THE SHOEMAKER'S VISITOR
In the evening of that same day, after their supper, Louise, having
taken her spinning-wheel, was gone for a little diversion to the Mother
Rochart's where all the good women and young girls of the neighborhood
used to assemble till near midnight. They spent their time in relating
old legends, talking of the rain, of the weather, of marriages,
baptisms, of the departure or return of the conscripts, and what not,
that enabled them to pass the hours agreeably.
Hullin remained alone before his little copper lamp, nailing the shoes
of the old wood-cutter. He no longer thought of the madman Yegof. His
hammer rose and fell, driving the great nails into the thick wooden
shoes quite mechanically, by force of habit. In the meantime thousands
of ideas came into his head; he was thoughtful without knowing why.
Now it was Gaspard, who gave no signs of being alive; then it was the
campaign, which was being indefinitely prolonged. The lamp threw its
yellowish light around the smoky little room. Outside, not a sound.
The fire began to die away. Jean-Claude rose to put on a fagot, then
sat down again, muttering,--"Bah! this cannot last; we shall receive a
letter one of these days."
The old clock began to strike nine; and as Hullin was recommencing his
work, the door opened and Catherine Lefevre, the mistress of
Bois-de-Chenes, appeared on the threshold, to the great stupefaction of
the shoemaker, for it was not her custom to arrive at such a time.
Catherine Lefevre might have been sixty years old, but she was as
upright and strong as at thirty. Her clear gray eyes and beaked nose
resembled those of a bird of prey; the corners of her mouth turned
down, and made her look somewhat gloomy and sad; two or three locks of
gray hair fell over her forehead; a brown striped hood reached from her
head, over her shoulders and down to her elbows. Her physiognomy
announced a steadfast, tenacious character, with something
indescribably grand and mournful about it, which inspired both respect
and fear.
"Can it be you, Catherine?" said Hullin, in astonishment.
"Yes, it is I," replied the old dame, calmly. "I am come to talk with
you, Jean-Claude.... Louise is away?"
"She has gone for a little amusement to Madeleine Rochart's."
"It is well."
Then Catherine pushed back her hood from her head, and sat down at the
end of the bench. Hullin looked fixedly at her: he perceived something
extraordinary and mysterious about her which fascinated him.
"What has happened, then?" said he, putting down his hammer.
Instead of answering this question, she turned toward the door, and
seemed to be listening; then hearing no sound, her serious expression
came back.
"Yegof the madman spent last night at the farm," said she.
"He came to see me this afternoon," rejoined Hullin, without attaching
any importance to this fact, which was totally indifferent to him.
"Yes," replied the old dame, in a low voice, "he spent the night with
us; and yesterday evening, about this time, in the kitchen, before us
all, this madman related terrible things!"
Then she relapsed into silence, and the corners of her mouth seemed to
turn down more than ever.
"Terrible things!" murmured the shoemaker, excessively astonished: for
he had never seen Catherine Lefevre in such a condition before. "But
what then? say, what?"
"Dreams I have had!"
"Dreams? You certainly want to make fun of me!"
"No!"
Then, after a short pause, she slowly continued--"Yesterday evening,
all our people were assembled in the kitchen around the large fireplace
after supper; the table still remained covered with empty dishes,
plates, and spoons. Yegof had partaken of it with us, and had amused
us with the history of his treasures, castles, and provinces. It might
have been toward nine o'clock: the madman was sitting at one end of the
blazing fire; old Duchene, my ploughboy, was mending Bruno's saddle;
the herdsman, Robin, was plaiting a basket; Annette arranged her pans
on the shelves: and I had brought my wheel nearer the fire to finish
spinning a distaff-ful before going to bed. Out of doors, the dogs
were barking at the moon; the cold was very great. We were all there,
talking of the coming winter. Duchene said it would be very severe,
for he had seen several flocks of wild-geese. And Yegof's raven, on
the edge of the mantel-piece, its head buried in its raffled feathers,
seemed to sleep; but now and then it would elongate its neck and watch
us, listen a moment and then cover itself again in its plumes."
She remained silent a moment, as though to collect her ideas; her
eyelids drooped, her great beaked nose seemed to bend down on to her
lips, and a strange pallor came over her face.
"What the devil is coming next?" thought Hullin.
The old woman continued: "Yegof near the fire, with his tin crown, and
his short stick on his knees, was dreaming of something. He looked at
the great black chimney, the stone mantel-piece, which is carved with
different figures and trees, and the smoke which went up in great
clouds around the sides of bacon: when suddenly he struck with the end
of his stick on to the tiles and called out, as though in a
dream--'Yes, yes, I have seen that long ago--long ago!' And as we all
looked at him speechless--'In those times,' he went on to say, 'the
pine-forests were forests of oak. The Nideck, the Dagsberg,
Falkenstein, Geroldseck, all those old ruined castles did not exist.
In those times the bison could be hunted in the depths of the woods,
the salmon caught in the Sarre, and you, the fair men, were buried in
snow six months of the year. You lived on milk and cheese, for you had
many flocks and herds on the Hengst, the Schneeberg, the Grosmann, the
Donon. In the summer you hunted: you came down to the Rhine, the
Moselle, the Meuse. I can recall it all!'
"And wonderful to relate, Jean-Claude, as the madman spoke, I seemed to
see also these countries of years gone by, and to remember them as I
should a dream. I had let fall my distaff, and Duchene, Robin,
Jeanne--in fact, everybody--listened. 'Yes, it was long ago,' he
continued. 'In those days you were already building these great
chimneys; and all around, at a distance of two or three hundred yards,
you planted palisades fifteen feet high, and with the points hardened
by the fire. And inside them you kept your big dogs with their hanging
cheeks, who barked day and night.'
"We could see what he said, Jean-Claude; we could see it all. But he
paid no heed to us: he regarded the figures on the chimney-piece with
his mouth open; but, in an instant, having stooped his head and seeing
how attentive we all were, he laughed with a wild, mad laughter, and
cried out:--'In those days you believed yourselves the lords of the
country, O fair men, with your blue eyes and white skins, fed on milk
and cheese, and only tasting blood in the autumn, at the great hunts:
you believed yourselves the masters of the plains and mountains, when
we, the red men, with the green eyes, out of the sea--we who drank
always blood and only liked battles--one fine morning we arrived with
our axes and spears, and ascended the Sarre under the shadows of the
old oaks. Ah! it was a cruel war, which lasted weeks and months. And
the old woman--there--' said he, pointing at me, with a singular smile,
'the Margareth of the clan of Kilberix, that old woman with her beaked
nose, in her palisades, in the midst of her dogs and warriors--she
fought like a wolf. But when five moons had passed, hunger arrived.
The doors of the palisades opened for flight, and we, in ambush in the
stream--we massacred all!--all--except the children and the beautiful
young girls. The old woman, alone, defended herself to the last with
her teeth and nails; and I, Luitprandt, clove her head in two; and I
took her father, the aged man and blind, to chain him at the door of my
castle like a dog!'
"Then, Hullin," continued the old woman, "the madman began to chant a
long song--the lamentation of the old man chained to his doorway. Wait
till I can recall it, Jean-Claude. It was mournful--mournful as a
_Miserere_. No, I cannot remember it; but I seem still to hear it. It
made our blood curdle; and, as he laughed without ceasing, at last all
our servants gave a terrible cry, rage seized them. Duchene sprang on
the madman to strangle him; but he, with more strength than one could
suppose he possessed, threw him back, and raising his stick furiously,
said to us:--'On your knees, slaves--on your knees! My armies are
advancing! Do you hear? The earth trembles with them. These castles,
the Nideck, the Haut-Barr, the Dagsberg, the Turkestein, you shall
build them up again! On your knees!'
"I never saw a more fearful face than Yegof's at that moment; but,
seeing for the second time my servants rising against him, I was
obliged to defend him myself. 'It is a madman,' I said to them. 'Are
you not ashamed to believe in the words of a madman?' They stopped on
my account; but I could not close my eyes that night. The words of
that wretched man kept recurring to me. I seemed to hear the chant of
the old prisoner, the barking of our dogs, and the sounds of battle.
For years I have never felt so uneasy. That is why I came to see you,
Jean-Claude. What do you think of it?"
"I?" exclaimed the shoemaker, in whose ruddy face both irony and pity
were visible. "If I did not know you so well, Catherine, I should say
you were deranged:--you, Duchene, Robin, and the rest of you. All that
has about the same effect on me as one of Genevieve de Brabant's
tales--made up to terrify little children, and which shows us how
foolish our ancestors were."
"You do not comprehend these things," said she, in a calm, grave voice;
"you have never had any of those ideas."
"Then you believe all that Yegof has said to you?"
"Yes, I believe it."
"What, you, Catherine?--you, a sensible woman? If it were the mother
of Rochart I should say nothing; but you!"
He rose as though annoyed, took off his apron, shrugged his shoulders,
then sat down again quickly, and called out:--"This madman, do you know
what he is? I will tell you. He is most assuredly one of those German
school-masters who stuff their brains with 'Old Mother Goose' tales,
and then gravely relate them to others. By dint of studying, dreaming,
ruminating, their wits get out of order; they have visions, many-sided
ideas, and take their dreams for realities. I have always looked upon
Yegof as one of those poor wretches. He knows lots of names, he speaks
of Brittany and Australasia, of Polynesia and the Nideck, and then of
Geroldseck, of the Turkestein, of the Rhine--in fact of everything at
hazard; and it ends by having the appearance of something when it is
nothing. In ordinary times you would think as I do, Catherine; but you
are troubled at not receiving any tidings from Gaspard. These rumors
of war and of invasion that are going about torment and unsettle you.
You cannot sleep; and what a poor madman says, you regard as Bible
truths."
"No, Hullin; it is not that. If you yourself had heard Yegof----"
"Get along!" exclaimed the good old fellow. "If I had, I should have
laughed at him as I did just now. Do you know that he came to ask
Louise of me in marriage, to make her queen of Australasia?"
Catherine Lefevre could not restrain a smile; but, regaining almost at
once her serious expression--"All your reasonings, Jean-Claude," said
she, "cannot convince me; but, I confess it, the silence of Gasper
frightens me. I know my son: he would certainly have written to me.
Why have his letters never reached me? The war is going on badly,
Hullin--we have all the world against us. They don't want our
revolution--you know it as well as I do. So long as we were masters,
and won victory after victory, they looked kindly on us; but since our
Russian misfortunes, things wear a bad aspect."
"La, La, Catherine, how you get carried away. You see everything
gloomily."
"Yes, I see everything gloomily, and I am right. What makes me so
uneasy is, that we never get any news from the outer world; we live
here as in a savage country: one knows of nothing that goes on. The
Austrians and the Cossacks could be upon us at any time, and we should
be taken by surprise."
Hullin observed the old dame, whose expression was very animated; and
even he began to be influenced by the same fears.
"Listen, Catherine," said he, suddenly. "When you speak in a
reasonable manner, it is not I who would say anything against it. All
you now tell me is possible. I do not believe in it; but one might as
well make sure. I had intended to go to Phalsbourg in a week, to buy
sheepskins for trimming some shoes: I will go to-morrow. At
Phalsbourg, a garrison and post town, there must be some reliable news.
Will you believe those I shall bring you on my return from that place?"
"Yes."
"Good; it is then arranged. I shall leave to-morrow early. There are
five leagues in all. I shall return about six o'clock. You will see,
Catherine, that all your dismal ideas have no sense in them."
"I hope so," she replied, rising. "I hope so. You have somewhat
reassured me, Hullin. Now I will go to the farm, and may I sleep
better than I did last night. Good-night, Jean-Claude."