The Erckmann-Chatrian Megapack: 20 Classic Novels and Short Stories (52 page)

“Joseph, you will not listen to me, but no matter. With God’s grace, all will yet be well. You will return if He wills it, and Catharine will wait for you.”

Catharine wept again, and I more than she; so that Monsieur Goulden himself could not help shedding tears.

At length Catharine and her mother descended the stairs, and Aunt Grédel called out from the bottom:

“Try to come and see us once or twice again, Joseph.”

“Yes, yes,” I answered, shutting the door.

I could no longer stand. Never had I been so miserable, and even now, when I think of it, my heart chills.

CHAPTER VII

From that day I could think of nothing but my misfortune. I tried to work, but my thoughts were far away, and Monsieur Goulden said:

“Joseph, stop working. Make the most of the little time you can remain among us; go to see Catharine and Mother Grédel. I still think they will exempt you, but who can tell? They need men so much that it may be a long time coming.”

I went every morning then to Quatre-Vents, and passed my days with Catharine. We were very sorrowful, but very glad to see each other. We loved one another even more than before, if that were possible. Catharine sometimes tried to sing as in the good old times; but suddenly she would burst into tears. Then we wept together, and Aunt Grédel would rail at the wars which brought misery to every one. She said that the Council of Revision deserved to be hung; that they were all robbers, banded together to poison our lives. It solaced us a little to hear her talk thus, and we thought she was right.

I returned to the city about eight or nine o’clock in the evening, when they closed the gates, and as I passed, I saw the small inns full of conscripts and old returned soldiers drinking together. The conscripts always paid; the others, with dirty police caps cocked over their ears, red noses, and horse-hair stocks in place of shirt-collars, twisted their mustaches and related with majestic air their battles, their marches, and their duels. One can imagine nothing viler than those holes, full of smoke, cob-webs hanging on the black beams, those old sworders and young men drinking, shouting, and beating the tables like crazy people; and behind, in the shadow, old Annette Schnaps or Marie Héring—her old wig stuck back on her head, her comb with only three teeth remaining, crosswise, in it—gazing on the scene, or emptying a mug to the health of the braves.

It was sad to see the sons of peasants, honest and laborious fellows, leading such an existence; but no one thought of working, and any one of them would have given his life for two farthings. Worn out with shouting, drinking, and internal grief, they ended by falling asleep over the table, while the old fellows emptied their cups, singing:

“’Tis glory calls us on!”

I saw these things, and I blessed heaven for having given me, in my wretchedness, kind hearts to keep up my courage, and prevent my falling into such hands.

This state of affairs lasted until the twenty-fifth of January. For some days a great number of Italian conscripts—Piedmontese and Genoese—had been arriving in the city; some stout and fat as Savoyards fed upon chestnuts—their cocked hats on their curly heads; their linsey-woolsey pantaloons dyed a dark green, and their short vests also of wool, but brick-red, fastened around their waists by a leather belt. They wore enormous shoes, and ate their cheese seated along the old market-place. Others were dried up, lean, brown, shivering in their long cassocks, seeing nothing but snow upon the roofs and gazing with their large, black, mournful eyes upon the women who passed. They were exercised every day in marching, and were going to fill up the skeleton of the Sixth regiment of the line at Mayence, and were then resting for a while in the infantry barracks.

The captain of the recruits, who was named Vidal, lodged over our room. He was a square-built, solid, very strong-looking man, and was, too, very kind and civil. He came to us to have his watch repaired, and when he learned that I was a conscript and was afraid I should never return, he encouraged me, saying that it was all habit; that at the end of five or six months one fights and marches as he eats his dinner; and that many so accustom themselves to shooting at people that they consider themselves unhappy when they are deprived of that amusement.

But his mode of reasoning was not to my taste; the more so as I saw five or six large grains of powder on one of his cheeks, which had entered deeply, and as he explained to me that they came from a shot which a Russian fired almost under his nose, such a life disgusted me more and more, and as several days had already passed without news, I began to think they had forgotten me, as they did Jacob, of Chèvre Hof, of whose extraordinary luck every one yet talks. Aunt Grédel herself said to me every time I went there, “Well, well! they will let us alone after all!” When, on the morning of the twenty-fifth of January, as I was about starting for Quatre-Vents, Monsieur Goulden, who was working at his bench with a thoughtful air, turned to me with tears in his eyes and said:

“Listen, Joseph! I wanted to let you have one night more of quiet sleep; but you must know now, my child, that yesterday evening the brigadier of the
gendarmes
brought me your marching orders. You go with the Piedmontese and Genoese and five or six young men of the city—young Klipfel, young Loerig, Jean Léger, and Gaspard Zébédé. You go to Mayence.”

I felt my knees give way as he spoke, and I sat down unable to speak. Monsieur Goulden took my marching orders, beautifully written, out of a drawer, and began to read them slowly. All that I remember is that Joseph Bertha, native of Dabo, Canton of Phalsbourg, Arrondissement of Sarrebourg, was incorporated in the Sixth regiment of the line, and that he was to join his corps the twenty-ninth of January at Mayence.

This letter produced as bad an effect on me as if I had known nothing of it before. It seemed something new, and I grew angry.

Monsieur Goulden, after a moment’s silence, added:

“The Italians start to-day at eleven.”

Then, as if awakening from a horrible dream, I cried:

“But shall I not see Catharine again?”

“Yes, Joseph, yes,” said he, in a trembling voice. “I notified Mother Grédel and Catharine, and thus, my boy, they will come, and you can embrace them before leaving.”

I saw his grief, and it made me sadder yet, so that I had a hard struggle to keep myself from bursting into tears.

He continued after a pause:

“You need not be anxious about anything, Joseph. I have prepared all beforehand; and when you return, if it please God to keep me so long in this world, you will find me always the same. I am beginning to grow old, and my greatest happiness would be to keep you for a son, for I found you good-hearted and honest. I would have given you what I possess, and we would have been happy together. Catharine and you would have been my children. But since it is otherwise, let us be resigned. It is only for a little while. You will be sent back, I am sure. They will soon see that you cannot make long marches.”

While he spoke, I sat silently sobbing, my face buried in my hands.

At last he arose and took from a closet a soldier’s knapsack of cowskin, which he placed upon the table. I looked at him, thinking of nothing but the pain of parting.

“Here is your knapsack,” he added; “and I have put in it all that you require; two linen shirts, two flannel waistcoats, and all the rest. You will receive at Mayence two soldier’s shirts,—all that you will need; but I have made for you some shoes, for nothing is worse than those given the soldiers, which are almost always of horse-hide and chafe the feet fearfully. You are none too strong in your leg, my poor boy. Well, well, that is all.”

He placed the knapsack upon the table and sat down.

Without, we heard the Italians making ready to depart. Above us Captain Vidal was giving his orders. He had his horse at the barracks of the gendarmerie, and was telling his orderly to see that he was well rubbed and had received his hay.

All this bustle and movement produced a strange effect upon me, and I could not yet realize that I must quit the city. As I was thus in the greatest distress, the door opened and Catharine entered weeping, while Mother Grédel cried out:

“I told you you should have fled to Switzerland; that these rogues would finish by carrying you off. I told you so, and you would not believe me.”

“Mother Grédel,” replied Monsieur Goulden, “to go to do his duty is not so great an evil as to be despised by honest people. Instead of all these cries and reproaches, which serve no good purpose, you would do better to comfort and encourage Joseph.”

“Ah!” said she; “I do not reproach him, although this is terrible.”

Catharine did not leave me; she sat by me and we embraced each other, and she said, pressing my arm:

“You will return?”

“Yes, yes,” said I, in a low voice. “And you—you will always think of me; you will not love another?”

She answered, sobbing:

“No, no! I will never love any but you.”

This lasted a quarter of an hour, when the door opened and Captain Vidal entered, his cloak rolled like a hunting-horn over his shoulder.

“Well,” said he, “well; how goes our young man?”

“Here he is,” answered Monsieur Goulden.

“Ah!” remarked the captain; “you are making yourself miserable. It is natural. I remember when I departed for the army. We have all a home.”

Then, raising his voice, he said:

“Come, come, young man, courage! We are no longer children.”

He looked at Catharine.

“I see all,” said he to Monsieur Goulden. “I can understand why he does not want to go.”

The drums beat in the street and he added:

“We have yet twenty minutes before starting,” and, throwing a glance at me, “Do not fail to be at the first call, young man,” said he, pressing Monsieur Goulden’s hand.

He went out, and we heard his horse pawing at the door.

The morning was overcast, and grief overwhelmed me. I could not leave Catharine.

Suddenly the roll beat. The drums were all collected in the square. Monsieur Goulden, taking the knapsack by its straps, said in a grave voice:

“Joseph, now the last embrace: it is time to go.”

I stood up, pale as ashes. He fastened the knapsack to my shoulders. Catharine sat sobbing, her face covered with her apron. Aunt Grédel looked on with lips compressed.

The roll continued for a time, then suddenly ceased.

“The call is about commencing,” said Monsieur Goulden, embracing me. Then the fountains of his heart burst forth; tears sprang to his eyes; and calling me his child, his son, he whispered, “Courage!”

Aunt Grédel seated herself again, and as I bent toward her, taking my head between her hands, she sobbed:

“I always loved you, Joseph; ever since you were a baby. You never gave me cause of grief—and now you must go. O God! O God!”

I wept no longer.

When Aunt Grédel released me, I looked a moment at Catharine, who stood motionless. I rushed to her and threw myself on her neck. She still kept her seat. Then I turned quickly to go, when she cried, in heart-breaking tones:

“O Joseph! Joseph!”

I looked back. We threw ourselves into each other’s arms, and for some minutes remained so, sobbing. Her strength seemed to leave her, and I placed her in the arm-chair, and rushed out of the house.

I was already on the square, in the midst of the Italians and of a crowd of people crying for their sons or brothers. I saw nothing; I heard nothing.

When the roll of the drums began again, I looked around, and saw that I was between Klipfel and Furst, all three with our knapsacks on our backs. Their parents stood before us, weeping as if at their funeral. To the right, near the town-hall, Captain Vidal, on his little gray horse, was conversing with two infantry officers. The sergeants called the roll, and we answered. They called Zébédé, Furst, Klipfel, Bertha; we answered like the others. Then the captain gave the word, “March!” and we went, two abreast, toward the French gate.

At the corner of Spitz’s bakery, an old woman cried, in a choking voice, from a window:

“Kasper! Kasper!”

It was Zébédé’s grandmother. His lips trembled. He waved his hand without replying, and passed on with downcast face.

I shuddered at the thought of passing my home. As we neared it, my knees trembled, and I heard some one call at the window; but I turned my head toward the “Red Ox,” and the rattle of the drums drowned the voices.

The children ran after us, shouting:

“There goes Joseph! there goes Klipfel!”

Under the French gate, the men on guard, drawn up in line on each side, gazed on us as we passed at shoulder arms. We passed the outposts, and the drum ceased playing as we turned to the right. Nothing was heard but the plash of footsteps in the mud, for the snow was melting.

We had passed the farm-house of Gerberhoff, and were going to the great bridge, when I heard some one call me. It was the captain, who cried from his horse:

“Very well done, young man; I am satisfied with you.”

Hearing this, I could not help again bursting into tears, and the big Furst, too, wept, as we marched along; the others, pale as marble, said nothing. At the bridge, Zébédé took out his pipe to smoke. In front of us, the Italians talked and laughed among themselves; their three weeks of service had accustomed them to this life.