CHAPTER IX

The quarry--Frenchmen eat the haricot cooked for the Cossacks--The Duc de Treviso--He allows himself to be surprised--Ducoudray the hosier--Terrors.

Five or six hundred steps from the farmhouse at home, in the middle of open country, scattered over with dwarf juniper trees, where the rocks jutted out of the earth all round, as the bones of a consumptive patient stick out through his skin, an excavation suddenly opens similar to those one meets at every turn in the Campagna of Rome. This excavation looks like a cave of Cumæ or an air-hole of Avernus. When you bend over its opening you can hear the roar which astonishes one on holding a shell to the ear--only this roar is on a greater and more frightful and more gigantic scale; then, if you try for a moment to pierce through the darkness, which increases as the cavern deepens, you can make out a rock, sticking up perpendicularly, about twenty-five or thirty feet below you, and burying its base in the bowels of the earth at a steep angle.

This is the entrance to the quarry.

You ask to what quarry?

To _the_ quarry, doubtless, since it was always called "The Quarry"--just as Rome was called _The City_--_Urbs._

When, by the help of a ladder, you descend the twenty-five or thirty feet, you reach a platform from which you slide down the steep slope for five or six feet, and then you find yourself at the entrance of an immense labyrinth--compared with which that of the Cretan Dædalus was but a child's garden in a toy box.

Who had hewn out these great catacombs? What town had being in these unknown depths? It would indeed be difficult to tell.

Its subterranean passages had certainly communicated with some larger opening pointing to further undermining. The opening by which one entered was, as we have said, merely a crack, too narrow to have ever disgorged the quantity of stones missing from the bare sides of the mountain.

It was in this quarry, then, that half the people of Villers-Cotterets had taken refuge under stress of terror.

A large encampment had been set up; a regular village, inhabited by five or six hundred people, in the midst of the square hall of granite, under a granite vault upheld by granite pillars; nearly a quarter of a league from the opening, at a depth of a hundred or a hundred and fifty feet.

My mother was one of the first who had chosen and secured and marked out her allotment in it; and there we carried mattresses, blankets, a table and some books.

So, when the first alarm came, we had but to leave Villers-Cotterets and to hide in the quarry.

Before resorting to this extremity, my mother meant to try every means of conciliation, and one of her means of conciliation, the one she set most store by, was her haricot mutton and her Soissons wines.

But man proposes and God disposes. After three days of hanging over the fire, after three days of lying in the cellar, the haricot mutton was eaten and the wine was drunk by Frenchmen.

Marshal Mortier's Corps, with the remnant of the Young Guard, and a dozen of cannon, came; they were commissioned to defend the entrance to the forest.

Great was our joy! It was glorious to see these fine young fellows, full of hope and courage, instead of the hideous-looking Cossacks we had been expecting.

Youth never despairs, for it is still in harmony with the divine. It was not so with the old generals, above all with the duc de Treviso.

There was a strange lassitude in all the men who had followed the fortunes of the emperor. Their worldly position was secured; they had reached the zenith of their fortunes by becoming marshals; while Napoleon--that hankerer after the unattainable--still went on coveting something more!

Therefore, those who were not left sleeping dead and bleeding on the battle-fields, stopped, harassed, upon the road of his retreat; shaking their heads at his never-resting, feverish course; and saying: "It is right enough for that man of iron, but we--we are not able to follow him any further."

Villers-Cotterets was one of these halting-places where the duc de Treviso stopped, overpowered by fatigue. We saw him pass by on horseback in the morning and reconnoitre the forest, guided by the inspector, M. Deviolaine.

My mother took the old tricoloured cockade out of my father's hat, which had remained there since the Egyptian Campaign, and carried it to M. Deviolaine, with a blunderbuss.

M. Deviolaine put the cockade in his hat, and the blunderbuss at his saddle-bow.

I can still remember the marshal, that veteran of our earliest battles, who escaped, throughout all our wars, the grapeshot of Prussia, of England, of Russia and of Austria, only to fall at last on the boulevard du Temple by Fieschi's infernal machine.

The giant passed by, doubled up on his horse; one would have said then that a child would have been strong enough to defeat that invincible warrior.

So long as Hercules crowned carried the world on his own shoulders, all went well; but, when he shifted the least portion upon the shoulders of his lieutenants, they gave way beneath the weight.

When evening came there was a grand dinner-party at M. Deviolaine's, to which I was taken; and the marshal took me up on his knees and fondled me: for he had known my father.

I asked him for news of my godfather Brune; he was in disgrace, or on the verge of it.

The dinner was a sad affair, the evening depressing. The marshal retired early, went to bed and slept. We were awakened at midnight by the sound of firing. Fighting was going on in the parterre. The marshal had been careless about his sentries; the enemy had seized his park, and he only saved himself by escaping, half-dressed, by a back-door, from M. Deviolaine's house.

In the morning the enemy had disappeared, taking away our dozen pieces of artillery.

The same day the marshal retired, I think, to Compiègne, and the town was deserted.

The enemy would surely not be long in appearing after this; so my mother set to work on a second haricot mutton.

Our days passed in constant alarms. When a couple of horsemen were seen on the highroad, the cry would go forth, "The Cossacks! the Cossacks!" Then a great crowd of people would run along the streets, children crying, shutters and doors banging as they fled, and the town would assume the funereal aspect of a city of the dead.

In spite of my mother's haricot mutton, which boiled unceasingly in the copper, and her Soissonais wine, ready for the corkscrew, she grew frightened with the rest, shut our door, and, pressing me to her breast, agitated and trembling, she would retire into a far corner.

Of course there were no more classes amid all these alarms; no more college; no more Abbé Grégoire.

I am wrong: the Abbé Grégoire was, on the contrary, more than ever present.

The Abbé Grégoire was calmness itself, and accordingly a great comfort all round. He went from house to house reassuring everybody, pointing out that evil comes from evil, and that if no ill was done to these much dreaded Cossacks, they, on their side, would do none to us.

Moreover, it would be to their interest not to behave too outrageously. When at Villers-Cotterets, they would find themselves in the midst of a vast forest, occupied by thirty or forty foresters, who knew every turning and winding better than Osman knew those of the Seraglio, and who were all of them more or less capable of putting a bullet into a crown-piece at a hundred paces distance. These were considerations which even Cossacks could appreciate highly.

Meanwhile, time was passing by; there was fighting at Mormant, at Montmirail, at Montereau. We were assured that at this latter battle Bonaparte (to use his own expression), by turning back into an artillery-man, had saved Napoleon.

We had retaken Soissons on the 19th February, and the haricot had been on the fire for five days. No one expected any more Cossacks to come, at least for some time, so we ate the haricot mutton. We received more reassuring news; and there was even talk of an armistice to be concluded with the Emperor of Austria, through the intervention of the Prince of Lichtenstein. Napoleon had re-entered Troyes on the 24th, and had dismissed the prefect; finally, conferences had taken place at Largny for suspension of hostilities.

But soon the fire burst out again, rekindled by some spark or other, and we learnt, in quick succession, of fighting at Bar-sur-Aube, at Meaux, and of the surrender of la Fère.

The enemy was coming nearer and nearer to us.

My mother set to work on a third haricot mutton.

Suddenly, in the middle of a foggy February morning, again the cry of "The Cossacks!" sounded, we heard the galloping of several horses, and we saw about fifteen long-bearded cavaliers, with tall lances, ride through the rue de Soissons; they seemed, indeed, to be more like desperate runaways than threatening conquerors.

As they advanced, doors and windows were shut. Their horses, urged at full gallop, traversed the whole length of the rue de Largny; then they retraced their steps, galloping still, and plunged again into the rue de Soissons, whence they departed, disappearing like a misty and hideous dream.

They were scarcely out of sight before firing was heard.

The sound made my mother tremble; but powder had its usual effect on me; I slipped out of her hands, I escaped from her and ran off to the beginning of the rue de Soissons in spite of her cries. The Cossacks had entirely disappeared.

A woman stood on the threshold of an open door wringing her hands.

She was the wife of a retail hosier named Ducoudray.

The neighbours gradually undid their doors at the sound of her cries, and at her gestures of despair ran up and collected round the door.

I was one of the first to arrive, and I learnt the reason for her cries and her despair.

At the approach of the Cossacks, the hosier had closed his door in fear and trembling, having opened it out of curiosity after their first passage. As they passed, one of the riders discharged his pistol at the shut door, just as though it had been a target. The bullet pierced the door and hit M. Ducoudray in the throat, breaking his spine.

He was lying on the ground, with his head resting on his daughter's knees, torrents of blood flowing from his wound, which had severed an artery.

Death had been instantaneous; he had already ceased to breathe.

Hence the cries, hence the despair of his wife.

As for the Cossacks, they had disappeared as they had come, and, if they had not left this bloody testimony in their wake, the town would have imagined their visit had been a bad dream.

Half from fear, and half in order to bear this important news, I ran back home full speed, and at the corner of the street I met my mother; she had already heard the news.

This time neither the haricot mutton nor the Soissonais wine appeared to her a safe shield against our impending dangers. She pictured the Cossacks passing in front of our door, instead of passing before that of M. Ducoudray; she saw the bullet flying through the door, and myself stretched, bleeding and dying from the pistol-shot before her eyes. We had a sort of housekeeper whom we called "the Queen." My mother left her third haricot mutton and her wine of Soissons to the Queen, bade her watch over the house, took me by the hand and dragged me at a frantic pace towards the quarry.

We turned as we left the town, and we saw the troop of Cossacks climbing a long hill at a gallop, the hill of Dampleux. They were a little detachment that had lost its way, and kept straying even further afield. I afterwards heard it said that not one of those twelve or fifteen men ever left the forest.

My mother and I fled on; running as only people can run under the influence of terror, hot and breathless. We told whom we met not only of the presence of the Cossacks, but also of the assassination they had perpetrated ten minutes previously.

Everyone who was not already in the quarry at once retreated to it; the last man who descended removed the ladder, and, for twenty-four hours, not one of the colony had the courage to go near the opening.

By degrees this first terror subsided, and people ventured to put their noses outside. The bravest ascended to the earth's surface, went to learn what was happening, and found that the Cossacks had completely disappeared, and that, except for the misfortune that had occurred the day before, the town was quiet.

My mother then decided to accept the offer made her by Madame Picot; to take me to spend the day at the farm, and only to return to the quarry to sleep there at night.

If anything fresh happened we were to be warned of it instantly by one of the many labourers employed on M. Picot's estate, who were to unyoke a horse from plough or harrow and to ride off in hot haste to give the alarm at the farm.

Five or six days passed in this fashion, during which we learnt in succession of the battles of Lizy, of St Julien, and of Bar-sur-Seine.

At length one day, as I have said, we heard from the farmyard the roaring of cannon.

There was fighting going on at Neuilly-Saint-Front.

The night after the battle, I went to sleep with my head filled with the noise of battle, and I dreamt that the Cossacks came down into the quarry.

When morning came, I repeated this dream to my mother, and it terrified her to such an extent that she made up her mind we should set off next day.

Where were we to go? She had absolutely no idea; but she fancied by changing places she might perhaps exorcise the danger.