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

by Émile Erckmann

  I was sinking with fatigue, and so was Sâfel; nothing but our love of trade sustained us.

  Another pleasant thing which I recall is that, on going home a few minutes before seven, we saw at a distance that our other shop was full. My wife and daughter had not been able to close it; they had raised the price, and the soldiers did not even notice it,—it seemed all right to them; so that not only the French money which I had just given them, but also Wurtemburg florins came to my pocket.

  Two trades which help each other along are an excellent thing, Fritz: remember that! Without my brandies I should not have had the money to buy so many goods, and without the market where I gave ready money for the booty, the soldiers would not have had wherewith to buy my brandy. This shows us plainly that the Lord favors orderly and peaceable men, provided they know how to make the best use of their opportunities.

  At length, as we could not do more, we were obliged to close the shop, in spite of the protestations of the soldiers, and defer business till to-morrow.

  About nine o’clock, after supper, we all sat down together around the large lamp, to count our gains. I made rolls of three francs each, and on the chair next me the pile reached almost to the top of the table. Little Sâfel put the white pieces in a wooden bowl. It was a pleasant sight to us all, and Sorlé said: “We have sold twice as much as usual. The more we raise the price the better it sells.”

  I was going to reply that still we must use moderation in all things—for these women, even the best of them, do not know that—when the sergeant came in to take his little glass. He wore his foraging coat, and carried hung across his cape a kind of bag of red leather.

  “He, he, he!” said he, as he saw the rolls. “The devil! the devil! You ought to be satisfied with this day’s work, Father Moses?”

  “Yes, not bad, sergeant,” I joyfully replied.

  “I think,” said he, as he sat down and tasted the little glass of cherry-brandy, which Zeffen had just poured out for him, “I think that after one or two sorties more, you will do for colonel of the shopkeepers’ regiment. So much the better; I am very glad of it!”

  Then, laughing heartily, he said,

  “He, Father Moses! see what I have here; these rascals of kaiserlichs deny themselves nothing.”

  At the same time he opened his bag, and began to draw out a pair of mittens lined with fox-skin, then some good woollen stockings, and a large knife with a horn handle and blades of very fine steel. He opened the blades:

  “There is everything here,” said he, “a pruning-knife, a saw, small knives and large ones, even to a file for nails.”

  “For finger-nails, sergeant!” said I.

  “Ah! very likely!” said he. “This big landwehr was as nice as a new crown-piece. He would be likely to file his finger-nails. But wait!”

  My wife and children, leaning over us, looked on with eager eyes. Thrusting his hand into a sort of portfolio in the side of the bag, he drew out a handsome miniature, surrounded with a circle of gold in the shape of a watch, but larger.

  “See! What ought this to be worth?”

  I looked, then Sorlé, then Zeffen, and Sâfel. We were all surprised at seeing a work of such beauty, and even touched, for the miniature represented a fair young woman and two lovely children, as fresh as rose-buds.

  “Well, what do you think of that?” asked the sergeant.

  “It is very beautiful,” said Sorlé.

  “Yes, but what is it worth?”

  I took the miniature and examined it.

  “To any one else, sergeant,” said I, “I should say that it was worth fifty francs; but the gold alone is worth more, and I should estimate it at a hundred francs; we can weigh it.”

  “And the portrait, Father Moses?”

  “The portrait is worth nothing to me, and I will give it back to you. Such things do not sell in this country; they are of no value except to the family.”

  “Very well,” said he, “we will talk about that by and by.”

  He put back the miniature into the bag.

  “Do you read German?” he asked.

  “Very well.”

  “Ah, good! I am curious to hear what this kaiserlich had to write. See, it is a letter! He was keeping it doubtless for the baggage-master to send it to Germany. But we came too soon! What does it say?”

  He handed me a letter addressed to Madame Roedig, Stuttgart, No. 6 Bergstrasse. That letter, Fritz, here it is. Sorlé has kept it; it will tell you more about the landwehr than I can.

  “Bichelberg, Feb. 25, 1814.

  “Dear Aurelia: Thy good letter of January 29th reached Coblentz too late; the regiment was on its way to Alsace.

  “We have had a great many discomforts, from rain and snow. The regiment came first to Bitche, one of the most terrible forts possible, built upon rocks up in the sky. We were to take part in blockading it, but a new order sent us on farther to the fort of Lutzelstein, on the mountain, where we remained two days at the village of Pétersbach, to summon that little place to surrender. The veterans who held it having replied by cannon, our colonel did not judge it necessary to storm it, and, thank God! we received orders to go and blockade another fortress surrounded by good villages which furnish us provisions in abundance; this is Phalsburg, a couple of leagues from Saverne. We relieve, here, the Austrian regiment of Vogelgesang, which has left for Lorraine.

  “Thy good letter has followed me everywhere, and it fills me now with joy. Embrace little Sabrina and our dear little Henry for me a hundred times, and receive my embraces yourself, too, thou dear, adored wife!

  “Ah! when shall we be together again in our little pharmacy? When shall I see again my vials nicely labelled upon their shelves, with the heads of Æsculapius and Hippocrates above the door? When shall I take my pestle, and mix my drugs again after the prescribed formulas? When shall I have the joy of sitting again in my comfortable arm-chair, in front of a good fire, in our back shop, and hear Henry’s little wooden horse roll upon the floor,—Henry whom I so long for? And thou, dear, adored wife, when wilt thou exclaim: ‘It is my Henry!’ as thou seest me return crowned with palms of victory.”

  “These Germans,” interrupted the sergeant, “are blockheads as well as asses! They are to have ‘palms of victory!’ What a silly letter!”

  But Sorlé and Zeffen listened as I read, with tears in their eyes. They held our little ones in their arms, and I, too, thinking that Baruch might have been in the same condition as this poor man, was greatly moved.

  Now, Fritz, hear the end:

  “We are here in an old tile-kiln, within range of the cannon of the fort. A few shells are fired upon the city every evening, by order of the Russian general, Berdiaiw, with the hope of making the inhabitants decide to open the gates. That must be before long; they are short of provisions! Then we shall be comfortably lodged in the citizens’ houses, till the end of this glorious campaign; and that will be soon, for the regular armies have all passed without resistance, and we hear daily of great victories in Champagne. Bonaparte is in full retreat; field-marshals Blücher and Schwartzenberg have united their forces, and are only five or six days’ march from Paris—”

  “What? What? What is that? What does he say?” stammered out the sergeant, leaning over toward the letter. “Read that again!”

  I looked at him; he was very pale, and his cheeks shook with anger.

  “He says that generals Blücher and Schwartzenberg are near Paris.”

  “Near Paris! They! The rascals!” he faltered out.

  Suddenly, with a bad look on his face, he gave a low laugh and said:

  “Ah! thou meanest to take Phalsburg, dost thou? Thou meanest to return to thy land of sauerkraut with palms of victory? He! he! he! I have given thee thy palms of victory!”

  He made the motions of pricking with his bayonet as he spoke, “One—two—hop!”

  It made us all tremble only to look at him.

  “Yes, Father Moses, so it is,” said he, emptying his glass by
little sips. “I have nailed this sort of an apothecary to the door of the tile-kiln. He made up a funny face—his eyes starting from his head. His Aurelia will have to expect him a good while! But never mind! Only, Madame Sorlé, I assure you that it is a lie. You must not believe a word he says. The Emperor will give it to them! Don’t be troubled.”

  I did not wish to go on. I felt myself grow cold, and I finished the letter quickly, passing over three-quarters of it which contained no information, only compliments for friends and acquaintances.

  The sergeant himself had had enough of it, and went out soon afterward, saying, “Good-night! Throw that in the fire!”

  Then I put the letter aside, and we all sat looking at each other for some minutes. I opened the door. The sergeant was in his room at the end of the passage, and I said, in a low voice:

  “What a horrible thing! Not only to kill the father of a family like a fly, but to laugh about it afterward!”

  “Yes,” replied Sorlé. “And the worst of it is that he is not a bad man. He loves the Emperor too well, that is all!”

  The information contained in the letter caused us much serious reflection, and that night, notwithstanding our stroke of good fortune in our sales, I woke more than once, and thought of this terrible war, and wondered what would become of the country if Napoleon were no longer its master. But these questions were above my comprehension, and I did not know how to answer them.

  CHAPTER XVII

  FAMINE AND FEVER

  After this story of the landwehr, we were afraid of the sergeant, though he did not know it, and came regularly to take his glass of cherry-brandy. Sometimes in the evening he would hold the bottle before our lamp, and exclaim:

  “It is getting low, Father Moses, it is getting low! We shall soon be put upon half-rations, and then quarter, and so on. It is all the same; if a drop is left, anything more than the smell, in six months, Trubert will be very glad.”

  He laughed, and I thought with indignation:

  “You will be satisfied with a drop! What are you in want of? The city storehouses are bomb-proof, the fires at the guard-house are burning every day, the market furnishes every soldier with his ration of fresh meat, while respectable citizens are glad if they can get potatoes and salt meat!”

  This is the way I felt in my ill-humor, while I treated him pleasantly, all the same, on account of his terrible wickedness.

  And it was the truth, Fritz, even our children had nothing more nourishing to eat than soup made of potatoes and salt beef, which cause many dangerous maladies.

  The garrison had no lack of anything; but, notwithstanding, the governor was all the time proclaiming that the visits were to be recommenced, and that those who should be found delinquent should be punished with the rigor of military law. Those people wanted to have everything for themselves; but nobody minded them, everybody hid what he could.

  Fortunate in those times was he who kept a cow in his cellar, with some hay and straw for fodder; milk and butter were beyond all price. Fortunate was he who owned a few hens; a fresh egg, at the end of February, was valued at fifteen sous, and they were not to be had even at that price. The price of fresh meat went up, so to speak, from hour to hour, and we did not ask if it was beef or horse-flesh.

  The council of defence had sent away the paupers of the city before the blockade, but a large number of poor people remained. A good many slipped out at night into the trenches by one of the posterns; they would go and dig up roots from under the snow, and cut the nettles in the bastions to boil for spinach. The sentries fired from above, but what will not a man risk for food? It is better to feel a ball than to suffer with hunger.

  We needed only to meet these emaciated creatures, these women dragging themselves along the walls, these pitiful children, to feel that famine had come, and we often said to ourselves:

  “If the Emperor does not come and help us, in a month we shall be like these wretched creatures! What good will our money do us, when a radish will cost a hundred francs?”

  Then, Fritz, we smiled no more as we saw the little ones eating around the table; we looked at each other, and this glance was enough to make us understand each other.

  The good sense and good feeling of a brave woman are seen at times like this. Sorlé had never spoken to me about our provisions; I knew how prudent she was, and supposed that we must have provisions hidden somewhere, without being entirely sure of it. So, at evening, as we sat at our meagre supper, the fear that our children might want the necessary food sometimes led me to say:

  “Eat! feast away! I am not hungry. I want an omelet or a chicken. Potatoes do not agree with me.”

  I would laugh, but Sorlé knew very well what I was thinking.

  “Come, Moses,” she said to me one day; “we are not as badly off as you think; and if we should come to it, ah, well! do not be troubled, we shall find some way of getting along! So long as others have something to live upon, we shall not perish, more than they.”

  She gave me courage, and I ate cheerfully, I had so much confidence in her.

  That same evening, after Zeffen and the children had gone to bed, Sorlé took the lamp, and led me to her hiding-place.

  Under the house we had three cellars, very small and very low, separated by lattices. Against the last of these lattices, Sorlé had thrown bundles of straw up to the very top; but after removing the straw, we went in, and I saw at the farther end, two bags of potatoes, a bag of flour, and on the little oil-cask a large piece of salt beef.

  We stayed there more than an hour, to look, and calculate, and think. These provisions might serve us for a month, and those in the large cellar under the street, which we had declared to the commissary of provisions, a fortnight. So that Sorlé said to me as we went up:

  “You see that, with economy, we have what will do for six weeks. A time of great want is now beginning, and if the Emperor does not come before the end of six weeks, the city will surrender. Meanwhile, we must get along with potatoes and salt meat.”

  She was right, but every day I saw how the children were suffering from this diet. We could see that they grew thin, especially little David; his large bright eyes, his hollow cheeks, his increasing dejected look, made my heart ache.

  I held him, I caressed him; I whispered to him that, when the winter was over, we would go to Saverne, and his father would take him to drive in his carriage. He would look at me dreamily, and then lay his head upon my shoulder, with his arm around my neck, without answering. At last he refused to eat.

  Zeffen, too, became disheartened; she would often sob, and take her babe from me, and say that she wanted to go, that she wanted to see Baruch! You do not know what these troubles are, Fritz; a father’s troubles for his children; they are the cruelest of all! No child can imagine how his parents love him, and what they suffer when he is unhappy.

  But what was to be done in the midst of such calamities? Many other families in France were still more to be pitied than we.

  During all this time, you must remember that we had the patrols, the shells in the evening, requisition and notices, the call to arms at the two barracks and in front of the mayoralty, the cries of “Fire!” in the night, the noise of the fire-engines, the arrival of the envoys, the rumors spread through the city that our armies were retreating, and that the city was to be burned to the ground!

  The less people know the more they invent.

  It is best to tell the simple truth. Then every one would take courage, for, during all such times, I have always seen that the truth, even in the greatest calamities, is never so terrible as these inventions. The republicans defended themselves so well, because they knew everything, nothing was concealed from them, and every one considered the affairs of his nation as his own.

  But when men’s own affairs are hidden from them, how can they have confidence? An honest man has nothing to conceal, and I say it is the same with an honest government.

  In short, bad weather, cold, want, rumors of all kinds, increase
d our miseries. Men like Burguet, whom we had always seen firm, became sad; all that they could say to us was:

  “We shall see!—we must wait!” The soldiers again began to desert, and were shot!

  Our brandy-selling always kept on: I had already emptied seven pipes of spirit, all my debts were paid, my storehouse at the market was full of goods, and I had eighteen thousand francs in the cellar; but what is money, when we are trembling for the life of those we love?

  On the sixth of March, about nine o’clock in the evening, we had just finished supper as usual, and the sergeant was smoking his pipe, with his legs crossed, near the window, and looking at us without speaking.

  It was the hour when the bombarding began; we heard the first cannon-shots, behind the Fiquet bottom-land; a cannon-shot from the outposts had answered them; that had somewhat roused us, for we were all thoughtful.

  “Father Moses,” said the sergeant, “the children are pale!”

  “I know it very well,” I replied, sorrowfully.

  He said no more, and as Zeffen had just gone out to weep, he took little David on his knee, and looked at him for a long time. Sorlé held little Esdras asleep in her arms. Sâfel took off the table-cloth and rolled up the napkins, to put them back in the closet.

  “Yes,” said the sergeant. “We must take care, Father Moses; we will talk about it another time.”

  I looked at him with surprise; he emptied his pipe at the edge of the stove, and went out, making a sign for me to follow him. Zeffen came in, and I took a candle from her hand. The sergeant led me to his little room at the end of the passage, shut the door, sat down on the foot of the bed, and said:

  “Father Moses, do not be frightened—but the typhus has just broken out again in the city; five soldiers were taken to the hospital this morning; the commandant of the place, Moulin, is taken. I hear, too, of a woman and three children!”

  He looked at me, and I felt cold all over.

  “Yes,” said he, “I have known this disease for a long time; we had it in Poland, in Russia, after the retreat, and in Germany. It always comes from poor nourishment.”