The Germans had quitted Grandfontaine, Framont, and even Schirmeck.
At a distance, very far off, on the plains of Alsace, dark points
might be remarked indicating their battalions in retreat. Hullin awoke
early, and made the round of the camp. He stood for a few moments
contemplating the scene that lay extended before him, the cannon
pointed towards the gorge, the volunteers stretched around the fire,
the armed sentinels; then, satisfied with his inspection, he returned
to the farm where Louise and Catherine were still sleeping.
The greyish light of dawn was stealing through the chamber. A few
wounded in the next apartment were beginning to be attacked by fever;
they might be heard calling on their wives and mothers. A little later,
the hum of voices and the footsteps of people coming to and fro broke
the still silence of the night. Catherine and Louise awoke; and the
first sight that met their eyes was Jean-Claude sitting in a corner of
the window-seat, gazing affectionately upon them; and, ashamed of their
apparent laziness, they rose at once, to go and embrace him.
"Well?" said Catherine, inquiringly.
"Well, they are gone; we are left masters of the route, as I foresaw."
This assurance did not appear to tranquillise the old farm-mistress;
she had to look out of window, and see with her own eyes the Germans
in full retreat as far as Alsace. And even then all the remainder of
the day her stern countenance still preserved the expression of an
indefinable anxiety.
Between eight and nine o'clock, the pastor Saumaize arrived from the
village of Charmes. Some mountaineers then came down to the foot of the
mountain to carry away the dead; they then dug, to the right of the
farm, a long ditch, where volunteers and _kaiserlicks_, whether clad in
uniform or coats, hats or shakos, were quietly ranged side by side.
The pastor Saumaize, a tall old man, with white hair, read the ancient
form of prayer for the dead in that rapid and mysterious tone which
penetrates to the very bottom of the soul, and seems to invoke bygone
generations to attest to the living the horrors of the tomb.
All day long carriages and _schlittes_[11] kept arriving to remove the
wounded, who were imploring to be allowed to see their native village
once more. Doctor Lorquin, fearing to increase their irritation, was
forced to consent to it. About four o'clock Catherine and Hullin found
themselves alone in the large house-room of the farm. Louise had gone
to prepare the supper. Out of doors large flakes of snow continued to
fall from the skies, and lay thick upon the window-ledges, and from
moment to moment a sleigh was to be seen setting out silently with its
sick burden lying buried in the straw; sometimes a man, sometimes a
woman, leading the horse by the bridle. Catherine, seated by the table,
was folding bandages with an absent air.
"Why, what's the matter with you, Catherine?" inquired Hullin. "Since
this morning I have noticed how low-spirited you seem. And yet
everything is prospering with us."
The old farm-mistress, then slowly pushing back the linen from her,
replied:
"It is true, Jean-Claude; I am troubled."
"Troubled! and what about? The enemy is in full retreat. Only just now,
Frantz Materne, whom I had sent to reconnoitre, and all the scouts from
Piorette, from Jerôme, and from Labarbe, have come to tell me that the
Germans are returning to Mutzig. Old Materne and Kasper, after helping
to remove the dead, were informed at Grandfontaine that there was
nothing to be seen of them on the side of Saint Blaize-la-Roche. All
this proves that our Spanish dragoons gave the enemy a warm reception
on the road to Senones, and that they were in fear of having their
retreat cut off by Schirmeck. I cannot see, therefore, Catherine, what
it is you are tormenting yourself about."
And as Hullin regarded her with a questioning look, "You will laugh at
me again," said she: "I have had a dream."
"A dream?"
"Yes, the same that I had at the farm of Bois-des-Chênes."
Then, growing excited, she went on in almost an angry tone:
"You may say what you like, Jean-Claude; but a great danger threatens
us. Yes, yes, all this, in your opinion, has not a shadow of common
sense. Moreover, this was not a dream; it was all like an old story
coming back to your mind; something that you see again in your
sleep, and that you recognise again. Listen. We were, as to-day, after
a great victory, somewhere, I don't know where, in a sort of great
wooden barrack, with heavy rafters across, and palings round it. We
were not in fear of anything; all the faces that I saw, I knew; you
were there, and Marc Divès, and many others, old people dead long ago;
my father, and old Hugh Rochart, of the Harberg, uncle of the one
who has just died, all wearing gaberdines of thick grey cloth, long
beards, and bare-necked. We had just won a similar victory, and we
were drinking out of a large red earthen pot, when suddenly a cry was
raised: "The enemy is returning!" and Yégof, on horseback, with his
long beard, his pointed crown, a hatchet in his hand, his eyes glaring
like those of a wolf, appeared before me in the darkness of the night.
I rush upon him with a stake--he awaits me; and from that moment I
see nothing more; only I feel a terrible pain in my neck, a gust of
cold wind passes over my face, and it seems to me as if my head were
dangling at the end of a cord. It was that miscreant Yégof who had
hung my head at his saddle, and was galloping away!" continued the old
farm-mistress, in such a tone of conviction that it made Hullin shudder.
[Illustration: "PASTOR SAUMAIZE READ THE PRAYERS FOR THE DEAD."]
There was a few moments' silence; then Jean-Claude, recovering from his
stupefied inaction, replied:
"It was a dream. I myself have such dreams sometimes. Yesterday you
were disturbed, agitated--all that noise, those shouts."
"No," she retorted, in a firm tone, resuming her occupation--"no, it is
not that. And to tell you the truth, during the whole of the battle,
and even at the very moment when the cannon was roaring against us, I
was not one bit afraid; I was certain beforehand that we could not be
beaten: I had already seen that, but now I am afraid!"
"But the Germans have evacuated Schirmeck; all the line of the Vosges
is defended; we have more people than we require; they keep on coming
every minute."
"No matter!"
Hullin shrugged his shoulders.
"Come, come, you are excited, Catherine; try to be calm, and think
of pleasanter things. As for all these dreams, look you, I value
them just as much as I do the Grand Turk, with his pipe and his blue
stockings. The great thing is to be well on our guard, to have plenty
of ammunition, men and cannon; these are worth much more than the very
brightest of dreams."
"You are laughing at me, Jean-Claude."
"No; but to hear a woman of good sense and great courage speak like
you, reminds one, in spite of oneself, of Yégof, who boasts of having
lived sixteen hundred years ago."
"Who knows," said the old woman, in a persistent tone, "whether he
recollects what others have forgotten?"
Hullin was about to relate to her his conversation of the evening
before at the camp with the fool, thinking thus to upset from top
to bottom all her dismal visions; but seeing that she held the same
opinion as Yégof on the question of the sixteen hundred years, the
brave fellow said nothing more, and resumed his silent walk, with head
hung down and careworn brow. "She is mad," he was thinking to himself;
"one more little shock, and it will be all over with her."
Catherine, after a moment, in which she seemed to be lost in thought,
was just about to say something, when Louise came skimming in like a
swallow, exclaiming, in her sweetest voice:--
"Mother Lefévre, Mother Lefévre, here is a letter from Gaspard!"
Then the old farm-mistress, whose hooked nose seemed bent down till it
almost met her lips, so indignant was she to see Hullin turn her dream
into ridicule, raised her head, and the deep wrinkles in her cheeks
relaxed. She took the letter, looked at the red seal, and said to the
young girl:
"Kiss me, Louise; it is a good letter."
And Louise immediately bestowed on her a warm embrace.
Hullin had joined them, quite delighted at this incident, and
Brainstein, the postman, with his thick shoes an inch deep in snow,
stooping shoulders, and his two hands leaning on his stick, stationed
himself at the door with a tired look.
The old woman put on her spectacles, opened the letter in a sort of
meditative way under the impatient eyes of Jean-Claude and Louise, and
read aloud:
"This, my good mother, comes to tell you that all is as well as can
be, and that I arrived on Tuesday evening at Phalsbourg, just as they
were closing the gates. The Cossacks were already on the side of
Saverne; we had to keep up a constant fire all night against their
vanguard. The next day, an envoy came to summon us to surrender the
place. The governor, Meunier, made answer that he might go and hang
himself elsewhere, and three days after great showers of bombs and
howitzer-shells began to rain upon the town. The Russians have three
batteries, one on the side of Mittelbronn, the other at the barracks
above, and the third behind the tile-kiln of Pernette; but the red-hot
shot did us the most harm; they burn the houses from bottom to top,
and when some part is set fire to, then come the howitzer-shells in
a body and hinder people from putting it out. The women and children
do not leave the block houses; the inhabitants remain with us upon
the ramparts; they are brave fellows; there are among them some
old warriors of Sambre and Meuse, of Italy and Egypt, who have not
forgotten their old skill. It made me sorry to see the old greybeards
hard at work again with the guns. I warrant you, no bullet misses its
mark with them. But, for all that, when you've made the world tremble,
it's rather hard to be forced, in your last days, to defend your
barrack and your last morsel of bread."
"Yes, it is hard," put in Dame Catherine, wiping her eyes; "only to
think of it makes one sorrowful." Then she continued:--
"The day before yesterday the governor decided to make an attack upon
the Russian battery at the back of the tile-kiln. You know that the
Russians are in the habit of breaking the ice of the tank to bathe in
companies of twenty or thirty, and that they then go to dry themselves
in the furnace of the brick-kiln. Good. About four o'clock, as day
was departing, we went out by the postern of the arsenal, and passed
through the Allée des Vaches, gun on shoulder, at a rapid trot. A
few minutes after, we opened a running fire on the Cossacks who were
bathing in the tank. All the rest then came out of the tile-kiln. They
had only just time to catch up their cartridge-pouches, shoulder their
guns, and place themselves in rank, all naked, like so many savages as
they were, in the snow. But, for all that, the beggars were ten times
more numerous than we, and they were just commencing a movement in the
direction of the little chapel of St. Jean, in order to surround us,
when the cannon from the arsenal began to pour such a hail of shot
in their direction as I never saw the like of before. The grape shot
carried away whole files right out of sight. At the end of a quarter
of an hour, all in a body began a retreat upon Quatre-Vents, without
stopping to pick up their pantaloons, the officers at the head of
them, and showers of bullets bringing up the rear. Papa Jean-Claude
would have laughed fit to crack his sides at the sight. At length, at
night-fall we returned to the town, after having stormed the battery,
and thrown two eight-pound shot into the brick-kiln. This is our
first expedition. To-day, I am writing to you from the barracks of
Bois-des-Chênes, where we are quartered to provision the place. All
this may last for months. I have already told you that the Allies are
returning by the valley of Dosenheim as far as Weschem, and that they
are gaining by thousands the road to Paris. Ah! if it were only God's
will that the Emperor should have the upper hand in Lorraine or in
Champagne, not a single one of them would escape. However, he who lives
longest sees the most. They are sounding the recall from Phalsbourg;
we have not fared badly in the way of oxen, cows, and goats in the
neighbourhood. There will be a little fighting to get them all in safe
and sound. Farewell for the present, my good mother, my dear Louise,
Papa Jean-Claude; my affectionate and loving remembrances to you all."
As she finished reading, Catherine Lefévre was quite overcome with
emotion.
"What a brave boy!" said she; "he knows nothing but his duty. In
short, you hear, Louise, he sends you his affectionate and loving
remembrances."
Louise then throwing herself into her arms, they gave each other a
hearty embrace, and Dame Catherine, in spite of the firmness of her
character, could not restrain two big tears which slowly coursed each
other down her wrinkled cheeks; then recovering herself:
"Come, come," said she, "all is going well. Here, Brainstein, you
go and eat a piece of beef and drink a glass of wine. Here is a
crown-piece for your trouble; I should like to have to give you a
similar sum every week for just such another letter."
The postman, delighted with this gratuity, followed the old woman;
Louise walked behind, and Jean-Claude came after, impatient to question
Brainstein on all that he had learnt by the way touching present
events, but he gained nothing new from him, except that the Allies
were investing Bitche and Lutzelstein, and that they had lost several
hundred men in endeavouring to force the defile of the Graufthal.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 11: A sort of sledge peculiar to the district of the Vosges.]