The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (50 page)

When Father Fouze, the glazier, came to us with this news, one morning, I almost fell, through faintness, for I thought:

“Now they will take all, even fathers of families. I am lost!”

Monsieur Goulden poured some water on my neck; my arms hung useless by my side; I was pale as a corpse.

But I was not the only one upon whom the placard had such an effect: that year many young men refused to go; some broke their teeth off, so as not to be able to tear the cartridge; others blew off their thumbs with pistols, so as not to be able to hold a musket; others, again, fled to the woods; they proclaimed them “refractories,” but they had not
gendarmes
enough to capture them.

The mothers of families took courage to revolt after a manner, and to encourage their sons not to obey the
gendarmes
. They aided them in every way; they cried out against the Emperor, and the clergy of all denominations sustained them in so doing. The cup was at last full!

The very day of the proclamation I went to Quatre-Vents; but it was not now in the joy of my heart; it was as the most miserable of unhappy wretches, about to be bereft of love and life. I could scarcely walk, and when I reached there I did not know how to announce the evil tidings; but I saw at a glance that they knew all, for Catharine was weeping bitterly, and Aunt Grédel was pale with indignation.

We embraced in silence, and the first words Aunt Grédel said to me, as in her anger she pushed her gray hair behind her ears, were:

“You shall not go! What have we to do with wars? The priest himself told us it was at last too much, and that we ought to have peace! You shall not go! Do not cry, Catharine; I say he shall not go!”

She was fairly green with anger, and rattled her kettles noisily together, saying:

“This carnage has lasted long enough. Our two poor cousins, Kasper and Yokel, are already going to lose their lives in Spain for this Emperor, and now he comes to ask us for the younger ones. He is not satisfied to have slain three hundred thousand in Russia. Instead of thinking of peace, like a man of sense, he thinks only of massacring the few who remain. We will see! We will see!”

“In the name of Heaven! Aunt Grédel, be quiet; speak lower,” said I, looking at the window. “If they hear you, we are lost.”

“I speak for them to hear me,” she replied. “Your Napoleon does not frighten me. He commenced by closing our mouths, so that he might do as he pleased; but the end approaches. Four young women are losing their husbands in our village alone, and ten poor young men are forced to abandon everything, despite father, mother, religion, justice, God! Is not this horrible?”

I tried to answer, but she kept on:

“Hold, Joseph,” said she; “be silent; your Emperor has no heart—he will end miserably yet. God showed his finger this winter; He saw that we feared a man more than we feared Him; that mothers—like those whose babes Herod slew—dared no longer cling to their own flesh when that man demanded them for massacre; and so the cold came and our army perished; and now those who are leaving us are the same as already dead. God is weary of all this! You shall not go!” cried she obstinately; “I shall not let you go; you shall fly to the woods with Jean Kraft, Louis Bême, and all our bravest fellows; you shall go to the mountains—to Switzerland, and Catharine and I will go with you and remain until this destruction of men is ended.”

Then Aunt Grédel became silent. Instead of giving us an ordinary dinner, she gave us a better one than on Catharine’s birthday, and said, with the air of one who has taken a resolution:

“Eat, my children, and fear not; there will soon be a change!”

I returned about four in the evening to Phalsbourg, somewhat calmer than when I set out. But as I went up the Rue de la Munitionnaire, I heard at the corner of the college the drum of the
sergent-de-ville
, Harmantier, and I saw a throng gathered around him. I ran to hear what was going on, and I arrived just as he began reading a proclamation.

Harmantier read that, by the
senatus-consultus
of the 3d, the drawing for the conscription would take place on the 15th.

It was already the 8th, and only seven days remained. This upset me completely.

The crowd dispersed in the deepest silence. I went home sad enough, and said to Monsieur Goulden:

“The drawing takes place next Thursday.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed, “they are losing no time, things are pressing.”

It is easy to imagine my grief that day and the days following. I could scarcely stand; I constantly saw myself on the point of leaving home. I saw myself flying to the woods, the
gendarmes
at my heels, crying, “Halt! halt!” Then I thought of the misery of Catharine, of Aunt Grédel, of Monsieur Goulden. Then I imagined myself marching in the ranks with a number of other wretches, to whom they were crying out, “Forward! charge bayonets!” while whole files were being swept away. I heard bullets whistle and shells shriek; in a word, I was in a pitiable state.

“Be calm, Joseph,” said Monsieur Goulden; “do not torment yourself thus. I think that of all who may be drawn there are probably not ten who can give as good reasons as you for staying at home. The surgeon must be blind to receive you. Besides, I will see Monsieur the Commandant. Calm yourself.”

But these kind words could not reassure me.

Thus I passed an entire week almost in a trance, and when the day of the drawing arrived, Thursday morning, I was so pale, so sick-looking that the parents of conscripts envied, so to speak, my appearance for their sons. “That fellow,” they said, “has a chance; he would drop the first mile. Some people are born under a lucky star!”

CHAPTER VI

The town-house of Phalsbourg, that Thursday morning, January 15, 1813, during the drawing of the conscription, was a sight to be seen. To-day it is bad enough to be drawn, to be forced to leave parents, friends, home, one’s cattle and one’s fields, to go and learn—God knows where—“
One! two!
one! two! halt! eyes left! eyes right! front! carry arms!” etc., etc. Yes, this is all bad enough, but there is a chance of returning. One can say, with something like confidence: “In seven years I shall see my old nest again, and my parents, and perhaps my sweetheart. I shall have seen the world, and will perhaps have some title to be appointed forester or gendarme.” This is a comfort for reasonable people. But
then
, if you had the ill-luck to lose in the lottery, there was an end of you; often not one in a hundred returned. The idea that you were only going for a time never entered your head.

The enrolled of Harberg, of Garbourg, and of Quatre-Vents were to draw first; then those of the city, and lastly those of Wechem and Mittelbronn.

I was up early in the morning, and with my elbows on the work-bench I watched the people pass by; young men in blouses, poor old men in cotton caps and short vests; old women in jackets and woollen skirts, bent almost double, with a staff or umbrella under their arms. They arrived by families. Monsieur the Sub-Prefect of Sarrebourg, with his silver collar, and his secretary, had stopped the day before at the “Red Ox,” and they were also looking out of the window. Toward eight o’clock, Monsieur Goulden began work, after breakfasting. I ate nothing, but stared and stared until Monsieur the Mayor Parmentier and his co-adjutor, came for Monsieur the Sub-Prefect.

The drawing began at nine, and soon we heard the clarionet of Pfifer-Karl and the violin of big Andrès resounding through the streets. They were playing the “March of the Swedes,” an air to which thousands of poor wretches had left old Alsace for ever. The conscripts danced, linked arms, shouted until their voices seemed to pierce the clouds, stamped on the ground, waved their hats, trying to seem joyful while death was at their hearts. Well, it was the fashion; and big Andrès, withered, stiff, and yellow as boxwood, and his short chubby comrade, with cheeks extended to their utmost tension, seemed like people who would lead you to the church-yard all the while chatting indifferently.

That music, those cries, sent a shudder through my heart.

I had just put on my swallow-tailed coat and my beaver hat, to go out, when Aunt Grédel and Catharine entered, saying:

“Good-morning, Monsieur Goulden. We have come for the conscription.”

Then I saw how Catharine had been crying. Her eyes were red, and she threw her arms around my neck, while her mother turned to me.

Monsieur Goulden said:

“It will soon be the turn of the young men of the town.”

“Yes, Monsieur Goulden,” answered Catharine in a choking voice; “they have finished Harberg.”

“Then it is time for you to go, Joseph,” said he; “but do not grieve; do not be frightened. These drawings, you know, are only a matter of form. For a long while past none can escape; for if they escape one drawing, they are caught a year or two after. All the numbers are bad. When the council of exemption meets, we will see what is best to be done. To-day it is merely a sort of satisfaction they give the people to draw in the lottery; but every one loses.”

“No matter,” said Aunt Grédel; “Joseph will win.”

“Yes, yes,” replied Monsieur Goulden, smiling, “he cannot fail.”

Then I sallied forth with Catharine and Aunt Grédel, and we went to the town square, where the crowd was. In all the shops, dozens of conscripts, purchasing ribbons, thronged around the counters, weeping and singing as if possessed. Others in the inns embraced, sobbing; but still they sang. Two or three musicians of the neighborhood—the Gipsy Walteufel, Rosselkasten, and George Adam—had arrived, and their pieces thundered in terrible and heart-rending strains.

Catharine squeezed my arm. Aunt Grédel followed.

Opposite the guard-house I saw the pedler Pinacle afar off, his pack opened on a little table, and beside it a long pole decked with ribbons which he was selling to the conscripts.

I hastened to pass by him, when he cried:

“Ha! Cripple! Halt! Come here; I have a ribbon for you; you must have a magnificent one—one to draw a prize by.”

He waved a long black ribbon above his head, and I grew pale despite myself. But as we ascended the steps of the town-house, a conscript was just descending; it was Klipfel, the smith of the French gate; he had drawn number eight, and shouted:

“The black for me, Pinacle! Bring it here, whatever may happen.”

His face was gloomy, but he laughed. His little brother Jean was crying behind him, and said:

“No, no, Jacob! not the black!”

But Pinacle fastened the ribbon to the smith’s hat, while the latter said:

“That is what we want now. We are all dead, and should wear our own mourning.”

And he cried savagely:

“
Vive l’Empereur!
”

I was better satisfied to see the black ribbon on his hat than on mine, and I slipped quickly through the crowd to avoid Pinacle.

We had great difficulty in getting into the townhouse and in climbing the old oak stairs, where people were going up and down in swarms. In the great hall above, the gendarme Kelz walked about maintaining order as well as he could, and in the council-chamber at the side, where there was a painting of Justice with her eyes blindfolded, we heard them calling off the numbers. From time to time a conscript came out with flushed face, fastening his number to his cap and passing with bowed head through the crowd, like a furious bull who cannot see clearly and who would seem to wish to break his horns against the walls. Others, on the contrary, passed as pale as death. The windows of the town-house were open, and without we heard six or seven pieces playing together. It was horrible.

I pressed Catharine’s hand, and we passed slowly through the crowd to the hall where Monsieur the Sub-Prefect, the Mayors, and the Secretaries were seated on their tribune, calling the numbers aloud, as if pronouncing sentence of death in a court of justice, for all these numbers were really sentences of death.

We waited a long while.

It seemed as if there was no longer a drop of blood in my veins, when at last my name was called.

I stepped up, seeing and hearing nothing; I put my hand in the box and drew a number.

Monsieur the Sub-Prefect cried out:

“Number seventeen.”

Then I left without speaking, Catharine and her mother behind me. We went out into the square, and, the air reviving me, I remembered that I had drawn number seventeen.

Aunt Grédel seemed confounded.

“And I put something into your pocket, too,” said she; “but that rascal of a Pinacle gave you ill-luck.”

At the same time she drew from my coat-pocket the end of a cord. Great drops of sweat rolled down my forehead; Catharine was white as marble, and so we went back to Monsieur Goulden’s.

“What number did you draw, Joseph?” he asked, as soon as he saw us.

“Seventeen,” replied Aunt Grédel, sitting down with her hands upon her knees.

Monsieur Goulden seemed troubled for a moment, but he said instantly:

“One is as good as another. All will go; the skeletons must be filled. But it don’t matter for Joseph. I will go and see Monsieur the Mayor and Monsieur the Commandant. It will be telling no lie to say that Joseph is lame; all the town knows that; but among so many they may overlook him. That is why I go, so rest easy; do not be anxious.”