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

by Émile Erckmann

  I was going up again very quietly, never thinking of danger, when, suddenly, a frightful noise, a kind of terrible rumbling, passed along the roof, and almost made me drop my lantern.

  The two Carabins turned pale and looked at each other.

  “It is a ball!” said the sergeant.

  At the same time a loud sound of cannon in the distance was heard in the darkness.

  I had a terrible feeling in my stomach, and I thought to myself, “Since one ball has passed, there may be two, three, four!”

  My strength was all gone. The two Carabins doubtless thought the same, for they took down at once their waistcoats, which were hanging on the gable, to go away.

  “Wait!” said the sergeant. “It is nothing. Let us keep at our work—it is going on well. It will be done in an hour more.”

  But the elder Carabin called out, “You may do as you please! I am not going to stay here—I have a family!”

  And while he was speaking, a second ball, more frightful than the first, began to rumble upon the roof, and five or six seconds after we heard the explosion.

  It was astonishing! The Russians were firing from the edge of the Bois-de-Chênes, more than a half-hour distant, and yet we saw the red flash pass before our two windows, and even under the tiles.

  The sergeant tried to keep us still at work.

  “Two bullets never pass in the same place,” said he. “We are in a safe spot, since that has grazed the roof. Come, let us go to work!”

  It was too much for us. I placed the lantern on the floor and went down, feeling as if my thighs were broken. I wanted to sit down at every step.

  Out of doors they were shouting as if it were morning, and in a more frightful way. Chimneys were falling, and women running to the windows; but I paid no attention to it, I was so frightened myself.

  The two Carabins had gone away paler than death.

  All that night I was ill. Sorlé and Zeffen were no more at ease than myself. The sergeant kept on alone, placing the logs and making them fast. About midnight he came down.

  “Father Moses,” said he, “the roof is screened, but your two men are cowards; they left me alone.”

  I thanked him, and told him that we were all sick, and as for myself I had never felt anything like it. He laughed.

  “I know what that is,” said he. “Conscripts always feel so when they hear the first ball; but that is soon over—they only need to get a little used to it.”

  Then he went to bed, and everybody in the house, except myself, went to sleep.

  The Russians did not fire after ten o’clock that night; they had only tried one or two field-pieces, to warn us of what they had in store.

  All this, Fritz, was but the beginning of the blockade; you are going to hear now of the miseries we endured for three months.

  CHAPTER XIII

  A DESERTER CAPTURED

  The city was joyful the next day, notwithstanding the firing in the night. A number of men who came from the ramparts about seven o’clock, came down our street shouting: “They are gone! There is not a single Cossack to be seen in the direction of Quatre-Vents, nor behind the barracks of the Bois-de-Chênes! Vive l’Empereur!”

  Everybody ran to the bastions.

  I had opened one of our windows, and leaned out in my nightcap. It was thawing, the snow was sliding from the roofs, and that in the streets was melting in the mud. Sorlé, who was turning up our bed, called to me: “Do shut the window, Moses! We shall catch cold from the draught!”

  But I did not listen. I laughed as I thought: “The rascals have had enough of my old bars and rusty nails; they have found out that they fly a good way: experience is a good thing!”

  I could have stayed there till night to hear the neighbors talk about the clearing away of the Russians, and those who came from the ramparts declaring that there was not one to be seen in the whole region. Some said that they might come back, but that seemed to me contrary to reason. It was clear that the villains would not quit the country at once, that they would still for a long time pillage the villages, and live on the peasants; but to believe that the officers would excite their men to take our city, or that the soldiers would be foolish enough to obey them, never entered my head.

  At last Zeffen came into our room to dress the children, and I shut the window. A good fire roared in the stove. Sorlé made ready our breakfast, while Zeffen washed her little Esdras in a basin of warm water.

  “Ah, now, if I could only hear from Baruch, it would all be well,” said she.

  Little David played on the floor with Sâfel, and I thanked the Lord for having delivered us from the scoundrels.

  While we were at breakfast, I said to my wife: “It has all gone well! We shall be shut up for a while until the Emperor has carried the day, but they will not fire upon us, they will be satisfied with blockading us; and bread, wine, meats, and brandies, will grow dearer. It is the right time for us to sell, or else we might fare like the people of Samaria when Ben-Hadad besieged their city. There was a great famine, so that the head of an ass sold for four-score pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove’s-dung for five pieces. It was a good price; but still the merchants were holding back, when a noise of chariots and horses and of a great host came from heaven, and made the Syrians escape with Ben-Hadad, and after the people had pillaged their camp, a measure of fine flour sold for only a shekel, and two measures of barley for a shekel. So let us try to sell while things are at a reasonable price; we must begin in good season.”

  Sorlé assented, and after breakfast I went down to the cellar to go on with the mixing.

  Many of the mechanics had gone back to their work. Klipfel’s hammer sounded on his anvil. Chanoine put back his rolls into his windows, and Tribolin, the druggist, his bottles of red and blue water behind his panes.

  Confidence was restored everywhere. The citizen-gunners had taken off their uniforms, and the joiners had come back to finish our counter; the noise of the saw and plane filled the house.

  Everybody was glad to return to his own business, for war brings nothing but harm; the sooner it is over the better.

  As I carried my jugs from one tun to another, in the cellar, I saw the passers-by stop before our old shop, and heard them say to each other, “Moses is going to make his fortune with the brandy; these rascals of Jews always have good scent; while we have been selling this month past, he has been buying. Now that we are shut up he can sell at any price he pleases.”

  You can judge whether that was not pleasant to hear! A man’s greatest happiness is to succeed in his business; everybody is obliged to say: “This man has neither army, nor generals, nor cannon, he has nothing but his own wit, like everybody else; when he succeeds he owes it to himself, and not to the courage of others. And then he ruins no one; he does not rob, or steal, or kill; while, in war, the strongest crushes the weakest and often the best.”

  So I worked on with great zeal, and would have kept on till night if little Sâfel had not come to call me to dinner. I was hungry, and was going upstairs, glad in the thought of sitting down in the midst of my children, when the call-beat began on the Place d’Armes, before the town-house. During a blockade a court-martial sits continually at the mayoralty to try those who do not answer to the call. Some of my neighbors were already leaving their houses with their muskets on their shoulders. I had to go up very hastily, and swallow a little soup, a morsel of meat, and a glass of wine.

  I was very pale. Sorlé, Zeffen, and the children said not a word. The drum corps continued the call to arms; it came down the main street and stopped at last before our house, on the little square. Then I ran for my cartridge-box and musket.

  “Ah!” said Sorlé, “we thought we were going to have a quiet time, and now it is all beginning again.”

  Zeffen did not speak, but burst into tears.

  At that moment the old Rabbi Heymann came in, with his old martin-skin cap drawn down to the nape of his neck.

  “For heaven’s sak
e let the women and children hurry to the casemates! An envoy has come threatening to burn the whole city if the gates are not opened. Fly, Sorlé! Zeffen, fly!”

  Imagine the cries of the women on hearing this; as for myself, my hair stood on end.

  “The rascals have no shame in them!” I exclaimed. “They have no pity on women or children! May the curse of heaven fall on them!”

  Zeffen threw herself into my arms. I did not know what to do.

  But the old rabbi said: “They are doing to us what our people have done to them! So the words of the Lord are fulfilled: ‘As thou hast done unto thy brother so shall it be done unto thee!’—But, you must fly quickly.”

  Below, the call-beat had ceased; my knees trembled. Sorlé, who never lost courage, said to me: “Moses, run to the square, make haste, or they will send you to prison!”

  Her judgment was always right; she pushed me by the shoulders, and in spite of Zeffen’s tears I went down, calling out: “Rabbi, I trust in you—save them!”

  I could not see clearly; I went through the snow, miserable man that I was, running to the townhouse where the National Guard was already assembled. I came just in time to answer the call, and you can imagine my trouble, for Zeffen, Sorlé, Sâfel, and the little ones were abandoned before my eyes. What was Phalsburg to me? I would have opened the gates in a minute to have had peace.

  The others did not look any better pleased than myself; they were all thinking of their families.

  Our governor, Moulin, Lieutenant-Colonel Brancion, and Captains Renvoyé, Vigneron, Grébillet, with their great military caps put on crosswise, these alone felt no anxiety. They would have murdered and burnt everything for the Emperor. The governor even laughed, and said that he would surrender the city when the shells set his pocket-handkerchief on fire. Judge from this, how much sense such a being had!

  While they were reviewing us, groups of the aged and infirm, of women and children, passed across the square on their way to the casemates.

  I saw our little wagon go by with the roll of coverings and mattresses on it. The old rabbi was between the shafts—Sâfel pushed behind. Sorlé carried David, and Zeffen Esdras. They were walking in the mud, with their hair loose as if they were escaping from a fire; but they did not speak, and went on silently in the midst of that great trouble.

  I would have given my life to go and help them—I must stay in the ranks. Ah, the old men of my time have seen terrible things! How often have they thought: “Happy is he who lives alone in the world; he suffers only for himself, he does not see those whom he loves weeping and groaning, without the power to help them.”

  Immediately after the review, detachments of citizen-gunners were sent to the armories to man the pieces, the firemen were sent to the old market to get out the pumps, and the rest of us, with half a battalion of the Sixth Light Infantry, were sent to the guard-house on the square, to relieve the guards and supply patrols.

  The two other battalions had already gone to the advance-posts of Trois-Maisons, of La Fontaine-du-Chateau,—to the block-houses, the half moons, the Ozillo farm, and the Maisons-Rouges, outside of the city.

  Our post at the mayoralty consisted of thirty-two men; sixteen soldiers of the line below, commanded by Lieutenant Schnindret, and sixteen of the National Guard above, commanded by Desplaces Jacob. We used Burrhus’s lodging for our guard-house. It was a large hall with six-inch planks, and beams such as you do not find nowadays in our forests. A large, round, cast-iron stove, standing on a slab four feet square, was in the left-hand corner, near the door; the zigzag pipes went into the chimney at the right, and piles of wood covered the floor.

  It seems as if I were now in that hall. The melted snow which we shook off on entering ran along the floor. I have never seen a sadder day than that; not only because the bombshells and balls might rain upon us at any moment, and set everything on fire, but because of the melting snow, and the mud, and the dampness which reached your very bones, and the orders of the sergeant, who did nothing but call out: “Such and such an one, march! Such an one forward, it is your turn!” etc.

  And then the jests and jokes of this mass of tilers, and cobblers, and plasterers, with their patched blouses, shoes run down at the heel, and caps without visors, seated in a circle around the stove, with, their rags sticking to their backs, thouing you like all the rest of their beggarly race: “Moses, pass along the pitcher! Moses, give me some fire!—Ah, rascals of Jews, when a body risks his life to save property, how proud it makes them! Ah, the villains!”

  And they winked at each other, and pushed each other’s elbows, and made up faces askance. Some of them wanted me to go and get some tobacco for them, and pay for it myself! In fine, all sorts of insults, which a respectable man could endure from the rabble!—Yes, it disgusts me whenever I think of it.

  In this guard-house, where we burned whole logs of wood as if they were straw, the steaming old rags which came in soaking wet did not smell very pleasantly. I had to go out every minute to the little platform behind the hall, in order to breathe, and the cold water which the wind blew from the spout sent me in again at once.

  Afterward, in thinking it over, it has seemed as if, without these troubles, my heart would have broken at the thought of Sorlé, Zeffen, and the children shut up in a cellar, and that these very annoyances preserved my reason.

  This lasted till evening. We did nothing but go in and out, sit down, smoke our pipes, and then begin again to walk the pavement in the rain, or remain on duty for hours together at the entrance of the posterns.

  Toward nine o’clock, when all was dark without, and nothing was to be heard but the pacing of the patrols, the shouts of the sentries on the ramparts: “Sentries, attention!” and the steps of our men on their rounds up and down the great wooden stairway of the admiralty, the thought suddenly came to me that the Russians had only tried to frighten us, that it meant nothing; and that there would be no shells that night.

  In order to be on good terms with the men, I had asked Monborne’s permission to go and get a jug full of brandy, which he at once granted. I took advantage of the opportunity to bite a crust and drink a glass of wine at home. Then I went back, and all the men at the station were very friendly; they passed the jug from one to another, and said that my brandy was very good, and that the sergeant would give me leave to go and fill it as often as I pleased.

  “Yes, since it is Moses,” replied Monborne, “he may have leave, but nobody else.”

  We were all on excellent terms with each other and nobody thought of bombardment, when a red flash passed along the high windows of the room. We all turned round, and in a few seconds the shell rumbled on the Bichelberg hill. At the same time a second, then a third flash passed, one after the other, through the large dark room, showing us the houses opposite.

  You can never have an idea, Fritz, of those first lights at night! Corporal Winter, an old soldier, who grated tobacco for Tribou, stooped down quietly and lighted his pipe, and said: “Well, the dance is beginning!”

  Almost instantly we heard a shell burst at the right in the infantry quarters, another at the left in the Piplinger house on the square, and another quite near us in the Hemmerle house.

  I can’t help trembling as I think of it now after thirty years.

  All the women were in the casemates, except some old servants who did not want to leave their kitchens; they screamed out: “Help! Fire!”

  We were all sure that we were lost; only the old soldiers, crooked on their bench by the stove, with their pipes in their mouths, seemed very calm, as people might who have nothing to lose.

  What was worst of all, at the moment when our cannon at the arsenal and powder-house began to answer the Russians’, and made every pane of glass in the old building rattle, Sergeant Monborne called out: “Somme, Chevreux, Moses, Dubourg: Forward!”

  To send fathers of families roaming about through the mud, in danger, at every step, of being struck by bursting shells, tiles, and whole chimneys falling o
n their backs, is something against nature; the very mention of it makes me perfectly furious.

  Somme and the big innkeeper Chevreux turned round, full of indignation also; they wanted to exclaim: “It is abominable!”

  But that rascal of a Monborne was sergeant, and nobody dared speak a word or even give a side-look; and as Winter, the corporal of the round, had taken down his musket, and made a signal for us to go on, we all took our arms and followed him.

  As we went down the stairway, you should have seen the red light, flash after flash, lighting up every nook and corner under the stairs and the worm-eaten rafters; you should have heard our twenty-four pounders thunder; the old rat-hole shook to its foundations, and seemed as if it was all falling to pieces. And under the arch below, toward the Place d’Armes, this light shone from the snow banks to the tops of the roofs, showing the glittering pavements, the puddles of water, the chimneys, and dormer-windows, and, at the very end of the street, the cavalry barracks, even the sentry in his box near the large gate:—what a sight!

  “It is all over! We are all lost!” I thought.

  Two shells passed at this moment over the city: they were the first that I had seen; they moved so slowly that I could follow them through the dark sky; both fell in the trenches, behind the hospital. The charge was too heavy, luckily for us.

  I did not speak, nor did the others—we kept our thoughts to ourselves. We heard the calls “Sentries, attention!” answered from one bastion to another all around the place, warning us of the terrible danger we were in.