All this, Fritz, was but the beginning of troubles.
You should have seen the city the next morning, at about eleven
o'clock, when the engineering officers had finished inspecting the
ramparts, and the tidings suddenly spread that there were needed
seventy-two platforms inside the bastions, three bomb-proof
block-houses, for thirty men each, at the right and left of the German
gate, ten palankas with battlements forming stronghold intrenchments
for forty men, and four blindages upon the great square of the
mayoralty to shelter each a hundred and ten men; and when it was known
that the citizens would be obliged to work at all these, to provide
themselves with shovels, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows, and the peasants
to bring trees with their own horses!
As for Sorle, Safel, and myself, we did not even know what blindages
and palankas were; we asked our neighbor Bailly, an old armorer, what
they were for, and he answered with a smile:
"You will find out, neighbor, when you hear the balls roar and the
shells hiss. It would take too long to explain. You will see, by and
by; never too late to learn."
Imagine how the people looked! I remember that everybody ran to the
square, where our mayor, Baron Parmentier, made a speech. We ran there
with all the rest.
Sorle held me by the arm, and Safel by the skirt of my coat.
There, in front of the mayoralty, the whole city, men, women, and
children, formed in a semicircle, and listened in the deepest silence,
now and then crying all together, "Vive l'Empereur!"
Parmentier, a tall, thin man, in a sky-blue dress-coat, a white cravat,
and the tri-colored sash around his waist, stood on the top of the
steps of the guard-house, with the members of the municipal council
behind him, under the arch, and shouted out:
"Phalsburgians! The time has come in which to show your devotion to
the Empire. A year ago all Europe was with us, now all Europe is
against us. We should have everything to fear without the energy and
power of the people. He who will not do his duty now will be a traitor
to his country! Inhabitants of Phalsburg, show what you are! Remember
that your children have perished through the treachery of the allies.
Avenge them! Let every one be obedient to the military authority, for
the sake of the safety of France," etc.
Only to hear him made one's flesh creep, and I said to myself:
"Now there will not be time for the spirits of wine to get here--that
is plain! The allies are on their way!"
Elias the butcher, and Kalmes Levy the ribbon-merchant, were standing
near us. Instead of crying "Vive l'Empereur!" with the rest, they said
to each other:
"Good! we are not barons, you and I! Barons, counts, and dukes have
but to defend themselves. Are we to think only of their interests?"
But all the old soldiers, and especially those of the Republic, old
Goulden, the clockmaker, Desmarels, the Egyptian--creatures with not a
hair left on their heads, nor as much as four teeth to hold their
pipes--these creatures fell in with the mayor, and cried out:
"Vive la France! We must defend ourselves to the death!"