I went to Monsieur the Commandant's. Entering a parlor, I saw him at
breakfast. He was an old man, but hale, with a red face and good
appetite.
"Ah! it is you!" said he, "Monsieur Goulden is not coming, then?"
"No, Monsieur the Commandant, the bad news has made him ill."
"Ah! I understand," he said, emptying his glass; "yes, it is
unfortunate."
And while I was regulating the clock, he added:
"Well! tell Monsieur Goulden that we will have our revenge. We cannot
always have the upper hand. For fifteen years we have kept the drums
beating over them, and it is only right to let them have this little
morsel of consolation. And then our honor is safe; we were not beaten
fighting; without the cold and the snow, those poor Cossacks would have
had a hard time of it. But patience; the skeletons of our regiments
will soon be filled, and then let them beware."
I wound up the clock; he rose and came to look at it, for he was a
great amateur in clock-making. He pinched my ear in a merry mood; and
then, as I was going away, he cried as he buttoned up his overcoat,
which he had opened before beginning breakfast:
"Tell Father Goulden to rest easy; the dance will begin again in the
spring; the Kalmucks will not always have winter fighting for them.
Tell him that."
"Yes, Monsieur the Commandant," I answered, shutting the door.
His burly figure and air of good humor comforted me a little; but in
all the other houses I went to, at the Horwiches, the Frantz-Tonis, the
Durlaches, everywhere I heard only lamentations. The women especially
were in misery; the men said nothing, but walked about with heads
hanging down, and without even looking to see what I was doing.
Toward ten o'clock there only remained two persons for me to see:
Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlan, one of the ancient nobility, who
lived at the end of the main street, with Madame Chamberlan-d'Ecof and
Mademoiselle Jeanne, their daughter. They were _emigres_, and had
returned about three or four years before. They saw no one in the
city, and only three or four old priests in the environs. Monsieur de
la Vablerie-Chamberlan loved only the chase. He had six dogs at the
end of the yard, and a two-horse carriage; Father Robert, of the Rue
des Capucins, served them as coachman, groom, footman, and huntsman.
Monsieur de la Vablerie-Chamberlan always wore a hunting vest, a
leathern cap, and boots and spurs. All the town called him the hunter,
but they said nothing of Madame nor of Mademoiselle de Chamberlan.
I was very sad when I pushed open the heavy door, which closed with a
pulley whose creaking echoed through the vestibule. What was then my
surprise to hear, in the midst of general mourning, the tones of a song
and harpsichord! Monsieur de la Vablerie was singing, and Mademoiselle
Jeanne accompanying him. I knew not, in those days, that the
misfortune of one was often the joy of others, and I said to myself
with my hand on the latch: "They have not heard the news from Russia."
But while I stood thus, the door of the kitchen opened, and
Mademoiselle Louise, their servant, putting out her head, asked:
"Who is there?"
"It is I, Mademoiselle Louise."
"Ah! it is you, Monsieur Joseph. Come this way."
They had their clock in a large parlor which they rarely entered; the
high windows, with blinds, remained closed; but there was light enough
for what I had to do. I passed then through the kitchen and regulated
the antique clock, which was a magnificent piece of work of white
marble. Mademoiselle Louise looked on.
"You have company, Mademoiselle Louise?" said I.
"No, but monsieur ordered me to let no one in."
"You are very cheerful here."
"Ah! yes," she said; "and it is for the first time in years; I don't
know what is the matter."
My work done, I left the house, meditating on these occurrences, which
seemed to me strange. The idea never entered my mind that they were
rejoicing at our defeat.
Then I turned the corner of the street to go to Father Feral's, who was
called the "Standard-bearer," because, at the age of forty-five, he, a
blacksmith, and for many years the father of a family, had carried the
colors of the volunteers of Phalsbourg in '92, and only returned after
the Zurich campaign. He had his three sons in the army of Russia,
Jean, Louis, and George Feral. George was commandant of dragoons; the
two others, officers of infantry.
I imagined the grief of Father Feral while I was going, but it was
nothing to what I saw when I entered his room. The poor old man, blind
and bald, was sitting in an arm-chair behind the stove, his head bowed
upon his breast, and his sightless eyes open, and staring as if he saw
his three sons stretched at his feet. He did not speak, but great
drops of sweat rolled down his forehead on his long, thin cheeks, while
his face was pale as that of a corpse. Four or five of his old
comrades of the times of the Republic--Father Desmarets, Father Nivoi,
old Paradis, and tall old Froissard--had come to console him. They sat
around him in silence, smoking their pipes, and looking as if they
themselves needed comfort.
From time to time one or the other would say: "Come, come, Feral! are
we no longer veterans of the army of the Sambre-and-Meuse?"
Or,
"Courage, Standard-bearer: courage! Did we not carry the battery at
Fleurus?"
Or some other similar remark.
But he did not reply; every minute he sighed, his aged, hollow cheeks
swelled; then he leaned over, and the old friends made signs to each
other, shaking their heads, as if to say:
"This looks bad."
I hastened to regulate the clock and depart, for to see the poor old
man in such a plight made my heart bleed.
When I arrived at home, I found Monsieur Goulden at his work-bench.
"You are returned, Joseph," said he. "Well?"
"Well, Monsieur Goulden, you had reason to stay away; it is terrible."
And I told him all in detail.
"Yes; I knew it all," said he, sadly, "but our misfortunes are only
beginning; these Prussians and Austrians and Russians and
Spaniards--all the nations we have been beating since eighteen hundred
and four, are now taking advantage of our ill luck to fall upon us. We
gave them kings and queens they did not know from Adam nor Eve, and
whom they did not want, it seems, and now they are going to bring back
the old ones with all their trains of nobles, and after pouring out our
blood for the Emperor's brothers, we are about losing all we gained by
the Revolution. Instead of being first among the first we will be last
among the last. While you were away I was thinking of all this; it is
unavoidable--We relied upon soldiers alone, and now that we have no
more, we are nothing."
He arose. I set the table, and, whilst we were dining in silence, the
bells of the steeples began to ring.
"Some one is dead in the city," said Monsieur Goulden.
"Indeed? I did not hear of it."
Ten minutes after, the Rabbi Rose came in to have a glass put in his
watch.
"Who is dead?" asked Monsieur Goulden.
"Poor old Standard-bearer."
"What! Father Feral?"
"Yes, near an hour ago. Father Desmarets and several others tried to
comfort him; at last he asked them to read to him the last letter of
his son George, the commandant of dragoons, in which he says that next
spring he hoped to embrace his father with a colonel's epaulettes. As
the old man heard this, he tried to rise, but fell back with his head
upon his knees. That letter had broken his heart."
Monsieur Goulden made no remark on the news.
"Here is your watch, Monsieur Rose," said he, handing it back to the
rabbi; "it is twelve sous."
Monsieur Rose departed, and we finished our dinner in silence.
V
A few days after, the gazette announced that the Emperor was in Paris,
and that the King of Rome and the Empress Marie-Louise were about to be
crowned. Monsieur the Mayor, his coadjutor and the municipal
councillors now spoke only of the rights of the throne, and Professor
Burguet, the elder, wrote a speech on the subject which Baron
Parmentier read. But all this produced but little effect on the
people, because every one was afraid of being carried off by the
conscription, and knew that many more soldiers were needed; all were in
trouble, and I grew thinner day by day. In vain would Monsieur Goulden
say: "Fear nothing, Joseph; you cannot march. Consider, my child, that
any one as lame as you would give out at the end of the first mile."
But all this did not lessen my uneasiness.
Monsieur Goulden, often, too, when we were alone at work, would say to
me:
"If those who are now masters, and who tell us that God placed them
here on earth to make us happy, would foresee at the beginning of a
campaign the poor old men, the hapless mothers, whose very hearts they
have torn away to satisfy their pride--if they could see the tears and
hear the groans of these poor people when they are coldly told 'Your
son is dead; you will see him no more; he perished, crushed by horses'
hoofs, or torn to pieces by a cannon-ball, or died mayhap afar off in a
hospital, after having his arm or leg cut off,--burning with fever,
without one kind word to console him, but calling for his parents as
when he was an infant,'--if, I say, these haughty ones of earth could
thus see the tears of those mothers, I do not believe that one among
them would be barbarous enough to continue the war. But they think
nothing of this; they think other folks do not love their children as
they love theirs; they think people are no more than beasts. They are
wrong; all their great genius, their lofty notions of glory, are as
nothing, for there is only one thing for which a people should fly to
arms--men, women, children--old and young. It is when their liberty is
assailed as ours was in '92--then all should die or conquer together;
he who remains behind is a coward, who would have others fight for
him;--the victory then is not for a few, but for all;--then sons and
fathers are defending their families; if they are killed, it is a
misfortune, to be sure, but they die for their rights. Such a man,
Joseph, is the only just one, the one of which no one can complain; all
others are shameful, and the glory they bring is not glory fit for a
man, but only for a wild beast."
On the eighth of January, a huge placard was posted on the town-hall,
stating that the Emperor would levy, after a _senatus-consultus_, as
they said in those days, in the first place, one hundred and fifty
thousand conscripts of 1813; then one hundred _cohortes_ of the first
call of 1812 who thought they had already escaped; then one hundred
thousand conscripts of from 1809 to 1812, and so on to the end; so that
every loop-hole was closed, and we would have a larger army than before
the Russian expedition.
When Father Fouze, the glazier, came to us with this news, one morning,
I almost fell, through faintness, for I thought:
"Now they will take all, even fathers of families. I am lost!"
Monsieur Goulden poured some water on my neck; my arms hung useless by
my side; I was pale as a corpse.
But I was not the only one upon whom the placard had such an effect:
that year many young men refused to go; some broke their teeth off, so
as not to be able to tear the cartridge; others blew off their thumbs
with pistols, so as not to be able to hold a musket; others, again,
fled to the woods; they proclaimed them "refractories," but they had
not _gendarmes_ enough to capture them.
The mothers of families took courage to revolt after a manner, and to
encourage their sons not to obey the _gendarmes_. They aided them in
every way; they cried out against the Emperor, and the clergy of all
denominations sustained them in so doing. The cup was at last full!
The very day of the proclamation I went to Quatre-Vents; but it was not
now in the joy of my heart; it was as the most miserable of unhappy
wretches, about to be bereft of love and life. I could scarcely walk,
and when I reached there I did not know how to announce the evil
tidings; but I saw at a glance that they knew all, for Catharine was
weeping bitterly, and Aunt Gredel was pale with indignation.
We embraced in silence, and the first words Aunt Gredel said to me, as
in her anger she pushed her gray hair behind her ears, were:
"You shall not go! What have we to do with wars? The priest himself
told us it was at last too much, and that we ought to have peace! You
shall not go! Do not cry, Catharine; I say he shall not go!"
She was fairly green with anger, and rattled her kettles noisily
together, saying:
"This carnage has lasted long enough. Our two poor cousins, Kasper and
Yokel, are already going to lose their lives in Spain for this Emperor,
and now he comes to ask us for the younger ones. He is not satisfied
to have slain three hundred thousand in Russia. Instead of thinking of
peace, like a man of sense, he thinks only of massacring the few who
remain. We will see! We will see!"
"In the name of Heaven! Aunt Gredel, be quiet; speak lower," said I,
looking at the window. "If they hear you, we are lost."
"I speak for them to hear me," she replied. "Your Napoleon does not
frighten me. He commenced by closing our mouths, so that he might do
as he pleased; but the end approaches. Four young women are losing
their husbands in our village alone, and ten poor young men are forced
to abandon everything, despite father, mother, religion, justice, God!
Is not this horrible?"