"Take care, Schweyer," said I, "take care! If you and your boys go
back, people will say that you have been a traitor to the city brandy,
and that is worse than being a traitor to the flag, especially in a
cooper."
"The devil take thee!" said he, "we ought never to have come."
However, he kept on ascending the hill with me. Nickel and Frantz
followed us without hurrying.
When we reached the plateau we saw lights in the village. All was
still and seemed quiet, although there was a great crowd around the two
first houses.
The door of the _Bunch of Grapes_ was wide open, and its kitchen fire
shone through the passage to the street where my two wagons stood.
This crowd came from the Cossacks who were carousing at Heitz's house,
after tying their horses under the shed. They had made Mother Heitz
cook them a good hot soup, and we saw them plainly, two or three
hundred paces distant, go up and down the outside steps, with jugs and
bottles which they passed from one to another. The thought came to me
that they were drinking my spirits of wine, for a lantern hung behind
the first wagon, and the rascals were all going from it with their
elbows raised. I was so furious that, regardless of danger, I began to
run to put a stop to the pillage.
Fortunately the veterans were in advance of me, or I should have been
murdered by the Cossacks; I had not gone half way when our whole troop
sprang from the fences of the highway, and ran like a pack of wolves,
crying out, "To the bayonet!"
You never saw such confusion, Fritz. In a second the Cossacks were on
their horses, and the veterans in the midst of them; the front of the
inn with its trellis, its pigeon-house, and its little fenced garden,
was lighted up by the firing of muskets and pistols. Heitz's two
daughters stood at the windows, with their arms lifted and screamed so
that they could be heard all over Mittelbronn.
Every minute, in the midst of the confusion, something fell upon the
road, and then the horses started and ran through the fields like deer,
with their heads run out, and their manes and tails flying. The
villagers ran; Father Heitz slipped into the barn, and climbed up the
ladder, and I came up breathless, as if out of my senses.
I had not gone more than fifteen steps when a Cossack, who was running
away at full speed, turned about furiously close to me, with his lance
in the air, and called out, "Hurra!"
I had only time to stoop, and I felt the wind from the lance as it
passed along my body.
I never felt so in my life, Fritz; I felt the chill of death, that
trembling of the flesh, of which the prophet spoke: "Fear came upon me
and trembling; the hair of my flesh stood up."
[Illustration: I SHUDDERED IN MY VERY SOUL AND MY HAIR BRISTLED.]
But what shows the spirit of wisdom and prudence which the Lord puts
into his creatures, when he means to spare them for a good old age, is
that immediately afterward, in spite of my trembling knees, I went and
sat under the first wagon, where the blows of the lances could not
reach me; and there I saw the veterans finish the extermination of the
rascals, who had retreated into the court, and not one of whom escaped.
Five or six were in a heap before the door, and three others were
stretched upon the highway.
This did not take more than ten minutes; then all was dark again, and I
heard the sergeant call: "Cease firing!"
Heitz, who had come down from his hay-loft, had just lighted a lantern;
the sergeant seeing me under the wagon, called out: "Are you wounded,
Father Moses?"
"No," I replied, "but a Cossack tried to thrust his lance into me, and
I got into a safe place."
He laughed aloud, and gave me his hand to help me to rise.
"Father Moses," said he, "I was frightened about you. Wipe your back;
people might think you were not brave."
I laughed too, and thought: "People may think what they please! The
great thing is to live in good health as long as possible."
We had only one wounded, Corporal Duhem, an old man, who bandaged his
own leg, and tried to walk. He had had a blow from a lance in the
right calf. He was placed on the first wagon, and Lehnel, Heitz's
granddaughter, came and gave him a drop of cherry-brandy, which at once
restored his strength and even his good spirits.
"It is the fifteenth," he exclaimed. "I am in for a week at the
hospital; but leave me the bottle for the compresses."
I was delighted to see my twelve pipes on the wagons, for Schweyer and
his two boys had run away, and without their help we could hardly have
reloaded.
I tapped at once at the bung-hole of the hindmost cask to find out how
much was missing. These scamps of Cossacks had already drunk nearly
half a measure of spirits; Father Heitz told me that some of them
scarcely added a drop of water. Such creatures must have throats of
tin; the oldest topers among us could not bear a glass of three-six
without being upset.
At last all was ready and we had only to return to the city. When I
think of it, it all seems before me now: Heitz's large dapple-gray
horses going out of the stable one by one; the sergeant standing by the
dark door with his lantern in his hand, and calling out, "Come, hurry
up! The rascals may come back!" On the road in front of the inn, the
veterans surrounded the wagons; farther on the right some peasants, who
had hastened to the scene with pitchforks and mattocks, were looking at
the dead Cossacks, and myself, standing on the stairs above, singing
praises to God in my heart as I thought how glad Sorle and Zeffen and
little Safel would be to see me come back with our goods.
And then when all is ready, when the little bells jingle, when the whip
snaps, and we start on the way--what delight!
Ah Fritz! everything looks bright after thirty years; we forget fears,
anxieties, and fatigues; but the memory of good men and happy hours
remains with us forever!
The veterans, on both sides of the wagons, with their muskets under
their arms, escorted my twelve pipes as if they were the tabernacle;
Heitz led the horses, and the sergeant and I walked behind.
"Well, Father Moses!" said he laughing, "it has all gone off well; are
you satisfied?"
"More than I can possibly tell, sergeant! What would have been my ruin
will make the fortune of my family, and we owe it all to you."
"Go along," said he, "you are joking."
He laughed, but I felt deeply; to have been in danger of losing
everything, and then to regain it all and make profit out of it--it
makes one feel deeply.
I exclaimed inwardly: "I will praise thee, O Lord, among the people;
and I will sing praises unto thee among the nations.
"For thy mercy is great above the heavens, and thy truth reacheth unto
the clouds."