After this story of the landwehr, we were afraid of the sergeant,
though he did not know it, and came regularly to take his glass of
cherry-brandy. Sometimes in the evening he would hold the bottle
before our lamp, and exclaim:
"It is getting low, Father Moses, it is getting low! We shall soon be
put upon half-rations, and then quarter, and so on. It is all the
same; if a drop is left, anything more than the smell, in six months,
Trubert will be very glad."
He laughed, and I thought with indignation:
"You will be satisfied with a drop! What are you in want of? The city
storehouses are bomb-proof, the fires at the guard-house are burning
every day, the market furnishes every soldier with his ration of fresh
meat, while respectable citizens are glad if they can get potatoes and
salt meat!"
This is the way I felt in my ill-humor, while I treated him pleasantly,
all the same, on account of his terrible wickedness.
And it was the truth, Fritz, even our children had nothing more
nourishing to eat than soup made of potatoes and salt beef, which cause
many dangerous maladies.
The garrison had no lack of anything; but, notwithstanding, the
governor was all the time proclaiming that the visits were to be
recommenced, and that those who should be found delinquent should be
punished with the rigor of military law. Those people wanted to have
everything for themselves; but nobody minded them, everybody hid what
he could.
Fortunate in those times was he who kept a cow in his cellar, with some
hay and straw for fodder; milk and butter were beyond all price.
Fortunate was he who owned a few hens; a fresh egg, at the end of
February, was valued at fifteen sous, and they were not to be had even
at that price. The price of fresh meat went up, so to speak, from hour
to hour, and we did not ask if it was beef or horse-flesh.
The council of defence had sent away the paupers of the city before the
blockade, but a large number of poor people remained. A good many
slipped out at night into the trenches by one of the posterns; they
would go and dig up roots from under the snow, and cut the nettles in
the bastions to boil for spinach. The sentries fired from above, but
what will not a man risk for food? It is better to feel a ball than to
suffer with hunger.
We needed only to meet these emaciated creatures, these women dragging
themselves along the walls, these pitiful children, to feel that famine
had come, and we often said to ourselves:
"If the Emperor does not come and help us, in a month we shall be like
these wretched creatures! What good will our money do us, when a
radish will cost a hundred francs?"
Then, Fritz, we smiled no more as we saw the little ones eating around
the table; we looked at each other, and this glance was enough to make
us understand each other.
The good sense and good feeling of a brave woman are seen at times like
this. Sorle had never spoken to me about our provisions; I knew how
prudent she was, and supposed that we must have provisions hidden
somewhere, without being entirely sure of it. So, at evening, as we
sat at our meagre supper, the fear that our children might want the
necessary food sometimes led me to say:
"Eat! feast away! I am not hungry. I want an omelet or a chicken.
Potatoes do not agree with me."