GASPARD'S LETTER
Toward two o'clock the next morning, snow began to fall. At daybreak
the Germans had left Grandfontaine, Framont, and even Schirmeck. In
the distance, on the plains of Alsace, could be seen the black lines,
which indicated their retreating battalions.
Hullin arose early and made the round of the bivouacs. He stopped for
a few seconds on the plateau, to look at the cannons in position, the
sleeping partisans, and the watchful sentries; then, satisfied with his
inspection, he re-entered the farm, where Louise and Catherine were
still asleep.
The gray light was spreading everywhere. A few wounded in the next
room were growing feverish; they were calling for their wives and
children. Soon the hum of voices and the noise of busy feet broke the
stillness of the night. Catherine and Louise awoke. They saw
Jean-Claude sitting in a corner of the window watching them, and
ashamed of having slept longer than he, they arose and approached him.
"Well?" asked Catherine.
"Well, they have left; and we are masters of the field, as I expected."
This assurance did not appear to satisfy the old dame. She looked
through the window to see for herself that the Germans were retreating
into Alsace; and during the whole of that day she seemed both anxious
and troubled.
Between eight and nine the cure Saumaize came in from the village of
Charmes. Some mountaineers then descended the slopes to pick up the
dead, and dug a deep pit to the right of the farm, where partisans and
"kaiserlichs," with their clothes, hats, shakos, and uniforms, were
laid side by side. The cure Saumaize, a tall old man with white hair,
read the prayers for the dead in that solemn, mysterious voice which
seems to penetrate to the depths of one's soul, and to summon from the
tomb the spirits of extinct generations to attest to the living the
terrors of the grave.
All day carts and sledges continued to arrive to carry away the
wounded, who demanded, with loud cries, to be allowed to see their
villages once more. Doctor Lorquin, fearing to increase their
irritation, was forced to consent. And toward four o'clock, Catherine
and Hullin were alone in the great room: Louise had gone out to prepare
the supper. Outside, large flakes of snow continued to fall, and, from
time to time, a sledge might be seen silently passing along, bearing a
wounded man laid in straw. Catherine, seated near the table, was
folding bandages with an absent air.
"What ails you, Catherine?" demanded Hullin. "You have seemed so
thoughtful since morning: and yet our affairs are going on well."
The old dame, pushing the linen slowly away from her, replied,--"Yes,
Jean-Claude, I am uneasy."
"Uneasy about what? The enemy is in full retreat. Only this moment,
Frantz Materne, whom I had sent to reconnoitre, and all the messengers
from Piorette, Jerome, and Labarbe, told me that the Germans are
returning to Mutzig. Old Materne and Kasper, having gathered up the
dead, learned at Grandfontaine that nothing is to be seen in the
direction of Saint-Blaize-la-Roche. All this proves that our Spanish
dragoons gave the enemy a warm reception on the way to Senones, and
that they fear an attack from Schirmeck. What is it, then, Catherine,
that troubles you?"
And seeing that Hullin looked at her inquiringly, "You may laugh at
me," said she; "but I have had a dream."
"A dream?"
"Yes, the same as at the farm of Bois-de-Chenes." And getting
animated, she continued, in an almost angry tone, "You may say what you
like, Jean-Claude, but a great danger menaces us. Yes, yes! you don't
see any sense in all this; but it was not a dream, it was like an old
tale which comes back to one: something one sees in sleep and
remembers. Listen! We were as we are now, after a great victory--in
some place--I don't know where--in a sort of large wooden shed, with
beams across it, and palisades around. We were not thinking of
anything: all the faces I saw I knew: you were among them, Marc Dives,
Duchene, and old men already dead: my father and old Hugues Rochart of
Harberg, the uncle of him who has just died: and they all had coarse
gray cloth blouses, with long beards and bare necks. We had won a like
victory, and were drinking out of red earthenware pots, when a cry
arose: 'The enemy is coming!' And Yegof, on horseback, with his long
beard and pointed crown, an axe in his hand, and with his eyes gleaming
like a wolf's, appeared before me in the darkness. I rushed on him
with a club, he waited for me--and from that moment I saw no more. I
only felt a great pain in my neck; a cold wind passed over my face, and
my head seemed to be dangling at the end of a cord: it was that
wretched Yegof who had hung my head to his saddle and was galloping
away!"
There was a short pause; and then Jean-Claude, rousing from his stupor,
replied: "It is a dream. I also have had dreams. Yesterday you were
agitated, Catherine, by all that tumult, that noise."
"No," she exclaimed in a firm tone, taking up her task again: "no, it
was not that. And to tell you the truth, during the battle, and even
when, the cannons were thundering against us, I was not afraid; I was
certain beforehand that we should not be beaten; I had seen it long
ago. But now I am afraid."
"But the Germans have evacuated Schirmeck; the whole line of the Vosges
is defended. We have more men than we need; they are coming every
minute in great numbers."
"No matter."
Hullin shrugged his shoulders.
"Come, come! you are feverish, Catherine; try to be calm, and think of
pleasanter things. As for all these dreams, you see, I make no more
account of them than I do of the Grand Turk, with his pipe and blue
stockings. The chief thing is to keep a good look-out, and to have
plenty of ammunition, men, and guns: that is infinitely better than the
most rose-colored dreams."
"You are mocking me, Jean-Claude."
"No; but to hear a sensible, courageous woman speak as you do, reminds
one in spite of himself of Yegof, who pretends to have lived sixteen
hundred years ago."
"Who knows?" said the old woman, in an obstinate tone; "it is possible
he may remember what others have forgotten."
Hullin was going to relate to her his conversation of the evening
before at the bivouac-fire with the madman, thus hoping to overthrow
all her gloomy fancies; but seeing she agreed with Yegof about the
sixteen hundred years, the worthy man said no more, but resumed his
walk up and down, with his head bent and an anxious face: "She is mad,"
thought he; "one more shock and it is all over with her!"
Catherine after a pause was going to speak, when Louise entered like a
swallow, calling out, in her sweetest voice, "Maman Lefevre, Maman
Lefevre, a letter from Gaspard!"
Whereupon the old farm-wife, whose hooked nose almost touched her lips,
so angry was she to see Hullin turning her dream into ridicule, raised
her head, the long wrinkles in her face relaxing.
She took the letter, looked at the red seal, and said to the young
girl: "Embrace me, Louise: it is a good letter!" And Louise at once
embraced her with joy.
Hullin came close up to them, delighted at this incident; and the
postman Brainstein, his big boots dyed red with the snow, his two hands
on his stick, and drooping his shoulders, stationed himself at the door
with a tired look.
The old dame put on her spectacles, slowly opened the letter under the
impatient eyes of Jean-Claude and Louise, and read aloud:--
"This, my mother, is to announce to you that all goes well, and that I
reached Phalsbourg on Tuesday evening just as the gates were being
closed. The Cossacks were already on the Saverne road; we had to fire
all night against their advanced guard. The following day, an envoy
was sent demanding the surrender of the place. The commandant,
Meunier, told him to go and be hanged; and three days after great
showers of bombs and shells began to rain upon the town. The Russians
have three batteries--one on the side of Hittelbronn, the other at the
Baraques above, and the third behind the tilery of Pernette near the
drinking-tank; but the red-hot shot do us the most harm: they burn down
the houses, and when a fire has broken out the bombs then come in
quantities and prevent the people from extinguishing it. The women and
children do not leave the block-houses; the townsmen remain with us on
the ramparts: they are fine fellows. Among them are some old soldiers
of the Sambre-et-Meuse, Italy, and Egypt, who have not forgotten how to
manage the guns. I felt sorry to see the graybeards bending over the
carronades to take aim. I will answer for it that there are no balls
lost with them; but all the same, when one has made the world tremble,
it is hard to be obliged, in one's old days, to fight for one's home
and last morsel of bread."
"Yes, it is hard," exclaimed Catherine, drying her eyes. "Only to
think of it makes one's heart bleed."
Then she continued:--
"The day before yesterday, the governor decided on our making a sortie
against the tile-kiln battery. You must know that these Russians break
the ice of the tank, and bathe in it, in groups of from twenty to
thirty; afterward drying themselves in the oven of the brick-kiln.
Well! about four o'clock, as the day was closing, we went out by the
Arsenal gateway, ascending the covered way, and filing along the
Allee-des-Vaches, with our muskets under our arms, and marching at the
double. Ten minutes after we commenced a rolling fire on the men that
were in the tank. Then their comrades rushed out of the brick-kilns:
they had only time to put on their cartouche-boxes, seize their
muskets, and form, all naked as they were, on the snow, like regular
savages. Notwithstanding that, the rogues were ten times more numerous
than we, and they began a movement to the right, in the direction of
the little chapel of St. John, in order to surround us, when the guns
from the Arsenal began to send such a storm of shot at them as I never
saw before; it carried whole files clean off. A quarter of an hour
later they retreated in a body to Quatre-Vents, without waiting to pick
up their breeches--their officers at their head, and the hail from the
fortress bringing up the rear. Papa Jean-Claude would have laughed at
the rout immensely. At last, toward nightfall, we returned to the
town, having destroyed one of their batteries and thrown two
eight-pounders into the well of the kiln. It was our first sortie. I
am now writing to you from the Baraques du Bois-de-Chenes, where we
have been sent to get provisions for the fortress. All this may last
months. It is said that the allies are reascending the valley of
Dosenheim as far as Weschem, and that thousands of them are marching on
Paris. Oh, if the Emperor once obtained the upper hand in Lorraine and
Champagne, not one of them would escape! But who lives will see. They
are sounding the retreat on Phalsbourg. We have collected a pretty
good number of oxen, cows, and goats about here; but shall have to
fight in order to get them in safely. Good-by, my good mother, my
dearest Louise, and Papa Jean-Claude. I embrace you as though I held
you in my arms."
At the close of the letter, Catherine Lefevre was overwhelmed with
emotion.
"What a brave boy!" said she. "He only knows his duty. There! thou
hearest, Louise? He embraces thee!"
Louise then throwing herself into her arms, they embraced each other;
and Catherine, notwithstanding the firmness of her character, could not
keep back two large tears from trickling down her cheeks; then,
recovering herself, "Come," said she, "all is well! Come, Brainstein,
you must eat some meat and drink a glass of wine. And here is a
crown-piece for your journey; I would give you the same sum every day
of the week for such a letter."
The postman, delighted with his present, followed the old dame. Louise
walked after them, and Jean-Claude, also, being eager to interrogate
Brainstein as to what he had learnt on the road, touching the events
taking place; but he could get nothing new out of him, except that the
allies were besieging Bitsche and Lutzelstein, and that they had lost
some hundreds of men in trying to force the Graufthal pass.