The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (28 page)

Now my goat—an animal with a broad brow, garnished with heavy knotted curling horns, with eyes gleaming like a pair of gold buttons, a reddish beard, exhibiting a proud, defiant bearing under those festoons of verdure, and a countenance as bold as that of a prowling satyr—my goat was making a progress upwards towards the very highest of these narrow ledges, and was enjoying a sweet repast of dainty herbs.

“Elias!” I cried, “I feel an inspiration! Just as I was thinking of a scapegoat, there is one! I see it! Look!—behold! There he is! Is not your course plain now? Lay your crime upon that goat, and then forget all about it.”

Elias looked at me in stupid ignorance.

“I should like to do that, Christian, but how am I to lay my remorse upon that goat?”

“Nothing can be plainer. What did the Romans do to get rid of their criminals, polluted with every crime? Why they flung them off the Tarpeian rock, to be sure. Well, having laid your imprecations upon that goat, fling him down the Holderloch, and there will be an end of it all.”

“But”—replied Elias.

“I know your objections beforehand,” I replied. “You are going to say that you see no connection between Kaspar Evig, whose shade follows you, and that goat. But beware! be careful! Where was the connection between the waters of the Ganges, Circe’s salt-cakes, and the scapegoat with the crimes to be expiated? None at all. Well, for all that, the expiation was held to be good; therefore lay your curses and imprecations upon that goat, and throw him over! I order you to do that! I feel it my duty to see this thing done. I can see a connection between that goat and your fault, but I cannot explain it because the light of my vast information dazzles me just now!”

Elias did not move a step. I even thought I detected a smile upon his countenance, which irritated me.

“How!” said I; “here am I pointing out to you an infallible method to get rid of the just punishment of your crime, and you doubt—you hesitate—you even smile!”

“No,” said he, “but I am not accustomed to walk on the edges of precipices, and I am afraid I should fall into the Holderloch along with the goat.”

“Ah, you are a coward! I can see it all. You have just once displayed a little courage to get exemption for the rest of your days. Well, sir, if you refuse to carry out my advice, I will do it myself.”

And I rose.

“Christian! Christian!” cried my friend, “don’t trust yourself too far. Your foot is not steady—just now.”

“My foot not steady! Do you dare to insinuate that I am drunk because I have just had ten or a dozen glasses of beer and three glasses of schnapps this morning? Away with you! Back! back, son of Belial!”

And advancing a few feet above the goat, with my head raised and hands extended, I cried solemnly—

“Azazel! goat destined for misery and expiation, I lay upon your hairy back the remorse of my friend Elias Hirsch, and I send you down to the spirits of darkness!”

Then, passing round the ledge on which we stood, I descended to the next below to catch the goat and throw him over.

A sacred rage and fury seemed to possess me. I took no notice of the abyss. I stepped along the edge of the precipice like a cat.

The goat, perceiving my approach, eyed me suspiciously, and stepped back a little way.

“Ha!” I cried, “you may flee from me, but you shall not escape from me, accursed beast! I have got you!”

“Oh, Christian, Christian!” Elias kept repeating in a heartrending voice, “do come back. You are risking your life!”

“Silence, unbeliever!” I cried. “You are unworthy of the great sacrifice which I am making for your happiness! But your friend Christian never draws back. Azazel must perish!”

A little farther on the ledge narrowed and ended in a point.

The goat, having a second time examined me with a curious eye, drew back a little farther, but not without some hesitation.

“Aha!” I exclaimed, “you are beginning to understand what is going to happen. Yes, let me get you into that corner, and your doom is sealed!”

And undoubtedly, when he had got to the spot where the ledge came to an end, Azazel seemed puzzled to know what to do next. I edged up to him closer and closer, full of a noble excitement, and laughing in anticipation at the coming descent and the splash in the torrent below.

I now beheld him at four paces from me, and I was grasping tightly a root of holly that was growing out of a rock to launch out a kick at the devoted beast.

“Look, Elias, see the accursed!” I cried.

When, all in a moment, I felt in my stomach a most awful blow, a butt which would have sent
me
into the Holderloch had I not kept hold of that blessed root of holly. The fact was that that miserable goat, seeing himself driven into a corner, had himself commenced the attack.

Oh, what was my astonishment! Before I knew where I was or what had happened, there was the brute standing up again on his hind-legs, and his horns digging into my stomach and my sides with a hollow sound.

What a position to be in! It is impossible to be more astounded than I was at that moment! It was the world upside down. It was a bad dream—a nightmare! The precipice with all its jagged peaks seemed to dance around me, and so did the trees and sky above. At the same moment I heard piercing cries from Elias of “Help! help!” while Azazel’s horns were ploughing up my sides.

Then I lost all presence of mind. The goat with his long beard and his hard, sharp horns pounding me, now in my chest, now in my stomach, and then in my shaking limbs, produced a most diabolical effect upon me. My hold on the root slowly relaxed, and I let go. But happily something kept me from falling, something which I could not understand at first. But it was the shepherd Yeri, of the Holderloch, who from the next platform above had caught me by the coat-collar with his crook.

Thanks to his assistance, instead of falling down into the chasm I lay full length along the ledge, and that awful goat walked over my body to get away about his business.

“Come, take firm hold of my crook,” cried the shepherd to Elias; “now I will go down for him. Don’t let go!”

“You may rely upon me,” answered Elias.

I heard all that as if it were a nightmare. I had almost lost consciousness.

When I opened my eyes I saw standing before me that gigantic shepherd, with his grey eyes sunk underneath his bushy eyebrows, his yellow beard, a sheepskin thrown over his shoulders, and I thought I had awoke in the age of Oedipus, which made me wonder a good deal.

“Well,” cried the shepherd, in a harsh guttural, “this will teach you not to curse my goat any more!”

Then I saw Azazel rubbing himself comfortably against his master’s colossal legs, and looking slily, and I thought ironically, at me; and then I saw Elias standing behind me, and making the greatest efforts not to laugh.

My scattered senses were beginning to return. I sat myself down with pain and difficulty, for Azazel had bruised me all over, and I felt fearfully stiff and sore.

“Was it you who saved me?” I asked the shepherd.

“Yes, my boy, it was.”

“Well, you are a good fellow, and I am much obliged to you. I withdraw the curse I laid upon your goat. Here, take this.”

I handed him my purse with sixteen florins in it.

“Thank you, sir,” said he, “and now you can begin again if you like on even ground. Down there it was not fair; the goat had all the advantage.”

“Thank you very much! But I have had quite enough. Shake hands, old fellow; I’ll never forget you. Let us go now.”

My comrade and I, arm-in-arm, then descended the hill.

The shepherd, leaning on his crook, watched us till we disappeared. The goat had resumed his walk and his supper on the very edge of the crags. The sky was lovely, the air balmy with a thousand sweet mountain perfumes carried on it with the distant sounds of the shepherd’s horn and the booming of the torrent.

We returned to Tubingen with our hearts full.

Since that time my friend Elias has found some comfort for slaying the Seigneur Kaspar, but in an original fashion.

Scarcely had he taken his doctor’s degree when he married Mademoiselle Eva Salomon, with the hope of having a numerous family to make up for the loss of that individual who had met with an untimely end at his hand.

Four years ago I was at his wedding as best man, and already there are two fat babies making the pretty little house in Crispin street to rejoice.

This was a promising commencement!

Don’t let me be misunderstood. I don’t pretend to say that the method I prescribed for making expiation for taking away a life is better than that taught in our holy religion, which, according to the Catholic Church, consists in masses and in giving away your goods to the Church. But I do think it better than the Hindoo practice, and I think the theory of the famous scapegoat is not to be compared with that which is taught us by pure religion.

A NIGHT IN THE WOODS

CHAPTER I

My worthy uncle, Bernard Hertzog, the historian and antiquary, surmounted with his grand three-cornered hat and wig, and with a long iron-shod mountain-pole firmly grasped in his hand, was coming down one evening by the Luppersberg, hailing every turn in the landscape with enthusiastic exclamations.

Years had never quenched in him the love of knowledge. At sixty he was still at work upon his
History of Alsacian Antiquities
, and never allowed himself to write a complete account of a ruined and defaced monument, or any relic of former days, until he had examined it a hundred times from every point of view.

“No man,” said he, “who has had the happy privilege of being born in the Vosges, between Haut Bar, Nideck, and Geierstein has any business to think of travelling. Where are there nobler forests, older fir and beech trees, more lovely smiling valleys, wilder rocks? Where is the country with richer possessions in memorable story? Here, in olden times, used the high and powerful lords of Lutzelstein, Dagsberg, Leiningen, and Fénétrange, to fight clad in mail from head to foot. Here the eldest son of the Church and the rulers of the Holy Roman Empire exchanged blows in the Middle Ages with swords two yards long. What are our wars compared with those terrible battles where warriors fought hand to hand, where they hammered upon each other’s skulls with huge battle-axes, and drove the dagger between the bars of the closed visor? Were not those heroic feats of arms? was not that a courage worthy to be chronicled to all posterity? But our young people want to see new things; they are not satisfied with their own native land: they must wander through Germany, make tours in France. Worse still, they abandon science and its noble fields for trade, arts, industry, as if there had not been in the former glorious days much more curious industrial arts and pursuits than in our own day! Witness the Hanseatic League, the maritime enterprise of Venice, Genoa, and the Levant, Flemish manufactures, Florentine art, the triumphs in art of Rome and Antwerp! No! all that is laid aside; people now-a-days pride themselves upon their ignorance of those glorious days; above all, they neglect our dear old Alsace. Now, candidly, Theodore, don’t all those tourists remind you of husbands leaving their fair sweet lawful wives to run after ugly coquettes?”

And Bernard Hertzog shook his learned head, his eyes rounded with wonder and excitement, just as if he had been standing before the ruins of Babylon.

His partiality to the usages and customs of old times accounted for his having, for forty years past, worn the full-skirted plush coat, the velvet breeches, the black silk stockings, and the silver shoe-buckles of our grandfathers. He would have thought himself disgraced had he put on trousers; and to cut off his pigtail would have been a profane deed.

So the worthy chronicler was going to Haslach on the 3rd of July, 1835, to examine with his own eyes a little bronze Mercury recently unearthed in the old cloister of the Augustins.

He trotted on with a tolerably elastic stop under a burning sun. Mountains succeeded mountains, valleys sank into other valleys, the footpath went up, then went down again, turned, now to the right, now to the left, until Maître Hertzog began to wonder how it was that he had not caught sight of the village spire an hour ago.

The fact was that after leaving Saverne he had inclined to the right, and was now penetrating into the Dagsberg woods with juvenile energy. At the rate he was going, in five or six hours he would have reached Phramond, eight leagues from his destination. But night was coming on apace, and the path was now becoming fainter, and under the tall trees only an indistinct track appeared.

The approach of night among the mountains is a melancholy sight; the shadows lengthen in the valleys, the sun withdraws, one by one, his rays from the darkening foliage, the silence deepens every minute. You look behind you; the groups and clumps of trees assume colossal proportions; a blackbird at the summit of a tree bids farewell to the parting day, then silence covers all like a funeral pall. You can only hear now the last year’s dead leaves crisping under foot, and far, far, away a waterfall filling the valley with its monotonous hum. Bernard Hertzog began to pant a little; his clothes adhered to his skin with the running perspiration. His legs were beginning to give hints of surrendering.