Part 7

I have often reproached myself for having caused this sorrow, but who can answer for his own wisdom? Has not the wise man himself said: "I turned myself to behold wisdom, and madness, and folly; and I saw that wisdom excelleth folly; and I myself perceived that one event happeneth to the wise man and the fool. Wherefore, I said in my heart, that wisdom also is vanity."

Burguet was going out from Father Frise's when Schweyer and his sons came up the postern stairs, crying out that we were surrounded by Cossacks and lost. Fortunately my wife and daughter could not hear them, and the mayor soon came along and ordered them to stop talking and go home quickly, if they did not want to be sent to prison.

They obeyed, but that did not prevent people from believing what they said, especially as it was all dark again in the direction of Mittelbronn.

The crowd came down from the ramparts and filled the street; many of them went to their homes thinking they should never see us again, when, just as the clock struck seven, the sentinel of the outworks called out, "Who goes there?"

We had reached the gate.

The crowd was soon on the ramparts again. The squad in front of the sergeant on duty flew to arms; they had just recognized us.

We heard the murmur, without knowing what it was. So, when, after a reconnoissance, the gates were slowly opened to us, and the two bridges lowered for us to pass, what was our surprise at hearing the shouts: "Hurrah for Father Moses! Hurrah for the spirits of wine!"

The tears came to my eyes. And my wagons rolling heavily under the gates, the soldiers presented arms to us, the great crowd surrounding us, shouting: "Moses! Hey, Moses! are you all right? you have not been killed?" the shouts of laughter, the people seizing my arm to hear me tell about the fight,--all these things were very pleasant.

Everybody wanted to talk with me, even the mayor, and I had not time to answer them.

But all this was nothing compared with the joy I felt at seeing Sorle, Zeffen, and little Safel run from Father Frise's and throw themselves all at once into my arms, exclaiming: "He is safe! he is safe!"

Ah, Fritz! what are honors by the side of such love? What is all the glory of the world compared with the joy of seeing our beloved ones? The others might have cried out, "Hurrah for Moses!" a hundred years, and I would not even have turned my head; but I was terribly moved by the sight of my family.

I gave Safel my gun, and while the wagons, escorted by the veterans, went on toward the little market, I led Zeffen and Sorle through the crowd to old Frise's, and there, when we were alone, we began to hug each other again.

Without, the shouts of joy were redoubled; you would have thought that the spirits of wine belonged to the whole city. But within the room, my wife and daughter burst into tears, and I confessed my imprudence.

So, instead of telling them of the dangers I had experienced, I told them that the Cossacks ran away as soon as they saw us, and that we had only to put horses to the wagons before starting.

A quarter of an hour afterward, when the cries and tumult had ceased, I went out, with Zeffen and Sorle on my arms, and little Safel in front, with my gun on his shoulder, and in this way we went home, to see to the unlading of the brandy.

I wanted to put everything in order before morning, so as to begin to sell at double price as soon as possible.

When a man runs such risks he ought to make something by it; for if he should sell at cost price, as some persons wish, nobody would be willing to run any risk for the sake of others; and if it should come to pass that a man should sacrifice himself for other people, he would be thought a blockhead; we have seen it a hundred times, and it will always be so.

Thank God! such ideas never entered into my head! I have always thought that the true idea of trade was to make as much profit as we can, honestly and lawfully.

That is according to justice and good sense.

As we turned at the corner of the market, our two wagons were already unharnessed before our house. Heitz was running back with his horses, so as to take advantage of the open gates, and the veterans, with their arms at will, were going up the street toward the infantry quarters.

It might have been eight o'clock. Zeffen and Sorle went to bed, and I sent Safel for Gros the cooper, to come and unload the casks. Quantities of people came and offered to help us. Gros came soon with his boys, and the work began.

It is very pleasant, Fritz, to see great tuns going into your cellar, and to say to yourself, "These splendid tuns are mine: it is spirits which cost me twenty sous the quart, and which I am going to sell for three francs!" This shows the beauty of trade; but everybody can imagine the pleasure for himself--there is no use in speaking of it.

About midnight my twelve pipes were down on the stands, and there was nothing left to do but to broach them.

While the crowd was dispersing, I engaged Gros to come in the morning to help me mix the spirits with water, and we went up, well pleased with our day's work. We closed the double oak door, and I fastened the padlock and went to bed.

What a pleasure it is to own something and feel that it is all safe!

This is how my twelve pipes were saved.

You see now, Fritz, what anxieties and fears we had at that time. Nobody was sure of anything; for you must not suppose that I was the only one living like a bird on the branch; there were hundreds of others who were not able to close their eyes. You should have seen how the citizens looked every morning, when they heard that the Austrians and Russians occupied Alsace, that the Prussians were marching upon Sarrebruck, or when an order was published for domiciliary visits, or for days' labor to wall up the posterns and orillons of the place, or to form companies of firemen to remove at once all inflammable matter, or to report to the governor the situation of the city treasury, and the list of the principal persons subject to taxes for the supply of shoes, caps, bed-linen, and so forth.

You should have seen how people looked at each other.

In war times civil life is nothing, and they will take from you your last shirt, giving you the governor's receipt for it. The first men of the land are zeros when the governor has spoken. This is why I have often thought that everybody who wishes for war, or at least wants to be a soldier, is either demented or half ruined, and hopes to better himself by the ruin of everybody else. It must be so.

But notwithstanding all these troubles, I could not lose time, and I spent all the next day in mixing my spirits. I took off my cloak, and drew out with great gusto. Gros and his boys brought jugs, and emptied them in the casks which I had bought beforehand, so that by evening these casks were brimful of good white brandy, eighteen degrees.

I had caramel prepared, also, to give the brandy a good color of old cognac, and when I turned the faucet, and raised the glass before the candle, and saw that it was exactly the right tint, I was in ecstasies, and exclaimed: "Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto those that be of heavy hearts! Let him drink and remember his misery no more."

Father Gros, standing at my side on his great flat feet, smiled quietly, and his boys looked well pleased.

I filled the glass for them; they passed it to each other and were delighted with it.

About five o'clock we went upstairs. Safel, on the same day, had brought three workmen, and had them remove our old iron into the court under the shed. The old rickety storehouse was cleaned. Desmarets, the joiner, put up some shelves behind the door in the arch, for holding bottles, and glasses, and tin measures, when the time for selling should come, and his son put together the planks of the counter. This was all done at once, as at a time of great pressure, when people like to make a good sum of money quickly.

I looked at it all with a good deal of satisfaction. Zeffen, with her baby in her arms, and Sorle, had also come down. I showed my wife the place behind the counter, and said, "That is the place where you are to sit, with your feet in loose slippers, and a warm tippet on your shoulders, and sell our brandy."

She smiled as she thought of it.

Our neighbors, Bailly the armorer, Koffel the little weaver, and several others, came and looked on without speaking; they were astonished to see what quick work we were making.

At six o'clock, just as Desmarets laid aside his hammer, the sergeant arrived in great glee, on his return from the cantine.

"Well, Father Moses!" he exclaimed, "the work goes on! But there is still something wanting."

"What is that, sergeant?"

"Hi! It is all right, only you must put a screen up above, or look out for the shells!"

I saw that he was right, and we were all well frightened, except the neighbors, who laughed to see our surprise.

"Yes," said the sergeant, "we must have it."

This took away all my pleasure; I saw that our troubles were not yet at an end.

Sorle, Zeffen, and I went up, while Desmarets closed the door. Supper was ready; we sat down thoughtfully, and little Safel brought the keys.

The noise had ceased without; now and then a citizen on patrol passed by.

The sergeant came to smoke his pipe as usual. He explained how the screens were made, by crossing beams in the form of a sentry-box, the two sides supported against the gables, but while he maintained that it would hold like an arch, I did not think it strong enough, and I saw by Sorle's face that she thought as I did.

We sat there talking till ten o'clock, and then all went to bed.

XII

THE ENEMY REPULSED

About one o'clock in the morning of the sixth of January, the day of the feast of the Kings, the enemy arrived on the hill of Saverne.

It was terribly cold, our windows under the persiennes were white with frost. I woke as the clock struck one; they were beating the call at the infantry barracks.

You can have no idea how it sounded in the silence of the night.

"Dost thou hear, Moses?" whispered Sorle.

"Yes, I hear," said I, almost without breathing.

After a minute some windows were opened in our street, and we knew that others too were listening; then we heard running, and suddenly the cry, "To arms! to arms!"

It made one's hair stand on end.

I had just risen, and was lighting a lamp, when we heard two knocks at our door.

"Come in!" said Sorle, trembling.

The sergeant opened the door. He was in marching equipments, with his gaiters on his legs, his large gray cap turned up at the sides, his musket on his shoulder, and his sabre and cartridge-box on his back.

"Father Moses," said he, "go back to bed and be quiet: it is the battalion call at the barracks, and has nothing to do with you."

And we saw at once that he was right, for the drums did not come up the street two by two, as when the National Guard was called in.

"Thank you, sergeant," I said.

"Go to sleep!" said he, and he went down the stairs.

The door of the alley below slammed to. Then the children, who had waked up, began to cry. Zeffen came in, very pale, with her baby in her arms, exclaiming, "Mercy! What is the matter?"

"It is nothing, Zeffen," said Sorle. "It is nothing, my child: they are beating the call for the soldiers."

At the same moment the battalion came down the main street. We heard them march as far as to the Place d'Armes, and beyond it toward the German gate.

We shut the windows, Zeffen went back to her room, and I lay down again.

But how could I sleep after such a start? My head was full of a thousand thoughts: I fancied the arrival of the Russians on the hill this cold night, and our soldiers marching to meet them, or manning the ramparts. I thought of all the blindages and block-houses, and batteries inside the bastions, and that all these great works had been made to guard against bombs and shells, and I exclaimed inwardly: "Before the enemy has demolished all these works, our houses will be crushed, and we shall be exterminated to the last man."

I took on in this way for about half an hour, thinking of all the calamities which threatened us, when I heard outside the city, toward Quatre-Vents, a kind of heavy rolling, rising and falling like the murmur of running water. This was repeated every second. I raised myself on my elbow to listen, and I knew that it was a fight far more terrible than that at Mittelbronn, for the rolling did not stop, but seemed rather to increase.

"How they are fighting, Sorle, how they are fighting!" I exclaimed, as I pictured to myself the fury of those men murdering each other at the dead of night, not knowing what they were doing. "Listen! Sorle, listen! If that does not make one shudder!"

"Yes," said she. "I hope our sergeant will not be wounded; I hope he will come back safe!"

"May the Lord watch over him!" I replied, jumping from my bed, and lighting a candle.

I could not control myself. I dressed myself as quickly as if I were going to run away; and afterward I listened to that terrible rolling, which came nearer or died away with every gust of wind.

When once dressed, I opened a window, to try to see something. The street was still black; but toward the ramparts, above the dark line of the arsenal bastions, was stretched a line of red.

The smoke of powder is red on account of the musket shots which light it up. It looked like a great fire. All the windows in the street were open: nothing could be seen, but I heard our neighbor the armorer say to his wife, "It is growing warm down there! It is the beginning of the dance, Annette; but they have not got the big drum yet; that will come, by and by!"

The woman did not answer, and I thought, "Is it possible to jest about such things! It is against nature."

The cold was so severe that after five or six minutes I shut the window. Sorle got up and made a fire in the stove.

The whole city was in commotion; men were shouting and dogs barking. Safel, who had been wakened by all these noises, went to dress himself in the warm room. I looked very tenderly on this poor little one, his eyes still heavy with sleep; and as I thought that we were to be fired upon, that we must hide ourselves in cellars, and all of us be in danger of being killed for matters which did not concern us, and about which nobody had asked our opinion, I was full of indignation. But what distressed me most was to hear Zeffen sob and say that it would have been better for her and her children to stay with Baruch at Saverne and all die together.

Then the words of the prophet came to me: "Is not this thy fear, thy confidence, thy hope, and the uprightness of thy ways?

"Remember, I pray thee, who ever perished being innocent, or where were the righteous cut off.

"No, they that plough iniquity and sow wickedness, reap the same.

"By the blast of God they perish, and by the breath of his nostrils are they consumed.

"But thee, his servant, he shall redeem from death.

"Thou shalt come to thy grave in a full age, like as a shock of corn cometh in his season."

In this way I strengthened my heart, while I heard the great tumult of the panic-stricken crowd, running and trying to save their property.

About seven o'clock it was announced that the casemates were open, and that everybody might take their mattresses there, and that there must be tubs full of water in every house, and the wells left open in case of fire.

Think, Fritz, what ideas these orders suggested.

Some of our neighbors, Lisbeth Dubourg, Bevel Ruppert, Camus's daughters, and some others, came up to us exclaiming, "We are all lost!"

Their husbands had gone out, right and left, to see what they could see, and these women hung on Zeffen and Sorle's necks, repeating again and again, "Oh, dear! oh, dear! what misery!"

I could have wished them all to the devil, for instead of comforting us they only increased our fears; but at such times women will get together and cry out all at once; you can't talk reason to them; they like these loud cryings and groanings.

Just as the clock struck eight, Bailly the armorer came to find his wife: he had come from the ramparts. "The Russians," he said, "have come down in a mass from Quatre-Vents to the very gate, filling the whole plain--Cossacks, Baskirs, and rabble! Why don't they fire down upon them from the ramparts? The governor is betraying us."

"Where are our soldiers?" I asked.

"Retreating!" exclaimed he. "The wounded came back two hours ago, and our men stay yonder, with folded arms."

His bony face shook with rage. He led away his wife; then others came crying out, "The enemy has advanced to the lower part of the gardens, upon the glacis." I was astonished at these things.

The women had gone away to cry somewhere else, and just then a great noise of wheels was heard from the direction of the rampart. I looked out of the window, and saw a wagon from the arsenal, some citizen gunners; old Goulden, Holender, Jacob Cloutier, and Barrier galloped at its sides; Captain Jovis ran in front. They stopped at our door.

"Call the iron-merchant!" cried the captain. "Tell him to come down."

Baker Chanoine, the brigadier of the second battery, came up. I opened the door.

"What do you want of me?" I asked in the stairway.

"Come down, Moses," said Chanoine. And I went down.

Captain Jovis, a tall old man, with his face covered with sweat, in spite of the cold, said to me, "You are Moses, the iron-merchant?"

"Yes, sir."

"Open your storehouse. Your iron is required for the defence of the city."

So I had to lead all these people into my court, under the shed. The captain on looking round, saw some cast-iron bars, which were used at that time for closing up the backs of fireplaces. They weighed from thirty to forty pounds each, and I sold a good many in the vicinity of the city. There was no lack of old nails, rusty bolts, and old iron of all sorts.

"This is what we want," said he. "Break up these bars, and take away the old iron, quick!"

The others, with the help of our two axes, began at once to break up everything. Some of them filled a basket with the pieces of cast-iron, and ran with it to the wagon.

The captain looked at his watch, and said, "Make haste! We have just ten minutes!"

I thought to myself, "They have no need of credit; they take what they please; it is more convenient."

All my bars and old iron were broken in pieces--more than fifteen hundred pounds of iron.

As they were starting to run to the ramparts, Chanoine laughed, and said to me, "Capital grape-shot, Moses! Thou canst get ready thy pennies. We'll come and take them to-morrow."

The wagon started through the crowd which ran behind it, and I followed too.

As we came nearer the ramparts the firing became more and more frequent. As we turned from the curate's house two sentinels stopped everybody, but they let me pass on account of my iron, which they were going to fire.

You can never imagine that mass of people, the noise around the bastion, the smoke which covered it, the orders of the infantry officers whom we heard going up the glacis, the gunners, the lighted match, caissons with the piles of bullets behind! No, in all these thirty years I have not forgotten those men with their levers, running back the cannon to load them to their mouths; those firings in file, at the bottom of the ramparts; those volleys of balls hissing in the air; the orders of the gun-captains, "Load! Ram! Prime!"

What crowds upon those gun-carriages, seven feet high, where the gunners were obliged to stand and stretch their arms to fire the cannon! And what a frightful smoke!

Men invent such machines to destroy each other, and they would think that they did a great deal if they sacrificed a quarter as much to assist their fellow-men, to instruct them in infancy, and to give them a little bread in their old age.

Ah! those who make an outcry against war, and demand a different state of things, are not in the wrong.

I was in the corner, at the left of the bastion, where the stairs go down to the postern behind the college, among three or four willow baskets as high as chimneys, and filled with clay. I ought to have stayed there quietly, and made use of the right moment to get away, but the thought seized me that I would go and see what was going on below the ramparts, and while they were loading the cannon, I climbed to the level of the glacis, and lay down flat between two enormous baskets, where there was scarcely a chance that balls could reach me.

If hundreds of others who were killed in the bastions had done as I did, how many of them might be still living, respectable fathers of families in their villages!

Lying in this place, and raising my nose, I could see over the whole plain. I saw the cordon of the rampart below, and the line of our skirmishers behind the palankas, on the other side of the moat; they did nothing but tear off their cartridges, prime, charge, and fire. There one could appreciate the beauty of drilling; there were only two companies of them, and their firing by file kept up an incessant roll.

Farther on, directly to the right, stretched the road to Quatre-Vents. The Ozillo farm, the cemetery, the horse-post-station, and George Mouton's farm at the right; the inn of La Roulette and the great poplar-walk at the left, all were full of Cossacks, and such-like rascals, who were galloping into the very gardens, to reconnoitre the environs of the place. This is what I suppose, for it is against nature to run without an object, and to risk being struck by a ball.

These people, mounted on small horses, with large gray cloaks, soft boots, fox-skin caps, like those of the Baden peasants, long beards, lances in rest, great pistols in their belts, came whirling on like birds.

They had not been fired upon as yet, because they kept themselves scattered, so that bullets would have no effect; but their trumpets sounded the rally from La Roulette, and they began to collect behind the buildings of the inn.

About thirty of our veterans, who had been kept back in the cemetery lane, were making a slow retreat; they made a few paces, at the same time hastily reloading, then turned, shouldered, fired, and began marching again among the hedges and bushes, which there had not been time to cut down in this locality.

Our sergeant was one of these; I recognized him at once, and trembled for him.

Every time these veterans gave fire, five or six Cossacks came on like the wind, with their lances lowered; but it did not frighten them: they leaned against a tree and levelled their bayonets. Other veterans came up, and then some loaded, while others parried the blows. Scarcely had they torn open their cartridges when the Cossacks fled right and left, their lances in the air. Some of them turned for a moment and fired their large pistols behind like regular bandits. At length our men began to march toward the city.

Those old soldiers, with their great shakos set square on their heads, their large capes hanging to the back of their calves, their sabres and cartridge-boxes on their backs, calm in the midst of these savages, reloading, trimming, and parrying as quietly as if they were smoking their pipes in the guard-house, were something to be admired. At last, after seeing them come out of the whirlwind two or three times, it seemed almost an easy thing to do.

Our sergeant commanded them. I understood then why he was such a favorite with the officers, and why they always took his part against the citizens: there were not many such. I wanted to call out, "Make haste, sergeant; let us make haste!" but neither he nor his men hurried in the least.