"That is enough," he added a moment after, taking the watch from my
hands. "Go, child, and find Catherine. You cannot conquer your love,
it Is stronger than you."
On hearing this, I wanted to exclaim "Oh, good, excellent man! you can
never know how much I love you," but he rose to wipe his hands on a
towel behind the door, and I said, "If you _really_ wish it, Mr.
Goulden."
"Yes, yes; certainly!"
I did not wait for another word. My heart bounded with joy, I put on
my hat and went down the stairs at a leap, exclaiming, "I will be back
in an hour, Mr. Goulden."
I was out of doors in a moment, but what a crowd, what a crowd! they
swarmed! military hats, felt hats, bonnets, and over all the noise and
confusion, the church bell tolled slowly.
For a minute I stood on our own steps, not knowing which way to turn,
and seeing at last that it was impossible to take a step in that crowd
I turned into the little lane called the Lanche, in order to reach the
ramparts and run and wait for the procession at the slope by the German
gate, as then it would turn up the rue de College. It might have been
eleven o'clock. I saw many things that day which have suggested many
reflections since; they were the signs of great trouble but nobody
noticed them, nobody had the good sense to comprehend their
significance. It was only later, when everybody was up to their necks
in trouble, when we were obliged to take our knapsacks and guns, again
to be cut in pieces; then they said, "if we had only had good sense and
justice and prudence we should have been so much better off, we should
have been quiet at home instead of this breaking up, which is coming;
we can do nothing but be quiet and submit; what a misfortune!"
I went along the Lanche, where they shot the deserters under the
Empire. The noise grew fainter in the distance, and the chanting and
prayers and the sound of the bells as well. All the doors and windows
were closed, everybody had followed the procession. I stopped in the
silent street to take breath, a slight breeze came from the fields
beyond the ramparts, and I listened to the tumult in the distance and
wiped the sweat from my face and thought, "how am I to find Catherine?"
I was climbing the steps at the postern gate when I heard some one say:
"Mark the points, Margarot."
I then saw that Father Colin's windows on the first floor were open,
and that some men in their shirt-sleeves were playing billiards. They
were old soldiers with short hair, and mustaches like a brush. They
went back and forth, without troubling themselves about the mayor, or
the commandant, or Louis XVI., or the bourgeoisie. One of them, short,
thick, with his whiskers cut as was the fashion of the hussars in those
days, and his cravat untied, leaned out of the window, resting his cue
on the sill, and, looking toward the square, said:
"We will put the game at fifty."
I thought at once that they were half-pay officers, who were spending
their last sous, and who would soon be troubled to live. I continued
on my way, and hurried along under the vault of the powder magazine
behind the college, thinking of all these things, but when I reached
the German gate I forgot everything. The procession was just turning
the corner at Bockholtz, the chants broke forth opposite the altar like
trumpets, and the young priests from Nancy were running among the crowd
with their crucifixes raised to keep order, and the Swiss Sirou carried
himself majestically under his banner; at the head of the procession
were the priests and the choir singing, while the prayers rose to
heaven, and behind, the crowd responded: and all this took form, in a
low fearful murmur.
I stood on my tiptoes, half hidden by the shed, trying to discover
Catherine in all that multitude and thinking only of her, but what a
crowd of hats and bonnets and flags I saw defiling down the rue Ulrich.
You would never have imagined that there were so many people in the
country; there could not have been a soul left in the villages, except
a few little children and old people who stayed to take care of them.
I waited about twenty minutes, and gave up hoping to find Catherine,
when suddenly I saw her with Aunt Gredel. Aunt was praying in such a
loud clear voice, that you could hear her above all the others.
Catherine said nothing, but walked slowly along with her eyes cast
down. If I could only have called to her she might perhaps have heard
me, but it was bad enough not to join the procession without causing
further scandal. All I can say is,--and there is not an old man in
Pfalzbourg who will assert the contrary,--that Catherine was not the
least beautiful girl in the country, and that Joseph Bertha was not to
be pitied.
She had passed, and the procession halted on the "Place d'armes,"
before the high altar at the right of the church. The priest
officiated, and silence spread all over the city. In the little
streets at the right and the left, it was as quiet as if they could
have seen the priest at the altar, great numbers kneeled, and others
sat down on the steps of the houses, for the heat was excessive, and
many of them had come to town before daylight. This grand sight
impressed me very much, and I prayed for my country and for peace, for
I felt it all in my heart, and I remember that just then I heard under
the shed at the German gate, voices which said very good-humoredly,
"Come, come, give us a little room, my friends."
The procession blocked the way, everybody was stopped, and these voices
disturbed the kneeling multitude. Several persons near the door made
way. The Swiss and the beadle looked on from a distance, and my
curiosity induced me to get a little nearer the steps, when I saw five
or six old soldiers white with dust, bent down and apparently exhausted
with fatigue, making their way along the slope in order to gain the
little rue d'Arsenal, through which they no doubt thought to find the
way clear, it seems as if I could see them now, with their worn-out
shoes and their white gaiters, and their old patched uniforms and
shakos battered by the sun and rain and the hardships of the campaign.
They advanced in file, a little on the grass of the slope in order to
disturb the people who were below as little as possible. One old
fellow with three chevrons, who marched ahead and resembled poor
Sergeant Pinto who was killed near the Hinterthor at Leipzig, made me
feel very sad. He had the same long, gray mustaches, the same wrinkled
cheeks, and the same contented air in spite of all his misfortunes and
sufferings. He had his little bundle on the end of his stick, and
smiling and speaking quite low he said, "Excuse us, gentlemen and
ladies, excuse us," while the others followed step by step.
They were the first prisoners released by the convention of the 23d of
April, and we saw these men pass afterward every day until July. They
had no doubt avoided the magazines, in order the sooner to reach France.
On reaching the little street they found the crowd extended beyond the
arsenal; and then in order not to disturb the people, they went under
the postern and sat down on the damp steps, with their little bundles
on the ground beside them, and waited for the procession to pass. They
had come from a great distance, and hardly knew what was going on with
us.
Unhappily the wretches from Bois-de-Chenes, the big Horni, Zapheri
Roller, Nicholas Cochart, the carder, Pinacle, whom they had made mayor
to pay him for having shown the way to Falberg and Graufthal to the
allies during the siege, all these rascals and others who were with
them, who wanted the fleur-de-lis--as if the fleur-de-lis could make
them any better--unhappily, I say, all that bad set who lived by
stealing fagots from the forest, had discovered the old tri-colored
cockade in the tops of their shakos, and "now," they thought, "is the
time to prove ourselves the real supporters of the throne and the
altar."
They came on disturbing everybody, Pinacle had a big black cravat on
his neck and a crape, an ell wide, on his hat, with his shirt collar
above his ears, and as grave as a bandit who wants to make himself look
like an honest man; he came up the first one. The old soldier with the
three chevrons had discovered that these men were threatening them at a
distance and had risen to see what it meant.
"Come, come! don't crowd so!" said he. "We are not much in the habit
of running, what do you want?"
But Pinacle, who was afraid of losing so good an occasion to show his
zeal for Louis XVIII., instead of replying to him, smashed his shako at
a blow, shouting, "Down with the cockade!"
Naturally the old veteran was indignant and was about to defend
himself, when these wretches, both men and women, fell upon the
soldiers, knocking them down, pulling off their cockades and epaulets,
and trampling them under foot without shame or pity.
The poor old fellow got up several times, exclaiming, in a voice which
went to one's heart, "Pack of cowards, are you Frenchmen, assassins,
etc., etc."
Every time he rose they beat him down again, and at last left him with
his clothes torn, and covered with blood in a corner, and the
commandant, de la Faisanderie, having arrived, ordered them to be
escorted to the "Violin." If I had been able to get down, I should
have run to the rescue, without thinking of Catherine or Aunt Gredel or
Mr. Goulden, and they might have killed me too. When I think of it now
even, I tremble, but fortunately the wall of the postern was twenty
feet thick, and when I saw them carried away covered with blood, and
comprehended the whole horrible affair, I ran home by way of the
arsenal, where I arrived so pale that Father Goulden exclaimed:
"Why, Joseph! have you been hurt?"
"No, no," I replied, "but I have seen a frightful thing." And I
commenced to cry as I told him of the affair. He walked up and down
with his hands behind his back, stopping from time to time to listen to
me, while his lips contracted and his eyes sparkled.
"Joseph," said he, "these men provoked them?"
"No, Mr. Goulden."
"It is impossible, they must have invited it. The devil! we are not
savages! The rascals must have had some other reason than the cockades
for attacking them!"
He could not believe me, and it was only after telling him all the
details twice over that he said at last:
"Well! since you saw it with your own eyes I must believe you. But it
is a greater misfortune than you think, Joseph. If this goes on, if
they do not put a strong check on these good-for-nothings, if the
Pinacles are to have the upper hand, honest people will open their
eyes."
He said no more, for the procession was finished and Aunt Gredel and
Catherine had come.
We dined together, aunt was happy and Catherine too, but even the
pleasure it gave me to see them, could not make me forget what I had
witnessed, and Mr. Goulden was very grave too.
At night, I went with them to the "Roulette," and then I embraced them
and bade them good-night. It might have been eight o'clock, and I went
home immediately. Mr. Goulden had gone to the "Homme Sauvage" brewery,
as was his habit on Sunday, to read the gazette, and I went to bed. He
came in about ten, and seeing my candle burning on the table, he pushed
open the door and said:
"It seems that they are having processions everywhere. You see nothing
else in the gazette." And he added that twenty thousand prisoners had
returned, and that it was a happy thing for the country.
V
The next morning all the clocks in the village were to be wound up, and
as Mr. Goulden was growing old he had intrusted that to me, and I went
out very early. The wind had blown the leaves in heaps against the
walls during the night, and the people were coming to take their
torches and vases of flowers from the altars. All this made me sad,
and I thought, "Now that they have performed their service for the
dead, I hope they are satisfied. If the permit would come, it would be
all very well, but if these people think they are going to amuse us
with psalms they are mistaken. In the time of the Emperor we had to go
to Russia and Spain it is true, but the ministers did not leave the
young people to pine away. I would like to know what peace is for if
it is not to get married!"
I denounced Louis XVIII., the Comte d'Artois, the _emigres_, and
everybody else, and declared that the nobles mocked the people.
On going home I found that Mr. Goulden had set the table, and while we
were eating breakfast, I told him what I thought. He listened to my
complaint and laughed, saying, "Take care, Joseph, take care; you seem
to me as if you were becoming a Jacobin."
He got up and opened the closet, and I thought he was going to take out
a bottle, but, instead, he handed me a thick square envelope with a big
red seal.
"Here, Joseph," said he, "is something that Brigadier Werner charged me
to give you."