We both looked and saw a hussar quartermaster, a withered, gray old
man, with quantities of chevrons on his arm, arrive in great haste.
All my life I shall have that man before my eyes; his smoking horse,
his flying sabretash, his sword clinking against his boots; his cap and
jacket covered with frost; his long, bony, wrinkled face, his pointed
nose, long chin, and yellow eyes. I shall always see him riding like
the wind, then stopping his rearing horse under the arch in front of
us, and calling out to us with a voice like a trumpet: "Where is the
governor's house, sergeant?"
"The first house at the right, quartermaster. What is the news?"
"The enemy is in Alsace!"
Those who have never seen such men--men accustomed to long warfare, and
hard as iron--can have no idea of them. And then if you had heard the
exclamation, "The enemy is in Alsace!" it would have made you tremble.
The veterans had gone away; the sergeant, as he saw the hussar fasten
his horse at the governor's door, said to me: "Ah, well, Father Moses,
now we shall see the whites of their eyes!"
He laughed, and the others seemed pleased.
As for myself, I set forth quickly, with my head bent, and in my terror
repeating to myself the words of the prophet:
"One post shall run to meet another, and one messenger to meet another,
to show the king that his passages are stopped, and the reeds they have
burned with fire, and the men of war are affrighted.
"The mighty men have forborne to fight, they have remained in their
holds, their might hath failed, and the bars are broken.
"Set ye up a standard in the land, blow the trumpet among the nations,
prepare the nations against her, call together against her the
kingdoms, appoint a captain against her.
"And the land shall tremble and sorrow; for every purpose of the Lord
shall be performed, to make the land a desolation without an
inhabitant!"