Brigadier Frederick, The Dean's Watch

XX

The snow, which had continued to fall since morning, was by this time quite deep. The great wagon went slowly on its way, Starck, in front, pulling his nags by the bridle, swearing, and forcing them to advance by blows; Calas, farther on, was driving along the pigs and cows; Ragot was helping him; Marie-Rose and I followed, with drooping heads; and behind us the cottage, all white with snow, among the firs, was gradually vanishing in the distance.

We had still our potatoes, wood, and fodder to take away the next day, so I closed the door and put the key in my pocket before leaving.

At nightfall we arrived before Ykel's house. I took the grandmother in my arms, like a child, and carried her up-stairs to her room, where Katel had kindled a bright fire. Marie-Rose and Katel kissed each other; they had been schoolmates and had been confirmed together at Felsberg. Katel burst into tears. Marie-Rose, who was deadly pale, said nothing. They went up-stairs together, and, while Starck and Calas and two or three of the neighbours were unloading the furniture and putting it under the shed, I went into the parlour, to sit down for a few minutes behind the stove and to take a glass of wine, for I could not stand it any longer; I was exhausted.

Our first night at Graufthal, in that loft, through which poured the draught from the garret, is the saddest that I can remember; the stove smoked, the grandmother coughed in her bed; Marie-Rose, in spite of the cold, got up to give her a drink; the little window-panes rattled at every blast of the wind, and the snow drifted in upon the floor.

Ah! yes, we suffered terribly that first night! And, not being able to close my eyes, I said to myself:

"It will be impossible to live here! We should all be dead in less than two weeks. We must positively go somewhere else. But where shall we go? What road can we take?"

All the villages of Alsace and Lorraine were filled with Germans, the roads were crowded with cannon and convoys; not a hut, not even a stable was free.

These ideas almost made my hair turn gray; I wished that I had broken my neck in coming down the steps of the forest house, and I wished the same thing for the grandmother and my daughter.

Happily, Jean Merlin arrived early the next morning. He had taken our answer to the Oberförster, he had moved his furniture to Felsberg, and old Margredel, his mother, was already sitting quietly beside the fire at Uncle Daniel's house.

He told us that with a good-humoured air, after having kissed Marie-Rose and said good-morning to the grandmother.

Only to see how his confidence had already lightened my heart; and when I complained of the cold, the smoke, and of our bad night, he cried:

"Yes! I understand all that, brigadier; I thought as much; so I hurried to come here. It is very hard to leave your old ways and come to live among strangers at your age; that paralyzes one's arm. Such occasions change one's ideas. Here is the key of my cottage and the book of estimations; you have also your register and the stamping hammer. Well, do you know what I would do in your place? I would take everything to our chief inspector, because the Oberförster of Zornstadt might ask you for them and force you to give them up. When they are deposited with M. Laroche no one will have anything more to say to you. While you are away Marie-Rose will wash the windows and the floor; Calas will go with Starck to get the wood, the fodder, and the potatoes, and I will undertake to arrange the furniture and to put everything in order."

He spoke with so much good sense that I followed his advice. We went down into the large room, and though it is not my habit, we took a good glass of brandy together; after which I set out, the register under my blouse, the hammer in my pocket, and a stout stick in my hand. It was my last journey through the country on affairs connected with the service. The pool of Frohmithle was frozen over; the flour-mill and the saw-mill lower down had ceased to go. No one, since the day before, had followed my path; all seemed desolate; for three hours I did not see a soul.

Then, remembering the smoke from the charcoal kilns, the sound of the wood-cutters' hatchets working in the clearings, lopping the trees, piling up the fagots beside the forest paths, even in mid-winter, all that formerly gay life, that profit that gave food and happiness to the smallest hamlets, I said to myself that the robbers, who were capable of troubling such order to appropriate wrongfully the fruit of the labour of others, ought to be hanged.

And from time to time, in the midst of the silence, seeing a sparrow-hawk pass on his large wings, his claws drawn up under his stomach and uttering his war cry, I thought:

"That is like the Prussians! They have got the Germans in their claws; they have given them officers who will cudgel them; instead of working, those people are forced to spend their last penny in the war, and the others have always their beaks and claws in their flesh; they pluck them leisurely, without their being able to defend themselves. Woe to us all! The noble Prussians will devour us; and the Badeners, the Bavarians, the Würtembergers, and the Hessians with us!"

Those melancholy ideas, and many others of the same kind, passed through my mind. About ten o'clock I ascended the stairs of the old fort, abandoned since the beginning of the war; then descending the Rue du Faubourg, I entered the house of the chief inspector. But the office door in the vestibule at the left was closed; I rang and tried to open the door, but no one came. I was going out to ask one of the neighbours what had become of M. Laroche, and whether he had been obliged to go away, when an upper door opened, and the chief inspector himself appeared on the stairs in his dressing-gown.

XXI

"Who is there?" said M. Laroche, not recognising me at first under my broad-brimmed felt hat.

"It is I, sir," I answered.

"Ah! it is you, Father Frederick!" said he, quite rejoiced. "Well, come up stairs. All my household has departed, I am here alone; they bring me my meals from the Grapes Inn. Come in, come in!"

We went into a very neat little room on the first floor; a large fire was burning in the stove. And, pushing forward an arm-chair for me:

"Take this chair, Father Frederick," said he, seating himself beside a small table covered with books. So I sat down, and we began to talk over our affairs. I told him about our visit to the Oberförster; he knew all about that and a good many other things beside.

"I am glad to find," said he, "that all our guards, except poor Hepp, the father of six children, have done their duty. With regard to you, Father Frederick, I never had the least doubt about either your son-in-law or yourself."

Then he inquired about our position; and, taking the register and the hammer, he put them in a closet, saying that his papers were already gone, that he would send these after them. He asked me if we were not in pressing need. I answered that I had still three hundred francs, that I had saved to buy a strip of meadow, beside the orchard, that that would doubtless be sufficient.

"So much the better!" said he. "You know, Father Frederick, that my purse is at your service; it is not very full just now; every one has to economize their resources, for Heaven only knows how long this campaign may last; but if you want some money – "

I thanked him again. We talked together like real friends. He even asked me to take a cigar from his box; but I thanked him and refused. Then he asked me if I had a pipe, and told me to light it. I tell you this to make you understand what a fine man our chief inspector was.

I remember that he told me after that that all was not yet over; that doubtless our regular army had surrendered en masse; that all our officers, marshals, generals, even the simple corporals had fallen into the power of the enemy, a thing that had never been seen before since the beginning of the history of France, or in that of any other nation; that pained him, and even if I may say so made him indignant. He had tears in his eyes like myself.

But after that, he said that Paris held good, that the great people of Paris had never shown so much courage and patriotism; he added that a large and solid army, though composed of young men, had been formed near Orleans, and that great things were expected from it; that the republic had been proclaimed after Sedan as the peasants go for a doctor when the patient is dying, and that, however, this republic had had the courage to take upon itself the burden of all the disasters, dangers that it had not caused, while those who had drawn us into the war withdrew to a foreign country. That a very energetic man, Gambetta, a member of the provisory government, was at the head of this great movement; that he was calling around him all the Frenchmen in a condition to bear arms, without distinction of opinions, and that if the campaign lasted a few months longer the Germans could not hold out; that all the heads of the families being enlisted, their estates, their workshops, their improvements were neglected. No ploughing or sowing were done, and that the women and children, the entire population, were dying of terrible starvation.

We have since seen, George, that those things were true; all the letters that we found on the landwehr told of the terrible poverty in Germany.

So what M. Laroche told me filled me with hope. He promised also to have my pension paid to me as soon as it would be possible, and about one o'clock I left him, full of confidence. He shook hands with me and called out from the door:

"Keep up a good heart, Father Frederick; we will have happy days yet."

After I left him I felt like another man, and I walked leisurely back to Graufthal, where a most agreeable surprise awaited me.

XXII

Jean Merlin had put everything in order. The cracks in the roof and in the doors and windows were stopped up; the floor was washed, the furniture placed and the pictures hung, as much as possible as they were at the forest house. It was bitterly cold outside; our stove, which Jean had put up and blackleaded, drew like a forge bellows, and the grandmother, sitting beside it in her old arm-chair, was listening to the crackling of the fire, and looking at the flame which was lighting up the room. Marie-Rose, with her sleeves rolled up, seemed delighted at my satisfaction; Jean Merlin, his pipe in his mouth and screwing up his eyes, looked at me as if to say:

"Well, Papa Frederick, what do you think of this? Is it cold now in this room? Is not everything clean, shining and in good order? Marie-Rose and I did all that?"

And when I saw all that I said to them:

"All right. The grandmother is warm. Now I see that we can stay here. You are good children!"

That pleased them very much. They set the table. Marie-Rose had made a good soup of cabbages and bacon, for as the Germans took all the fresh meat for their own use we were very glad to get even smoked meat; fortunately potatoes, cabbages, and turnips did not run out and they formed our principal resource.

That evening we all took supper together; and during the repast I related in all its details what the chief inspector had told me about the affairs of the republic. It was the first positive news we had had from France for a long time; so you may guess how eagerly they all listened to me. Jean's eyes sparkled when I spoke of approaching battles near the Loire.

"Ah!" said he, "they call the French the old soldiers. Indeed! they defend their country, then!"

And I cried, full of enthusiasm:

"Of course, they will defend their country! You had better believe it! The chief inspector says that if it lasts for a few months the others will have enough of it."

Then he twirled his mustache, seemed almost to speak; but then looking at Marie-Rose, who was listening to us with her usual quiet aspect, he went on eating, saying:

"Anyhow, you give me great pleasure by telling me that, Father Frederick; yes, it is famous news."

At last, about eight o'clock, he went away, announcing that he would be back on the morrow or the day after, and we went quietly to bed.

This night was as comfortable as the night before had been cold and disagreeable; we slept soundly in spite of the frost outside.

I had recovered from my sorrow; I thought that we could live at Graufthal till the end of the war.

XXIII

Once withdrawn under the rocks of Graufthal, I hoped that the Germans would let us alone. What else could they ask from us? We had given up everything; we lived in the most wretched village in the country, in the midst of the forest; their squads came very seldom into this corner, whose inhabitants were so poor that they could scarcely find a few bundles of hay or straw to take away with them. All seemed for the best, and we thought that we would not have anything more to do with the accursed race.

Unfortunately we are often mistaken; things do not always turn out as we thought they would. Soon it was rumoured that Donadien, big Kern, and the other guards had crossed the Vosges; that they were fighting the Germans near Belfort, and all at once the idea struck me that Jean would also want to go. I hoped that Marie-Rose would keep him back, but I was not sure of it. The fear haunted me.

Every morning, while my daughter arranged the rooms, and the grandmother told her beads, I went down stairs to smoke my pipe in the large room with Father Ykel. Koffel, Starck, and others would come dropping in, to take a glass of brandy; they told of domiciliary visits, of orders not to ring the bells, of the arrival of German schoolmasters to replace our own, of the requisitions of all kinds that increased every day, of the unhappy peasants who were compelled to work to feed the Prussians, and of a thousand other atrocities that infuriated one against those stupid Badeners, Bavarians, and Würtembergers, who were allowing themselves to be killed for the sake of King William, and warring against their own interests. Big Starck, who was very pious, and always went to mass every Sunday, said that they would all be damned, without hope of redemption, and that their souls would be burned to all eternity.

That helped to make the time pass agreeably. One day Hulot brought us his grandson, Jean Baptiste, a big boy of sixteen, in his vest and pantaloons of coarse linen, his feet bare, winter as well as summer, in his large shoes, his hair hanging in long, yellow locks over his face, and a satchel hanging over his thin back. This boy, sitting in front of the fire, told us that at Sarrebruck and Landau the landwehr were furious; that they were declaiming in all the taverns against the crazy republicans, the cause of all the battles since Sedan, and of the continuation of the war; that it had been reported that a battle had been fought at Coulmiers, near Orleans; that the Germans were retreating in disorder, and that the army of Frederick Charles was going to their rescue; but that our young men were also learning to join the army of the republic; and that the hauptmänner had laid a fine of fifty francs a day upon the parents of those who had left the country, which had not prevented him, Jean Baptiste, from going to the rescue of his country like his comrades.

Scarcely had he ceased to speak when I ran up the stairs, four steps at a time, to tell Marie-Rose the good news. I found her on the landing. She went down to the laundry, and did not appear in the least astonished.

"Yes, yes, father," she said, "I thought it would end that way; every one must lend a hand – all the men must go. Those Germans are thieves; they will return routed and defeated."

Her tranquility astonished me, for the idea must have occurred to her, too, that Jean, an able-bodied man, would not stay at home at such a time, and that he might all at once go off yonder in spite of his promises of marriage. So I went to my room to think it over, while she went down, and two minutes afterward I heard Jean Merlin's step upon the stairs.

He came in quietly, his large felt hat on the back of his head, and he said good-humouredly:

"Good morning, Father Frederick; you are alone?"

"Yes, Jean; Marie-Rose has just gone to the laundry, and the grandmother is still in bed."

"Ah! very good," said he, putting his stick behind the door.

I suspected something was coming, from his look. He walked up and down, with bent head, and, stopping suddenly, he said to me:

"You know what is going on near Orleans? You know that the breaking up of the German army has begun, and that all willing men are called upon. What do you think of it?"

I flushed scarlet and answered, feeling rather embarrassed:

"Yes, for those on the other side of the Loire it is all very well; but we others would have a long journey to take, and then the Prussians would arrest us on the road; they guard all the paths and highways."

"Pshaw!" said he; "they think the Prussians more cunning than they really are. I would wager that I could pass the Vosges under their noses. Big Kern and Donadien have passed, with a good many others."

Then I knew that he wanted to go, that his mind was made up to a certain extent, and that gave me a shock; for if he once set off, Heaven only knew when his marriage would take place; the thought of Marie-Rose troubled me.

"Very likely," I said; "but you must think of the old people, Jean. What would your mother, good old Margredel, say, if you abandoned her at such a time?"

"My mother is a good Frenchwoman," he answered. "We have talked it over, brigadier; she consents."

My arms dropped at my sides; I did not know what to reply; and only at the end of a minute I managed to say:

"And Marie-Rose! You do not think of Marie-Rose! Yet you are betrothed. She is your wife in the eyes of God!"

"Marie-Rose consents also," he said. "We only want your consent now; say yes; all will be settled. The last time I was here, while you were down stairs smoking your pipe, I told Marie-Rose all about it. I said to her that a forest guard without a situation, an old soldier like me, ought to be at the front; she understood and consented."

When he told me that, George, it was too much; I cried: "I do. It is not possible!" And, opening the window, I called out:

"Marie-Rose! Marie-Rose! Come here. Jean has arrived."

She was hanging out clothes in the shed, and leaving at once her work, she came up stairs.

"Marie-Rose," I said, "is it true that you have consented to let Jean Merlin go to fight the Germans at Orleans, behind Paris? Is it true? Speak freely."

Then, pale as death, with flashing eyes, she said:

"Yes. It is his duty. He must go. We do not wish to be Prussians, and the others ought not to fight alone to save us. He must be a man. He must defend his country."

She said other things of the same kind that warmed my blood and made me think:

"What a brave girl that is! No, I did not know her before. She is the true descendant of the old Burats. How the old people wake up and speak through the mouths of their children! They want us to defend the earth of the old cemetery where their bones lie buried."

I rose, white as a sheet, with open arms. "Come to my arms!" I said to them; "come to my arms! You are right. Yes, it is the duty of every Frenchman to go and fight. Ah! if I were only ten years younger, I would go with you, Jean; we would be two brothers in arms." And we embraced each other all round.