Chapter XIX.

Toward two o'clock that night the snow began to fall, and at daybreak it rested inches deep upon the men at the bivouacs.

The Germans had left Grandfontaine, Framont, and even Schirmeck, and black spots far away on the plains of Alsace showed where their battalions were in full retreat.

Hullin, roused at early dawn, inspected the bivouacs; he stopped for a few minutes to gaze at the plateau--the scene of Dives's charge at the cannon pointed down the mountain side, the partisans stretched around the fires, and the pacing sentries; then satisfied that all was well, he returned to the farm-house where Catherine and Louise were yet sleeping.

The gray morning was entering at the windows. A few wounded, whom the fires of fever had already seized, shrieked loudly for their wives and children. Then the hum of many voices arose, and at last Catherine and Louise appeared, and saw Jean-Claude seated in a corner of a window; ashamed to be thought more devoted to slumber than he, they hastened to bid him good morning.

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"Well!" said Catherine inquiringly.

"They are gone, and we are masters of the road."

This assurance did not seem sufficient for the old woman. She gazed through the windows, and saw the Austrians far off in Alsace. Still her face bore the impress of an indefinable uneasiness.

Between eight and nine o'clock, Father Saumaize, the priest of the village of Charmes, arrived. A few mountaineers then descended to the foot of the slope, and collected the dead who lay there so thick. Then a long trench was dug, to the right of the farm-house, in which partisans and Kaiserliks, in their blouses, their slouched hats, their shakos, and their uniforms, were ranged side by side. The good priest, a tall old man, with locks white as snow, read the ancient prayers for the dead in that rapid and mysterious voice which pierces the very depths of the soul, and seems to summon long-past generations to greet the new-comers to their realms--which calls so vividly to the hearts of the living thoughts of the darkness and terrors of the grave, and of the light and mercy beyond.

All day wagons and sleds kept carrying the wounded to their villages; for Doctor Lorquin, fearing to increase their excitement, was forced to yield to their cries and prayers that they might again see their homes. Toward evening Catherine and Hullin found themselves alone in the great hall; Louise had gone to prepare supper. Great flakes of snow still continued to fall without, and from time to time a sled departed silently bearing its wounded owner buried in straw, sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, leading a horse by the bridle. Catherine, seated at the table, folded bandages with an absent air.

"What ails you, Mother Lefevre?" asked Jean-Claude. "Ever since morning you have been sad and thoughtful. Is this your rejoicing over victory?"

The old woman looked up, and slowly pushing the linen from her, replied:

"True, Jean-Claude; I am anxious."

"Anxious? About what? The enemy is in full retreat, and Frantz Materne, whom I sent to watch them, and all Pivrette's and Jerome's and Labarbe's couriers report that they are returning to Mutzig. Old Materne and Kasper, after having buried the dead, learned at Grandfontaine that not a white coat is to be seen toward Saint Blaize-la-Roche. All this proves that our dragoons of the Spanish wars gave them a warm reception on the Senones road, and they fear to be turned by way of Schirmeck. I see no reason for uneasiness, Catherine."

And Hullin gazed at her with a look of inquiry.

"You will laugh at me again, Jean-Claude," said she; "I have had a dream."

"A dream!"

"Yes; the same that I dreamed at Bois-de-Chênes."

Her voice grew louder, and, before Hullin could interrupt, she continued half angrily:

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"Say what you will, Jean-Claude, a great peril hangs over us. Yes, yes, all this seems senseless, and is only a dream, but it was not a dream; it was what had passed and what I saw again and recognized in my sleep. Listen! We were as we were to-day--after a great victory--where I know not--in a sort of huge wooden hut, crossed by strong beams and defended by palisades. We were secure and careless. All whom I saw around me I knew. There were you, Marc Dives, Old Duchêne, and many others--old men long since dead--my father and old Hugo Rochart of Harberg, the uncle of him who has just died, all in gray blouses, and with long beards and bare necks. We were rejoicing and drinking from great vessels of red earth, when a cry arose, 'The enemy are returning!' And Yegof on horseback, his beard streaming in the wind, his crown surrounded with spikes, an axe in his hand, and his eyes glittering like a wolfs, appeared before me. I rushed at him with a stake; he awaited me, and I saw no more. But I felt a sharp pain at my throat; a cold blast struck my face, and it seemed as if my head were swinging at the end of a cord. Yegof had hung it to his saddle and was galloping away." The old woman ended her story in such a tone of belief that brave Jean-Claude shuddered.

There were a few moments of silence; then Hullin, rousing himself, replied:

"It was but a dream. I, too, often have horrible ones. It was the noise, the shrieks, the terror of yesterday tormenting you, Catherine."

"No!" she answered firmly, as she resumed her work; "it was not that. In good truth, during the whole of the battle--even when the cannon thundered upon us--I feared nothing; I was sure we would be victorious, for that too I had seen. But now I fear!"

"But the Austrians have evacuated Schirmeck; all the line of the Vosges is defended; we have more men than we need, and still more are arriving every moment."

"No matter!"

Hullin shrugged his shoulders.

"Come, come, Catherine! You are feverish. Try to calm yourself and dispel such gloomy thoughts. I laugh at all these dreams as I would at the Grand Turk with his pipe and blue stockings. We have men, munitions, and defences, and these are better than the rosiest-colored dreams."

"You mock me, Jean-Claude."

"No; but to hear a woman of sound sense, of courage and determination, talk as you do, makes one indeed think of Yegof, who boasts that he has been living sixteen hundred years."

"Who knows?" said the old woman obstinately. "He may remember what others have forgotten."

Hullin proceeded to relate his conversation of the day before with Yegof, at the bivouac, thinking thus to disperse her gloom; but seeing that she was inclined to agree with the fool on the score of the sixteen centuries, the good man at length ceased, and paced the room with bowed head and anxious brow. "She is becoming mad," he thought; "another shock, and her mind is gone."

Catherine, after a silence, seemed about again to speak, when Louise tripped into the room, crying:

"Mamma Lefevre, Mamma Lefevre, a letter from Gaspard!"

Then the old woman, whose lips had been pressed tight together in her indignation at Hullin's ridicule, lifted her head, and the sharp lines of her face softened.

She took the letter and gazing at the red seal, said to the young girl:

"Kiss me, Louise; it bears good tidings."

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Hullin drew near, glad that something had happened to distract Catherine's thoughts, and Brainstein, the postman, his heavy shoes covered with snow and his hands resting upon his staff, stood with a weary and careworn air at the door.

Catherine put on her spectacles, opened the letter slowly, notwithstanding the impatient glances of Jean-Claude and Louise, and read aloud:

"This, my dear mother, is to inform you that all goes well, and I arrived Tuesday evening at Phalsbourg, just as they were closing the gates. The Cossacks were already on the Saverne side, and skirmishing was kept up all night with their advance. The next day a flag of truce summoned us to surrender the place. The commandant Meunier told the bearer to go and hang himself, and, three days after, a storm of shell and canister began to hail upon the city. The Russians have three batteries; but the hot shot do the most harm. They set fire to the houses and when the flames appear, showers of canister prevent our putting them out. The women and children keep within the blockhouse; the citizens fight with us on the ramparts. They are brave men, and among them are some veterans of the Sambre-and-Meuse, of Italy and Egypt, who have not forgotten how to work the guns. It makes me sad to see their grey moustaches falling on the cannon as they aim. I will answer for it, they waste no powder; but it is hard to see men, who have made the world tremble, forced in their old age to defend their own homes and hearths."

"Hard indeed," said Catherine, drying her eyes. "It makes my heart bleed to think of it."

She continued:

"The day before yesterday the governor decided to attack the tile-kiln. You must know that these Russians break the ice to bathe in platoons of twenty or thirty, and afterward dry themselves there at the fire. About four in the afternoon, as evening was coming on, we made a sally through the arsenal postern, passing through the covered ways and filing along the path leading to the kiln. Ten minutes after, we began a rolling fire on it, and the Russians had scarcely time to seize their muskets and cartridge-boxes, and, half-dressed, to form ranks upon the snow. Nevertheless, they were ten times more numerous than we, and began a movement to the right, on the little chapel of Saint John, so as to surround us, when the guns of the arsenal opened a fire upon them, the like of which I never saw before, sweeping them down in long lanes. In less than a quarter of an hour they were in full flight to Quatre-Vents, without waiting to pick up their coats, their officers at their head, and round-shot from the town acting as file-closers. Father Jean-Claude would have laughed at their predicament. At night-fall we returned to the city, after destroying the kiln, and throwing two eight-pounders we captured into its well. So ended our first sortie. I write you from Bois-de-Chênes, which we have reached on a foraging expedition. The siege may last months.

"I should have told you that the Allies are passing through the valley of Dosenheim to Weschem, and flooding the roads to Paris by thousands. Ah! if God would only give the emperor the victory in Lorraine or Champagne, not one of them would return. But the trumpets are sounding the recall, and we have gathered a goodly number of oxen and cows and goats. We may have to fight our way back. Farewell, my dear mother, and Louise, and Father Jean-Claude. You are ever in my thoughts and my heart."

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Catherine's eyes grew moist as she finished.

"What a brave fellow he is!" she murmured; "he knows only his duty. Well! well! Do you hear, Louise, how he remembers you?"

Louise threw herself into the old woman's arms, and Mother Catherine, despite the firmness of her character, could not restrain two great tears, which coursed down her furrowed cheeks; but she was soon herself again. "Come, come!" said she; "all is well. Come Brainstein, eat a morsel of bread and take a glass of wine, and here is a crown for your trouble; I wish I could give as much every week for such a letter."

The postman, well pleased at her bounty, followed her, and Jean-Claude hastened to question him as to the enemy's movements; but he learned nothing new, except that the Allies were besieging Bitche, and Lutzelstein, and that they had lost some hundreds of men in attempting to force the defile of Graufthal.