The next day was Friday and market day, and there was nothing talked of
in the whole town but the great news. Great numbers of peasants from
Alsace and Lorraine came filing into town on their carts, some in
blouses, some in their waistcoats, some in three-cornered hats, and
some in their cotton caps, under pretence of selling their grain, their
barley and oats, but in reality to find out what was going on.
You could hear nothing but "Get up, Fox! gee ho, Gray!" and the rolling
of the wheels and the cracking of the whips. And the women were not
behindhand, they arrived from the Houpe, from Dagsberg, Ercheviller,
and Baraques, with their scanty skirts and with great baskets on their
heads, striding and hurrying along. Everybody passed under our
windows, and Mr. Goulden said, "What an excitement there is, what a
rush! It is easy to see that there is another spirit in the land.
Nobody is marching now with candles in his hand and a surplice on his
back."
He seemed to be satisfied, and that proved how much all these
ceremonies had annoyed him. At last about eight o'clock it was
necessary to set about our work again, and Catherine went out as usual
to buy our butter and eggs and vegetables for the week. At ten o'clock
she came back again.
"Oh! Heavens!" said she, "everything is topsy-turvy." And then she
related how the half-pay officers were promenading with their
sword-canes, with the Commandant Margarot in their midst, that on the
square, in the market, in the church, and around the stands, everywhere
the peasants and citizens were shaking hands and taking snuff together,
and saying, "Ah! now trade is brisk again."
And she told us also that during the night proclamations had been
posted up at the town-house and on the three doors of the church, and
even against the pillars of the market, but that the gendarmes had torn
them down early in the morning, in fact, that everything was in
commotion. Father Goulden had risen from the counter in order to
listen to her, and I turned round on my chair and thought:
"All that is good, very good, but at this rate your leave of absence
will soon be recalled. Everything is moving and you must also move,
Joseph! Instead of remaining here quietly with your wife, you will
have to take your cartridge-box and knapsack and musket and two
packages of cartridges on your back."
As I looked at Catherine, who did not think of the bad side of affairs,
Weissenfels, Lutzen, and Leipzig passed through my mind, and I was
quite melancholy. While we were all so sober, the door opened and Aunt
Gredel walked in. At first you would have thought she was quite
composed.
"Good-morning, Mr. Goulden; good-morning, my children," said she,
putting down her basket behind the stove.
"Are you well too, Mother Gredel?" asked Mr. Goulden.
"Ah! well! well!" said she.
I saw that she had set her teeth, and that two red spots burned on her
cheeks. She crammed her hair which was hanging down over her ears,
with a single thrust into her cap, and looked at us one after the other
with her gray eyes to see what we thought, and then she commenced.
"It seems that the rascal has escaped from his island."
"Of what rascal do you speak?" asked Mr. Goulden calmly.
"Oh! you know very well of whom I speak, I speak of your Bonaparte."
Mr. Goulden, seeing her anger, turned round to his counter to avoid a
dispute. He seemed to be examining a watch, and I followed his example.
"Yes," said she, speaking still louder, "his evil deeds are commencing
again; just as we thought all was finished! and he comes back again
worse than ever! What a pest!"
I could hear her voice tremble. Mr. Goulden kept on with his work, and
asked, without turning round, "Whose fault is it, Mother Gredel? Do
you think that those processions, atonements, and the sermons in regard
to the national domains and the 'rebellion of twenty-five years,' these
continual menaces of establishing the old order of things, the order to
close the shops during the service, do you think all that could
continue? Did any one, let me ask, ever see since the world began,
anything more calculated to rouse a nation against those who attempt to
degrade it! You would have said that Bonaparte himself had whispered
in the ears of those Bourbons, all the stupidities which would be
likely to disgust the people. Tell me, might we not expect just what
has come to pass?"
He kept on looking at the watch through his glass in order to keep
calm. While he was speaking I had looked at Aunt Gredel out of the
corner of my eye. She had changed color two or three times, and
Catherine, who was behind us near the stove, made signs to her not to
make trouble in our house, but the wilful woman disregarded all signs.
"You, too, are satisfied then, are you? you change from one day to
another like the rest of them, you always bring out your republic when
it suits you."
On hearing this, Mr. Goulden coughed softly, as if he had something in
his throat, and for half a minute he seemed to be considering, while
aunt looked on. He recovered himself at last and said slowly: "You are
wrong, Madame Gredel, to reproach me, for if I had wished to change I
should have begun sooner. Instead of being a clock-maker in Pfalzbourg
I should have been a colonel or a general, like the others, but I
always have been, I am now, and shall remain till I die, for the
Republic and the Rights of Man."
Then he turned suddenly round, and looking at aunt from head to foot,
and raising his voice; he went on: "And that is the reason why I like
Bonaparte better than the Comte d'Artois, the emigres, the
missionaries, and the workers of miracles; at least he is forced to
keep something of the Revolution, he is forced to respect the national
domain, to guarantee to every one his property, his rank, and
everything he has acquired under the new laws. Without that, what
right would he have to be Emperor? If he had not maintained equality
why should the nation wish to have him? The others, on the contrary,
have attacked everything; they want to destroy everything that we have
done. Now you understand why I like him better than the others.
"Ah!" said Mother Gredel, "that is new!" and she laughed
contemptuously. I would have given anything if she had been at Quatre
Vents.
"There was a time when you talked otherwise, when he re-established the
bishops and the archbishops and the cardinals, when he had himself
crowned by the Pope, and consecrated with oil from the holy ampoule,[1]
when he recalled the emigres, when he gave up the chateaux and forests
to the great families, when he made princes and dukes and barons by the
dozen; how many times have I heard you say that all that was atrocious,
that he had betrayed the Revolution, that you would have preferred the
Bourbons, because they did not know any other way, that they were like
blackbirds, who only whistle one tune because they know no other, and
because they think it the most beautiful air in the world. While he,
the result of the Revolution, whose father had only a few dozens of
goats on the mountains of Corsica, should have known that all men are
equal, that courage and genius alone elevate them above their
fellows,--that he should have despised all those old notions, and that
he should have made war only to defend the new rights, the new ideas,
which are just and which nothing can arrest: did you not say that, when
you were talking with old Colin in the rear of our garden, for fear of
being arrested--did you not say that between yourselves and before me?"
[1] Vial which contains the oil for anointing the kings of France.
Father Goulden had grown quite pale. He looked down at his feet and
turned his snuff-box round and round in his fingers as if he were
thinking, and I saw his emotion in his face.
"Yes, I said it," he replied, "and I think so still--you have a good
memory, Mother Gredel. It is true that for ten years Colin and I have
been obliged to hide ourselves if we spoke of events that will
certainly be accomplished, and it is the despotism of one man born
among us, whom we have sustained with our own blood, which compelled us
to do that. But to-day everything is changed. The man, to whom you
cannot deny genius, has seen his sycophants abandon and betray him; he
has seen that his strength lies in the people, and that those alliances
of which he had the weakness to be so proud, were the cause of his
ruin. He has come now to rid us of the others, and I am glad."
"Then you have no faith in yourself, eh? Have you any need of him?"
exclaimed Aunt Gredel. "If the processions annoyed you, and if you
were, as you say, 'the people,' why do you need him?"
Father Goulden smiled, and said, "If everybody had the courage to
follow his own conscience, and if so many persons who joined the
processions had not done so from vanity or to show their fine clothes,
and if others had not joined from interest, from the hope of getting a
good office, or to obtain permits, then Madame Gredel you would be
right, and we should not have needed Bonaparte to overturn all that,
and you would have seen that three-quarters of the people had
common-sense, and perhaps even the Comte d'Artois himself would have
cried, Hold! But as hypocrisy and interest hide and obscure everything
and make night out of the broad day, unhappily we must have
thunder-bolts to make us see clearly. It is you, and those who are
like you, who have caused those who have never changed their opinions,
to rejoice when fever takes the place of colic."
Father Goulden rose and walked up and down in great agitation, and as
Aunt Gredel was going on again, he took his cap and went out, saying:
"I have given you my opinions. Now talk to Joseph; he thinks you are
always right."
As soon as he had gone, Mother Gredel cried out:
"He is an old fool, and he has been, always! Now, as for you, if you
do not go to Switzerland, I warn you, you will be obliged to go, God
knows where. But we will talk about that another time, the principal
thing is to warn you. We will wait and see what happens; perhaps
Bonaparte will be arrested, but if he reaches Paris, we will go
somewhere else."
She embraced us and took her basket and went away. A few minutes
afterward, Father Goulden came in and we sat down to our work and said
no more about these things. We were very sober, and at night I was
more than ever surprised, when Catherine said:
"We will always listen to Mr. Goulden, he is right and will give us
good counsel."
On hearing that, I thought that she agreed with Father Goulden because
they read the gazette together. That gazette always says what just
pleases them, but that does not prevent it being very terrible if we
are obliged to take our guns and knapsacks again, and it would be
better to be in Switzerland, either at Geneva, or at Father Rulle's
manufactory or at Chaux-de-Fonds, than at Leipzig, and those other
places. I did not wish to contradict Catherine, but her remarks
annoyed me greatly.