"Well," said he, laughing, "you have made your first attack; you have
brought us back some provisions. Well and good!"
"Yes, sergeant, but it is very sad!"
"What, sad? Thirty oxen, forty-five cows, some pigs and goats--it is
magnificent!"
"To be sure, but if you had heard the cries of these poor people, if
you had seen them!"
"Bah! bah!" said he. "_Primo_, Father Moses, soldiers must live; men
must have their rations if they are going to fight. I have often seen
these things done in Germany and Spain and Italy! Peasants are
selfish; they want to keep their own; they do not regard the honor of
the flag; that is trash! In some respects they would be worse than
townspeople, if we were foolish enough to listen to them; we must be
strict."
"We have been, sergeant," I replied; "but if I had been master, we
should not have robbed these poor wretches; they are in a pitiable
condition enough already."
"You are too compassionate, Father Moses, and you think that others are
like yourself. But we must remember that peasants, citizens,
civilians, live only by the soldiers, and have all the profit without
wanting to pay any of the cost. If we followed your advice we should
die of hunger in this little town; our peasants would support the
Russians, the Austrians, and Bavarians at our expense. This pack of
scoundrels would be having a good time from morning to night, and the
rest of us would be as poor as church-mice. That would not do--there
is no sense in it!"
He laughed aloud. We had now come into our passage, and I went
upstairs.
"Is it thou, Moses?" asked Sorle in the darkness, for it was nightfall.
"Yes, the sergeant and I."
"Ah, good!" said she; "I was expecting you."
"Madame Moses," exclaimed the sergeant, "your husband can boast now of
being a real soldier; he has not yet seen fire, but he has charged with
his bayonet."
"Ah!" said Sorle, "I am very glad to see him back."
In the room, through the little white door-curtains, we saw the lamp
burning, and smelt the soup. The sergeant went to his room, as usual,
and we into ours. Sorle looked at me with her great black eyes, she
saw how pale I was, and knew what I was thinking about. She took from
me my cartridge-box, and placed my musket in the closet.
"Where is Safel?" I asked.
"He must be in the square. I sent him to see if you had come back.
Hark! There he is coming up!"
Then I heard the child come up the stairs; he opened the door at once
and ran joyfully to embrace me.
We sat down to dinner, and, in spite of my trouble, I ate with a good
appetite, having taken nothing since morning.
Suddenly Sorle said: "If the invoice does not come before the city
gates are closed we shall not have to pay anything, for goods are at
the risk of the merchant until they are delivered. And we have not
received the inventory."
"Yes," I replied, "you are right; M. Quataya, instead of sending us the
spirits of wine at once, waited a week before answering us. If he had
sent the twelve pipes that day or the day after, they would be here by
this time. The delay is not our fault."
You see, Fritz, how anxious we were; but, as the sergeant came to smoke
his pipe at the corner of the stove, as usual, we said no more about it.
I spoke only of my fears in regard to Zeffen, Baruch, and their
children, in an exposed town like Saverne. The sergeant tried to put
my mind at ease, and said that in such places they made, to be sure,
all sorts of requisitions in wines, brandies, provisions, carriages,
carts, and horses, but, except in case of resistance, the people were
let alone, and the soldiers even tried to keep on good terms with them.
We kept on talking till nearly ten o'clock; then the sergeant, who had
to keep guard at the German gate, went away, and we went to bed.
This was the night of the twenty-second and twenty-third of December, a
very cold night.