The city was joyful the next day, notwithstanding the firing in the
night. A number of men who came from the ramparts about seven o'clock,
came down our street shouting: "They are gone! There is not a single
Cossack to be seen in the direction of Quatre-Vents, nor behind the
barracks of the Bois-de-Chenes! _Vive l'Empereur_!"
Everybody ran to the bastions.
I had opened one of our windows, and leaned out in my nightcap. It was
thawing, the snow was sliding from the roofs, and that in the streets
was melting in the mud. Sorle, who was turning up our bed, called to
me: "Do shut the window, Moses! We shall catch cold from the draught!"
But I did not listen. I laughed as I thought: "The rascals have had
enough of my old bars and rusty nails; they have found out that they
fly a good way: experience is a good thing!"
I could have stayed there till night to hear the neighbors talk about
the clearing away of the Russians, and those who came from the ramparts
declaring that there was not one to be seen in the whole region. Some
said that they might come back, but that seemed to me contrary to
reason. It was clear that the villains would not quit the country at
once, that they would still for a long time pillage the villages, and
live on the peasants; but to believe that the officers would excite
their men to take our city, or that the soldiers would be foolish
enough to obey them, never entered my head.
At last Zeffen came into our room to dress the children, and I shut the
window. A good fire roared in the stove. Sorle made ready our
breakfast, while Zeffen washed her little Esdras in a basin of warm
water.
"Ah, now, if I could only hear from Baruch, it would all be well," said
she.
Little David played on the floor with Safel, and I thanked the Lord for
having delivered us from the scoundrels.
While we were at breakfast, I said to my wife: "It has all gone well!
We shall be shut up for a while until the Emperor has carried the day,
but they will not fire upon us, they will be satisfied with blockading
us; and bread, wine, meats, and brandies, will grow dearer. It is the
right time for us to sell, or else we might fare like the people of
Samaria when Ben-Hadad besieged their city. There was a great famine,
so that the head of an ass sold for four-score pieces of silver, and
the fourth part of a cab of dove's-dung for five pieces. It was a good
price; but still the merchants were holding back, when a noise of
chariots and horses and of a great host came from heaven, and made the
Syrians escape with Ben-Hadad, and after the people had pillaged their
camp, a measure of fine flour sold for only a shekel, and two measures
of barley for a shekel. So let us try to sell while things are at a
reasonable price; we must begin in good season."
Sorle assented, and after breakfast I went down to the cellar to go on
with the mixing.
Many of the mechanics had gone back to their work. Klipfel's hammer
sounded on his anvil. Chanoine put back his rolls into his windows,
and Tribolin, the druggist, his bottles of red and blue water behind
his panes.
Confidence was restored everywhere. The citizen-gunners had taken off
their uniforms, and the joiners had come back to finish our counter;
the noise of the saw and plane filled the house.
Everybody was glad to return to his own business, for war brings
nothing but harm; the sooner it is over the better.
As I carried my jugs from one tun to another, in the cellar, I saw the
passers-by stop before our old shop, and heard them say to each other,
"Moses is going to make his fortune with the brandy; these rascals of
Jews always have good scent; while we have been selling this month
past, he has been buying. Now that we are shut up he can sell at any
price he pleases."
You can judge whether that was not pleasant to hear! A man's greatest
happiness is to succeed in his business; everybody is obliged to say:
"This man has neither army, nor generals, nor cannon, he has nothing
but his own wit, like everybody else; when he succeeds he owes it to
himself, and not to the courage of others. And then he ruins no one;
he does not rob, or steal, or kill; while, in war, the strongest
crushes the weakest and often the best."
So I worked on with great zeal, and would have kept on till night if
little Safel had not come to call me to dinner. I was hungry, and was
going upstairs, glad in the thought of sitting down in the midst of my
children, when the call-beat began on the Place d'Armes, before the
town-house. During a blockade a court-martial sits continually at the
mayoralty to try those who do not answer to the call. Some of my
neighbors were already leaving their houses with their muskets on their
shoulders. I had to go up very hastily, and swallow a little soup, a
morsel of meat, and a glass of wine.
I was very pale. Sorle, Zeffen, and the children said not a word. The
drum corps continued the call to arms; it came down the main street and
stopped at last before our house, on the little square. Then I ran for
my cartridge-box and musket.
"Ah!" said Sorle, "we thought we were going to have a quiet time, and
now it is all beginning again."
Zeffen did not speak, but burst into tears.
At that moment the old Rabbi Heymann came in, with his old martin-skin
cap drawn down to the nape of his neck.
"For heaven's sake let the women and children hurry to the casemates!
An envoy has come threatening to burn the whole city if the gates are
not opened. Fly, Sorle! Zeffen, fly!"
Imagine the cries of the women on hearing this; as for myself, my hair
stood on end.
"The rascals have no shame in them!" I exclaimed. "They have no pity
on women or children! May the curse of heaven fall on them!"
Zeffen threw herself into my arms. I did not know what to do.
But the old rabbi said: "They are doing to us what our people have done
to them! So the words of the Lord are fulfilled: 'As thou hast done
unto thy brother so shall it be done unto thee!'--But, you must fly
quickly."
Below, the call-beat had ceased; my knees trembled. Sorle, who never
lost courage, said to me: "Moses, run to the square, make haste, or
they will send you to prison!"
Her judgment was always right; she pushed me by the shoulders, and in
spite of Zeffen's tears I went down, calling out: "Rabbi, I trust in
you--save them!"
I could not see clearly; I went through the snow, miserable man that I
was, running to the townhouse where the National Guard was already
assembled. I came just in time to answer the call, and you can imagine
my trouble, for Zeffen, Sorle, Safel, and the little ones were
abandoned before my eyes. What was Phalsburg to me? I would have
opened the gates in a minute to have had peace.
The others did not look any better pleased than myself; they were all
thinking of their families.
Our governor, Moulin, Lieutenant-Colonel Brancion, and Captains
Renvoye, Vigneron, Grebillet, with their great military caps put on
crosswise, these alone felt no anxiety. They would have murdered and
burnt everything for the Emperor. The governor even laughed, and said
that he would surrender the city when the shells set his
pocket-handkerchief on fire. Judge from this, how much sense such a
being had!
While they were reviewing us, groups of the aged and infirm, of women
and children, passed across the square on their way to the casemates.
I saw our little wagon go by with the roll of coverings and mattresses
on it. The old rabbi was between the shafts--Safel pushed behind.
Sorle carried David, and Zeffen Esdras. They were walking in the mud,
with their hair loose as if they were escaping from a fire; but they
did not speak, and went on silently in the midst of that great trouble.
I would have given my life to go and help them--I must stay in the
ranks. Ah, the old men of my time have seen terrible things! How
often have they thought:--"Happy is he who lives alone in the world; he
suffers only for himself, he does not see those whom he loves weeping
and groaning, without the power to help them."
Immediately after the review, detachments of citizen-gunners were sent
to the armories to man the pieces, the firemen were sent to the old
market to get out the pumps, and the rest of us, with half a battalion
of the Sixth Light Infantry, were sent to the guard-house on the
square, to relieve the guards and supply patrols.
The two other battalions had already gone to the advance-posts of
Trois-Maisons, of La Fontaine-du-Chateau,--to the block-houses, the
half moons, the Ozillo farm, and the Maisons-Rouges, outside of the
city.
Our post at the mayoralty consisted of thirty-two men; sixteen soldiers
of the line below, commanded by Lieutenant Schnindret, and sixteen of
the National Guard above, commanded by Desplaces Jacob. We used
Burrhus's lodging for our guard-house. It was a large hall with
six-inch planks, and beams such as you do not find nowadays in our
forests. A large, round, cast-iron stove, standing on a slab four feet
square, was in the left-hand corner, near the door; the zigzag pipes
went into the chimney at the right, and piles of wood covered the floor.
It seems as if I were now in that hall. The melted snow which we shook
off on entering ran along the floor. I have never seen a sadder day
than that; not only because the bombshells and balls might rain upon us
at any moment, and set everything on fire, but because of the melting
snow, and the mud, and the dampness which reached your very bones, and
the orders of the sergeant, who did nothing but call out: "Such and
such an one, march! Such an one forward, it is your turn!" etc.
And then the jests and jokes of this mass of tilers, and cobblers, and
plasterers, with their patched blouses, shoes run down at the heel, and
caps without visors, seated in a circle around the stove, with, their
rags sticking to their backs, _thouing_ you like all the rest of their
beggarly race: "Moses, pass along the pitcher! Moses, give me some
fire!--Ah, rascals of Jews, when a body risks his life to save
property, how proud it makes them! Ah, the villains!"
And they winked at each other, and pushed each other's elbows, and made
up faces askance. Some of them wanted me to go and get some tobacco
for them, and pay for it myself! In fine, all sorts of insults, which
a respectable man could endure from the rabble!--Yes, it disgusts me
whenever I think of it.
In this guard-house, where we burned whole logs of wood as if they were
straw, the steaming old rags which came in soaking wet did not smell
very pleasantly. I had to go out every minute to the little platform
behind the hall, in order to breathe, and the cold water which the wind
blew from the spout sent me in again at once.
Afterward, in thinking it over, it has seemed as if, without these
troubles, my heart would have broken at the thought of Sorle, Zeffen,
and the children shut up in a cellar, and that these very annoyances
preserved my reason.
This lasted till evening. We did nothing but go in and out, sit down,
smoke our pipes, and then begin again to walk the pavement in the rain,
or remain on duty for hours together at the entrance of the posterns.
Toward nine o'clock, when all was dark without, and nothing was to be
heard but the pacing of the patrols, the shouts of the sentries on the
ramparts: "Sentries, attention!" and the steps of our men on their
rounds up and down the great wooden stairway of the admiralty, the
thought suddenly came to me that the Russians had only tried to
frighten us, that it meant nothing; and that there would be no shells
that night.
In order to be on good terms with the men, I had asked Monborne's
permission to go and get a jug full of brandy, which he at once
granted. I took advantage of the opportunity to bite a crust and drink
a glass of wine at home. Then I went back, and all the men at the
station were very friendly; they passed the jug from one to another,
and said that my brandy was very good, and that the sergeant would give
me leave to go and fill it as often as I pleased.
"Yes, since it is Moses," replied Monborne, "he may have leave, but
nobody else."
We were all on excellent terms with each other and nobody thought of
bombardment, when a red flash passed along the high windows of the
room. We all turned round, and in a few seconds the shell rumbled on
the Bichelberg hill. At the same time a second, then a third flash
passed, one after the other, through the large dark room, showing us
the houses opposite.
You can never have an idea, Fritz, of those first lights at night!
Corporal Winter, an old soldier, who grated tobacco for Tribou, stooped
down quietly and lighted his pipe, and said: "Well, the dance is
beginning!"
Almost instantly we heard a shell burst at the right in the infantry
quarters, another at the left in the Piplinger house on the square, and
another quite near us in the Hemmerle house.