the words of the prophet:

  “One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another, to show the king that his passages are stopped, and the reeds they have burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.

  “The mighty men have forborne to fight, they have remained in their holds, their might hath failed, and the bars are broken.

  “Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations, prepare the nations against her, call together against her the kingdoms, appoint a captain against her.

  “And the land shall tremble and sorrow; for every purpose of the Lord shall be performed, to make the land a desolation without an inhabitant!”

  I saw my ruin at hand—the destruction of my hopes.

  “Mercy, Moses!” exclaimed my wife, as she saw me come back, “what is the matter? Your face is all drawn up. Something dreadful has happened.”

  “Yes, Sorlé,” I said, as I sat down; “the time of trouble has come of which the prophet spoke: ‘The king of the south shall push at him, and the king of the north shall come against him like a whirlwind; and he shall enter into the countries and shall overflow and pass over.’”

  This I said with my hands raised toward heaven. Little Sâfel squeezed himself between my knees, while Sorlé looked on, not knowing what to say; and I told them that the Austrians were in Alsace; that the Bavarians, Swedes, Prussians, and Russians were coming by hundreds of thousands; that a hussar had come to announce all these calamities; that our spirits of wine were lost, and ruin was threatening us.

  I shed a few tears, and neither Sorlé nor Sâfel would comfort me.

  It was eight o’clock. There was a great commotion in the city. We heard the drum beat, and proclamations read; it seemed as if the enemy were already there.

  One thing which I remember especially, for we had opened a window to hear, was that the governor ordered the inhabitants to empty immediately their barns and granaries; and that, while we were listening, a large Alsatian wagon with two horses, with Baruch sitting on the pole, and Zeffen behind on some straw—her infant in her arms, and her other child at her side—turned suddenly into the street.