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

by Émile Erckmann

  After these moments of excitement he would fall exhausted against the wall of the tower, and murmur—“Some bread; oh, only a morsel of bread!”

  Materne’s two sons, crouched in the brushwood, their carbines at their shoulders, seemed to expect the passage of some game which never arrived. Their ceaseless watching alone sustained their expiring strength.

  Others, bent double with pain, were shivering with cold, and yet were burning with fever: they reproached Jean-Claude with having brought them to the Falkenstein.

  Hullin, with a superhuman force of character, still went and came, observing what took place in the neighboring valleys, but without saying anything.

  Occasionally he would advance to the edge of the rock, and with his massive jaws clinched and shining eyes, looked at Yégof, seated before a large fire, on the plains of Bois-de-Chênes, in the midst of a band of Cossacks. Since the arrival of the Germans in the valley of the Charmes, the madman had never quitted his post, but appeared to be watching the agony of his victims.

  Such was the position of these unfortunate people beneath the open heaven.

  In the gloom of a prison the torture of hunger is doubtless frightful, but in the broad light of day, in the eyes of a whole country, in face of all the resources of nature, its sufferings are beyond all description.

  At the close of the nineteenth day, between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, the weather was gloomy; large gray clouds rose behind the snowy summit of the Grosmann; the red sun, like a ball of fire, threw a few last rays into the misty horizon. The silence on the rock was unbroken. Louise no longer gave signs of life; Kasper and Frantz remained among the bushes immovable as stones; Catherine Lefèvre, crouching on the earth, her skinny arms clasped round her pointed knees, with hard, rigid features, her hair hanging over her clammy cheeks, looked like some old sibyl seated in the heather. She had ceased speaking. That evening, Hullin, Jérome, old Materne, and Doctor Lorquin gathered themselves around the old farm-mistress to die. They were silent, and the last rays of twilight fell upon the wretched group. To the right, behind a jutting rock, a few German watch-fires sparkled in the abyss. Suddenly the old dame, rousing from her dreams, began to murmur some unintelligible words.

  “Divès is coming,” said she, in a low voice. “I see him. He goes out from the door to the right of the arsenal. Gaspard follows him, and—”

  Then she began to count.

  “Two hundred and fifty men,” she exclaimed; “National Guards and soldiers. They cross the ditch; they mount behind the demilune. Gaspard is speaking with Marc. What does he say?”

  She appeared to listen.

  “Let us hurry!—yes, hurry! Time flies! There they are on the glacis!”

  There was a long pause; then the old woman suddenly arose, with outstretched arms and hair on end, and screamed aloud in a terrible voice: “Courage! Kill, kill! Ah, ah!” And she fell down heavily.

  This fearful cry awoke them all; it would have aroused the dead. The besieged seemed born anew. Something was abroad. Was it hope, life, a spirit? I know not; but all rose up on their hands and knees, like wild beasts, holding their breath to hear. Louise even moved softly and lifted her head; Frantz and Kasper dragged themselves along; and, strange to say, Hullin, turning his eyes toward Phalsbourg, thought he saw through the darkness the flashes of a fusillade announcing a sortie.

  Catherine had resumed her first appearance; but her cheeks, before still and pale as those of a corpse, trembled now. The others listened as though their salvation hung on her lips. A quarter of an hour nearly had passed, when the old dame slowly recommenced: “They have passed the enemy’s lines; they are running toward Lutzelbourg. I see them! Gaspard and Divès are before, with Desmarets, Ulrich, Weber, and our friends of the town. They come! they come!”

  She again became silent. Long did they listen; but the vision was gone. Seconds followed seconds slowly like centuries. At length, Hexe-Baizel, in an angry voice, began to say: “She is mad! She saw nothing! Marc, I know him: he is making fun of us. What does it matter to him if we perish? So long as he has his bottle and tobacco and can smoke his pipe in peace by the fireside, all the rest is nothing. Ah, the wretch!”

  Then all relapsed into silence, and the unhappy creatures, reanimated for an instant by hope of a speedy deliverance, again fell into despair.

  “It is a dream,” thought they; “Hexe-Baizel is right: we are condemned to die of hunger.”

  While this was going on night arrived. When the moon rose behind the high pine-trees, and lit up the gloomy group, Hullin alone kept watch, in spite of his raging fever. Far off—very far off in the gorges—he heard the voices of the German sentries; “Wer da? Wer da?” the rounds of the patrols in the woods; the shrill neighing of the horses at the picket, and the shouts of their keepers. Toward midnight the worthy fellow fell asleep like the rest. When he awoke, the clock of the village of Charmes struck four. At the sound of the distant chimes, Hullin shook off his drowsiness, and he opened his eyes. As he gazed unconsciously into the darkness, trying to collect his thoughts, the vague glimmer of a torch passed before his eyes. A feeling of dread came over him, and he said to himself: “Am I mad? The night is dark, and I see torches!”

  Nevertheless, the flame reappeared; he looked at it, then raised himself quickly, resting his contracted face for a second in his hand. At length, hazarding one more look, he distinctly saw a fire on the Giromani, on the other side of Blanru—a fire which swept the heavens with its purple wings, causing the shadows of the pines to dance on the snow. Recalling to himself that this signal had been agreed upon between him and Piorette to announce an attack, he trembled from head to foot, his face streamed with perspiration, and, walking in the dark, groping like a blind man with his hands outstretched, he stammered, “Catherine, Louise, Jérome.” But no one answered. Still groping about, thinking he was walking while he did not make a step, the unfortunate man fell down, exclaiming, “My children! Catherine! they come! We are saved!”

  A vague sound immediately arose. One would have said that the dead were awaking. There was a shrill laugh: it was Hexe-Baizel, gone mad from her sufferings.

  Then Catherine exclaimed: “Hullin! Hullin! who spoke?”

  Jean-Claude, recovering from his emotion, said, in firmer tones: “Jérome, Catherine, Materne, and the others, are you dead? Do you not see that fire down there, in the direction of Blanru? It is Piorette, who is coming to our assistance.”

  At the same instant, a deep boom rolled along the gorges of the Jägerthal, like the rumbling of a storm. The summoning trumpet of the Judgment could not have produced a greater effect on the besieged: they suddenly awoke.

  “It is Piorette! it is Marc!” cried broken, harsh voices, such as might have belonged to skeletons; “they are coming to our aid!”

  And all the wretched creatures tried to rise: some sobbed; but they had no longer any tears to shed. A second report brought them upright.

  “They are firing in detachments,” said Hullin. “Ours are doing so too. We have soldiers in lines! France forever!”

  “Yes,” replied Jérome. “Mother Catherine was right; the Phalsbourgers are coming to our assistance; they are descending the hills of the Sarre; and there is Piorette, who is now attacking by Blanru.”

  Indeed, the fusillade now began to resound on both sides at once, toward the plateau of Bois-de-Chênes and the heights of Kilbèri.

  The two chiefs embraced; and, as they groped along in the dark night, seeking to reach the edge of the rock, suddenly Materne cried out, “Take care, the precipice is near!”

  They stopped short and looked down; but nothing was to be seen: a current of cold air ascending from the abyss alone warned them of the danger. The peaks and gorges round were all plunged in darkness. On the hill-sides in front the flashes of the fusillade passed like lightning, illuminating now an old oak, now the heather, or the black outline of some rock; and groups of men were coming and going, as though in the midst of a conflagration. Two
thousand feet below, in the depth of the gorge, could be heard dull sounds of galloping horses, and the clamors of command. Now, the shout of a mountaineer hailing another was prolonged from peak to peak, and arose to the Falkenstein like a sigh.

  “It is Marc!” said Hullin; “it is Marc’s voice!”

  “Yes, it is Marc, who bids us have courage,” replied Jérome.

  The others looked around them with outstretched necks, their hands grasping the rock. The fusillade continued with a vivacity that betrayed the fury of the battle; but nothing could be seen. Oh! how they wished to take part in this supreme struggle! With what ardor would they not have thrown themselves into the fire! The fear of being abandoned once more, of seeing by daylight their defenders retreating, rendered them speechless with terror.

  Day began to dawn; the pale light arose behind the black summits, and began to illumine the gloomy valleys, and soon the fog of the abyss turned to silvery mists. Hullin, looking across the openings of these clouds, at length made out the position. The Germans had lost the heights of Valtin, and the plain of Bois-de-Chênes. They were massed in the valley of Charmes, at the foot of the Falkenstein, so as to obtain shelter from their adversaries’ fire. Piorette, master of Bois-de-Chênes, had thrown out outworks, in front of the rock, on the side of the descent to Charmes. He was pacing to and fro, his pipe in his mouth, and carbine slung across his shoulders; and the blue axes of the wood-cutters glistened in the rising sun. On the left of the village, toward Valtin, in the midst of the furze, Marc Divès, on a small black horse, with a long tail, his blade by his side, pointed to the ruins and the sledge road; while an infantry officer and a few National Guards were listening to him. Gaspard Lefèvre stood alone, in front of the group, leaning on his gun; and, on the summit of the hill, by the wood, two or three hundred men were keeping watch.

  The sight of the small number of their defenders caused the hearts of the besieged to grow fearful; all the more so, as the Germans were seven or eight times superior in numbers, and had already begun to form columns of attack, to regain the positions they had lost. Horsemen were conveying on all sides the general’s orders, and the bayonets began to defile.

  “It is all over,” said Hullin to Jérome. “What are five or six hundred men to do against four thousand in line of battle? The Phalsbourgers will return to their houses and say, ‘We have done our duty.’ And Piorette will be crushed.”

  The others thought so too; and their despair was brought to a climax when they suddenly saw a long file of Cossacks riding furiously along the valley of Charmes, with Yégof the madman galloping like the wind at their head, his beard, horse’s tail, dogskin, and red hair floating wildly in the air. He looked up at the rock, and brandished his lance above his head. Reaching the bottom of the valley, he made at once for the enemy’s staff, and coming up to the general, he indicated by gestures the other side of the plateau of Bois-de-Chênes.

  “Ah, the brigand!” shouted Hullin. “See, he tells them that Piorette has no outworks on that side, that they must go round the mountain.”

  In fact, a column began immediately to march in that direction, while another went toward the outworks to mask the movement of the first.

  “Materne,” cried Jean-Claude, “is there no means of sending a ball into the madman?”

  The old hunter shook his head.

  “No,” said he, “it is impossible; he is out of range.”

  Just then, Catherine Lefèvre gave a wild scream like a hawk.

  “Crush them, crush them, as they did at the Blutfeld!”

  And the old woman, an instant before so feeble, threw herself on a mass of rock, lifted it with both hands, advanced, with her streaming gray hair, bent over to the edge of the abyss, and the rock dashed through the space beneath.

  A terrible crash resounded below, pieces of pine flew out on all sides, the great stone rebounded a hundred feet away, and descending the steep slope with fresh impulse, struck Yégof, and crushed him at the feet of the enemy’s general. This was but the work of a few seconds.

  Catherine, upright on the edge of the rock laughed with a rattling sound, which seemed as though it would never end.

  The others, as though all animated with new life, precipitated themselves on the ruins of the old castle, shouting: “Slay them! slay them! Crush them as at the Blutfeld!”

  It is impossible to imagine a more terrible scene. These beings, at death’s very door, lean and haggard as skeletons, found strength for the carnage. They no longer stumbled, they trembled no more; each one lifted his stone and threw it down the precipice, then returned to take another, without even looking to see what was passing below.

  Imagine the stupor of the “kaiserlichs” at this deluge of ruins and rocks. All had turned at the sound of the stones bounding above through the bushes and clumps of trees. At first they stopped as though petrified; but looking higher up, and seeing more and more stones descending, and above it all the spectres coming and going, lifting their arms, and continually discharging fresh burdens—seeing their comrades crushed, fifteen or twenty at a time, an immense cry went up from the valley of Charmes to the Falkenstein, and, notwithstanding the fusillade which they kept up on every side, the Germans scampered away to escape this fearful death.

  In the thickest of the rout, the enemy’s general contrived to rally a battalion, and descend slowly toward the village.

  There was something grand and dignified about this man, so calm in the midst of disaster. He turned from time to time with a gloomy look to watch the bounding rocks, which made ghastly havoc in his columns.

  Jean-Claude observed him, and, notwithstanding the intoxication of his triumph and the certitude of having escaped famine, the old soldier could not suppress a feeling of admiration.

  “Look,” said he to Jérome, “he acts as he did on returning from the Donon and Grosmann: he is the last to retire, and yields only bit by bit. There are, indeed, brave fellows in every country!”

  Marc Divès and Piorette, the witnesses of this stroke of fortune, then descended into the midst of the fir-trees, to try and cut off the retreat of the enemy. But the battalion, reduced to half its strength, formed into square behind the village of Charmes, and slowly ascended the valley of the Sarre, stopping sometimes, like a wounded boar who turns to look at the huntsmen, whenever Piorette’s men or those of Phalsbourg tried to press too nearly upon them.

  Thus terminated the great battle of the Falkenstein, known in the mountains under the name of the Battle of the Rocks.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  CONCLUSION

  The combat was hardly over, when, toward eight o’clock, Marc Divès, Gaspard, and about thirty mountaineers, laden with provisions, ascended the Falkenstein. What a spectacle awaited them! The besieged, stretched on the earth, appeared to be dead. It seemed useless to shake them, to cry into their ears; “Jean-Claude! Catherine? Jérome!” There came no reply. Gaspard Lefèvre, seeing his mother and Louise immovable, with clinched teeth, told Marc, that if they did not return to life, he would blow out his brains with his gun. Marc replied that each man must do as he liked; but for his part he should not do likewise on Hexe-Baizel’s account. At length old Colon, having laid his burden down on a stone, Kasper Materne opened his eyes, and seeing the provisions, his teeth began to chatter like those of a fox pursued by the hounds.

  They immediately understood the meaning of this symptom; and Marc Divès, going from one to the other, passed his gourd under their noses, which sufficed to bring them to. They wanted to drink its contents all up at once; but Doctor Lorquin, notwithstanding his condition, had still enough sense to warn Marc not to allow them to do so, and the slightest action of choking would be fatal to them. Each one, therefore, only received a morsel of bread, an egg, and a glass of wine, which wonderfully revived their spirits; then Catherine, Louise, and the others, were laid on sledges and were brought down to the village.

  It is impossible to describe the enthusiasm and joy of their friends when they saw them ret
urn, leaner than Lazarus when he rose from his grave. They gazed at one another, and embraced, and the process was repeated on the arrival of every newcomer from Abreschwiller, Dagsburg, St. Quirin, or elsewhere.

  Marc Divès was obliged to relate more than twenty times the story of his journey to Phalsbourg. The brave smuggler had had no luck. After having miraculously escaped from the balls of the “kaiserlichs,” he got into the valley of Spartzprod, and fell into the midst of a band of Cossacks, who ransacked him from top to toe. He had been compelled to wander for two weeks around the Russian posts which surrounded the town, exposed to the continual fire of their sentries, and running endless risks of being taken as a spy, before being able to get into the town. Then the commandant, Meunier, at first refused to give any succor, assigning the weakness of his garrison as an excuse, and only at the pressing petitions of the towns-folk at length consented to detach two companies. Listening to his recital, the mountaineers gave vent to their admiration of Marc’s courage and perseverance in the midst of danger.

  “Well,” replied the tall smuggler good-humoredly to those who thus congratulated him, “I have only done my duty; could I have allowed my comrades to perish? I well knew it would not be easy; those rascally Cossacks are sharper than the customs’ folks; they scent you a league off like crows; but all the same, we have outwitted them.”

  Five or six days later everybody was on the alert; Captain Yidal, from Phalsbourg, had left twenty-five men to guard the powder; Gaspard Lefèvre was of the number, and the sturdy fellow went down every morning to the village. The allies had all passed into Lorraine, and were no longer seen in Alsace, except around the fortresses. Soon after came the news of the victories of Champ-Aubert and Montmirail; but a great misfortune was at hand; for the allies, notwithstanding the heroism of our army and the genius of the Emperor, entered Paris.

  It was a terrible shock to Jean-Claude and Catherine, Materne, Jérome and all the mountaineers; but the history of these events does not belong to this tale. It has already been related by others.