Then, Fritz, the funeral rites began. All who died of typhus had to be
buried the same day: Christians behind the church, and Jews in the
trenches, in the place now occupied by the riding-school.
Old women were already there to wash the poor little body, and comb the
hair, and cut the nails, according to the law of the Lord. Some of
them sewed the winding-sheet.
The open windows admitted the air, the shutters struck against the
walls. The _schamess_* went through the streets, striking the doors
with his mace, to summon our brethren.
* Beadle.
Sorle sat upon the ground with her head veiled. Hearing Desmarets come
up the stairs, I had courage to go and meet him, and show him the room.
The poor angel was in his little shirt on the floor, the head raised a
little on some straw, and the little _thaleth_ in his fingers. He was
so beautiful, with his brown hair, and half-opened lips, that I thought
as I looked at him: "The Lord wanted to have thee near his throne!"
And my tears fell silently: my beard was full of them.
Desmarets then took the measure and went. Half an hour afterward, he
returned with the little pine coffin under his arm, and the house was
filled anew with lamentations.
I could not see the coffin closed! I went and sat upon the sack of
ashes, covering my face with both hands, and crying in my heart like
Jacob, "Surely I shall go down to the grave with this child; I shall
not survive him."
Only a very few of our brethren came, for a panic was in the city; men
knew that the angel of death was passing by, and that drops of blood
rained from his sword upon the houses; each emptied the water from his
jug upon the threshold and entered quickly. But the best of them came
silently, and as evening approached, it was necessary to go and descend
by the postern.
I was the only one of our family. Sorle was not able to follow me, nor
Zeffen. I was the only one to throw the shovelful of earth. My
strength all left me, they had to lead me back to our door. The
sergeant held me by the arm; he spoke to me and I did not hear him; I
was as if dead.
All else that I remember of that dreadful day, is the moment when,
having come into the house, sitting on the sack, before our cold
hearth, with bare feet and bent head, and my soul in the depths, the
_schamess_ came to me, touched my shoulder and made me rise; and then
took his knife from his pocket and rent my garment, tearing it to the
hip. This blow was the last and the most dreadful; I fell back,
murmuring with Job:
"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was
said, there is a man child conceived! Let a cloud dwell upon it, let
the blackness of the day terrify it! For mourning, the true mourning
does not come down from the father to the child, but goes up from the
child to the father. Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts
that I should suck? For now I should have lain still in the tomb and
been at rest!"
And my grief, Fritz, had no bounds; "What will Baruch say," I
exclaimed, "and what shall I answer him when he asks me to give him
back his child?"
I felt no longer any interest in our business. Zeffen lived with the
old rabbi; her mother spent the days with her, to take care of Esdras
and comfort her.
Every part of our house was opened; the _schabesgoie_ burned sugar and
spices, and the air from without had free circulation. Safel went on
selling.
As for myself, I sat before the hearth in the morning, cooked some
potatoes, and ate them with a little salt, and then went out, without
thought or aim. I wandered sometimes to the right, sometimes to the
left, toward the old gendarmerie, around the ramparts, in
out-of-the-way places.
I could not bear to see any one, especially those who had known the
child.
Then, Fritz, our miseries were at their height; famine, cold, all kinds
of sufferings weighed upon the city; faces grew thin, and women and
children were seen, half-naked and trembling, groping in the shadow in
the deserted by-ways.
Ah! such miseries will never return! We have no more such abominable
wars, lasting twenty years, when the highways looked like ruts, and the
roads like streams of mud; when the ground remained untilled for want
of husbandmen, when houses sank for want of inhabitants; when the poor
went barefoot and the rich in wooden shoes, while the superior officers
passed by on superb horses, looking down contemptuously on the whole
human race.
We could not endure that now!
But at that time everything in the nation was destroyed and humiliated;
the citizens and the people had nothing left; force was everything. If
a man said, "But there is such a thing as justice, right, truth!" the
way was to answer with a smile, "I do not understand you!" and you were
taken for a man of sense and experience, who would make his way.
Then, in the midst of my sorrow, I saw these things without thinking
about them; but since then, they have come back to me, and thousands of
others; all the survivors of those days can remember them, too.
One morning, I was under the old market, looking at the wretches as
they bought meat. At that time they knocked down the horses of
Rouge-Colas and those of the gendarmes, as fleshless as the cattle in
the trenches, and sold the meat at very high prices.
I looked at the swarms of wrinkled old women, of hollow-eyed citizens,
all these wretched creatures crowding before Frantz Sepel's stall,
while he distributed bits of carcass to them.
Frantz's large dogs were seen no longer prowling about the market,
licking up the bloody scraps. The dried hands of old women were
stretched out at the end of their fleshless arms, to snatch everything;
weak voices called out entreatingly, "A little more liver, Monsieur
Frantz, so that we can make merry!"
I saw all this under the great dark roof, through which a little light
came, in the holes made by the shells. In the distance, among the
worm-eaten pillars, some soldiers, under the arch of the guard-house,
with their old capes hanging down their thighs, were also looking
on;--it seemed like a dream.
My great sorrow accorded with these sad sights. I was about leaving at
the end of a half hour, when I saw Burguet coming along by Father
Brainstein's old country-house, which was now staved in by the shells,
and leaning, all shattered, over the street.
Burguet had told me several days before our affliction, that his
maid-servant was sick. I had thought no more of it, but now it came to
me.
He looked so changed, so thin, his cheeks so marked by wrinkles, it
seemed as if years had passed since I had seen him. His hat came down
to his eyes, and his beard, at least a fortnight old, had turned gray.
He came in, looking round in all directions; but he could not see me
where I was, in the deep shadow, against the planks of the old
fodder-house; and he stopped behind the crowd of old women, who were
squeezed in a semicircle before the stall, awaiting their turn.
After a minute he put some sous in Frantz Sepel's hand, and received
his morsel, which he hid under his cloak. Then looking round again, he
was going away quickly, with his head down.
This sight moved my heart: I hurried away, raising my hands to heaven,
and exclaiming: "Is it possible? Is it possible? Burguet too! A man
of his genius to suffer hunger and eat carcasses! Oh, what times of
trial!"