CHAPTER IX
On the 29th of September, a Prussian vaguemestre* brought me someproclamations with orders to make them public.
* The person in command of a wagon train--also an Army letter-carrier.
These proclamations declared that we were now part of the department ofLa Moselle, and that we were under a Prussian prefect, the Count Henkelde Bonnermark, who was himself under the orders of the Governor-Generalof Alsace and Lorraine, the Count Bismarck-Bohlen, provisionallyresiding at Haguenau.
I cannot tell what evil spirit then laid hold of me; the Landwehr hadbrought us the day before the news of the capitulation of Strasbourg; Ihad been worried past all endurance by all the requisitions which I wasordered to call for, and I boldly declared my refusal to post thatproclamation: that it was against my conscience; that I looked uponmyself as a Frenchman still, and they need not expect an honest man toperform such an errand as that.
The vaguemestre seemed astonished to hear me. He was a stout man, withthick brown mustaches, and prominent eyes.
"Will you be good enough to write that down, M. le Maire?" he said.
"Why not? I am tired out with all these vexatious acts. Let my placebe given to your friend, M. Placiard: I should be thankful. Let himorder these requisitions. I look upon them as mere robbery."
"Well, write that down," said he. "I obey orders: I have nothing to dowith the rest."
Then, without another thought, I opened my desk, and wrote thatChristian Weber, Mayor of Rothalp, considered it against his conscienceto proclaim Bismarck-Bohlen Governor of a French province, and that herefused absolutely.
I signed my name to it, with the date, 29th September, 1870; and it wasthe greatest folly I ever committed in my life: it has cost me dear.
The vaguemestre took the paper, put it in his pocket, and went away.Two or three hours after, when I had thought it over a little, I beganto repent, and I wished I could have the paper back again.
That evening, after supper, I went to tell George the whole affair; hewas quite pleased.
"Very good, indeed, Christian," said he. "Now your position is clear.I have often felt sorry that you should be obliged, for the interest ofthe commune and to avoid pillage, to give bonds to the Prussians.People are so absurd! Seeing the signature of the mayor, they makehim, in a way, responsible for everything; every one fancies he isbearing more than his share. Now you are rid of your burden; you couldnot go so far as to requisition in the name of Henkel de Bonnermark,self-styled prefect of La Moselle; let some one else do that work; theywill have no difficulty in finding as many ill-conditioned idiots asthey want for that purpose."
My cousin's approbation gave me satisfaction, and I was going home,when the same vaguemestre, in whose hands I had placed my resignationin the morning, entered, followed by three or four Landwehr.
"Here is something for you," said he, handing me a note, which I readaloud:
"The persons called Christian Weber, miller, and George Weber,wine-merchant, in the village of Rothalp, will, to-morrow, drive toDroulingen, four thousand kilos of hay and ten thousand kilos of straw,without fail. By order--FLOEGEL."
"Very well," I replied. For although this requisition appeared to meto be rather heavy, I would not betray my indignation before ourenemies; they would have been too much delighted. "Very well, I willdrive my hay and my straw to Droulingen."
"You will drive it yourself," said the vaguemestre, brutally. "All thehorses and carts in the village have been put into requisition; youhave too often forgotten your own."
"I can prove that my horses and my carts have been worked oftener thanany one's," I replied, with rising wrath. "There are your receipts; Ihope you won't deny them!"
"Well, it doesn't matter," said he. "The horses, the carts, the hayand straw are demanded; that is plain."
"Quite plain," said Cousin George. "The strongest may always command."
"Exactly so," said the vaguemestre.
He went out with his men, and George, without anger, said, "This iswar! Let us be calm. Perhaps our turn will come now that the _honestman_ is no longer in command of our armies. In the meantime the bestthing we can do, if we do not want to lose our horses and our cartsbesides, will be to load to-night, and to start very early in themorning. We shall return before seven o'clock to supper; and then theywon't be able to take any more of our hay and straw, because we shallhave none left."
For my part, I was near bursting with rage; but, as he set the example,by stripping off his coat and putting on his blouse, I went to wake upold Father Offran to help me to load.
My wife and Gredel were expecting me: for the vaguemestre and his menhad called at the mill, before coming to George's house, and they weretrembling with apprehension. I told them to be calm; that it was onlytaking some hay and straw to Droulingen, where I should get a receiptfor future payment.
Whether they believed it or not, they went in again.
I lighted the lantern, Offran mounted up into the loft and threw medown the trusses, which I caught upon a fork. About two in themorning, the two carts being loaded, I fed the horses and rested a fewminutes.
At five o'clock, George, outside, was already calling "Christian, I amhere!"
I got up, put on my hat and my blouse, opened the stable from theinside, put the horses in, and we started in the fresh and earlymorning, supposing we should return at night.
In all the villages that we passed through, troops of Landwehr weresitting before their huts, ragged, with patched knees and filthybeards, like the description of the Cossacks of former days, smokingtheir pipes; and the cavalry and infantry were coming and going.
Those who remained in garrison in the villages were obliged by theirorders to give up their good walking-boots to the others, and to weartheir old shoes.
Mounted officers, with their low, flat caps pulled down upon theirnoses, were skimming along the paths by the road-side like the wind.In the old wayside inns, in the corners of the yards the dung-hillswere heaped up with entrails and skins of beasts: hides, stuffed withstraw, were hanging also from the banisters of the old galleries, wherewe used to see washed linen hanging out to dry. Misery, unspeakablemisery, and gnawing anxiety were marked upon the countenances of thepeople. The Germans alone looked fat and sleek in their broken boots;they had good white bread, good red wine, good meat, and smoked goodtobacco or cigars: they were living like fighting-cocks.
At a certain former time, these people had complained bitterly of ourinvasion of their country, without remembering that they had begun byinvading ourselves. And yet they were right. At the close of theFirst Empire, the French were only fighting for one man; but theGermans had since had their revenge twice, in 1814 and 1815, and forfifty years they had always been coming to us as friends, and werereceived like brothers: we bore no malice against them, and they seemedto bear none against us; peace had softened us. We only wished fortheir prosperity, as well as for our own; for nations are really happyonly when their neighbors are prospering: then business and industryall move hand in hand together. That was our position! We saidnothing more of our victories; we talked of our defeats, so as to dofull justice to their courage and their patriotism; we acknowledged ourfaults; they pretended to acknowledge theirs, and talked of fraternity.We believed in their uprightness, in their candor and frankness: wewere really fond of them.
Now hatred has arisen between us.
Whose the fault?
First, our stupidity, our ignorance. We all believed that thePlebiscite was for peace; the Ministers, the prefets, the sous-prefets,the magistrates, the commissioners of police, everybody in authorityconfirmed this. A villain has used it to declare war! But the Germanswere glad of the war; they were full of hatred, and malice, and envy,without betraying it: they had long watched us and studied us; theyendured everlasting drill and perpetual fatigue to become thestrongest, and sought with pains for an opportunity to get war declaredagainst themselves, and so set themselves right in the eyes of Europe.T
he Spanish complication was but a trap laid by Bismarck for Bonaparte.The Germans said to one another: "We have twelve hundred thousand menunder arms; we are four to one. Let us seize the opportunity! If theFrench Government take it into their heads to organize and disciplinethe Garde Mobile, all might be lost.... Quick, quick!"
This is the uprightness, frankness, and fraternity of the Germans!
Our idiot fell into the trap. The Germans overwhelmed us with theirmultitudes. They are our masters; they hold our country; we are payingthem milliards! and now they are coming back, just as before, into ourtowns and cities in troops, smiling upon us, extending the right hand:"Ha! ha! how are you now? Have you been pretty well all this longwhile? What! don't you know me? You look angry! Ah! but you reallyshouldn't. Such friends, such good old friends! Come, now! give me asmall order, only a small one; and don't let us think of that unhappywar!"
Faugh! Let us look another way; it is too horrible.
To excuse them, I say (for one must always seek excuses for everything)man is not by nature so debased; there must be causes to explain, sogreat a want of natural pride; and I say to myself--that these are poorcreatures trained to submission, and that these unfortunate beings doas the birds do that the birdcatcher holds captives in his net; theysing, they chirp, to decoy others.
"Ah! how jolly it is here! how delightful here in Old Germany, with anEmperor, kings, princes, German dukes, grand-dukes, counts, and barons!What an honor to fight and die for the German Fatherland! The Germanis the foremost man in the world."
Yes. Yes. Poor devils! We know all about that. That is the songyour masters taught you at school! For the King of Prussia and hisnobility you work, you spy, you have your bones broken on thebattle-field! They pay you with hollow phrases about the noble German,the German Fatherland, the German sky, the German Rhine; and when yousing false, with rough German slaps upon your German faces.
No; no! it is of no use; the Alsacians and the Lorrainers will neverwhistle like you: they have learned another tune.
Well! all this did not save us from being nipped, George and me, andfrom being made aware that at the least resistance they would wring ournecks like chickens. So we put a good face upon a bad game, observingthe desolation of all this country, where the cattle plague had justbroken out. At Lohre, at Ottviller, in a score of places, thisterrible disease, the most ruinous for the peasantry, was alreadybeginning its ravages; and the Prussians, who eat more than four timesthe quantity of meat that we do--when it belongs to other people--wereafraid of coming short.
Their veterinary doctors knew but one remedy; when a beast fell ill,refused its fodder, and became low-spirited, they slaughtered it, andburied it with hide and horns, six feet under ground. This was notmuch cleverer than the bombardment of towns to force them to surrender,or the firing of villages to compel people to pay their requisitions.But then it answered the purpose!
The Germans in this campaign have taught us their best inventions!They had thought them over for years, whilst our school-masters and ourgazettes were telling us that they were passing away their time indreaming of philosophy, and other things of so extraordinary a kindthat the French could not understand the thing at all.
About eleven we were at Droulingen, where was a Silesian battalionready to march to Metz. It seems that some cavalry were to follow us,and that the requisitions had exhausted the fodder in the country, forour hay and straw were immediately housed in a barn at the end of thevillage, and the major gave us a receipt. He was a gray-beardedPrussian, and he examined us with wrinkled eyes, just like an oldgendarme who is about to take your description.
This business concluded, George and I thought we might return at once;when, looking through the window, we saw them loading our carts withthe baggage of the battalion. Then I came out, exclaiming: "Hallo!those carts are ours! We only came to make a delivery of hay andstraw!"
The Silesian commander, a tall, stiff, and uncompromising-lookingfellow, who was standing at the door, just turned his head, and, as thesoldiers were stopping, quietly said: "Go on!"
"But, captain," said I, "here is my receipt from the major!"
"Nothing to me," said he, walking into the mess-room, where the tablewas laid for the officers.
We stood outside in a state of indignation, as you may believe. Thesoldiers were enjoying the joke. I was very near giving them a rapwith my whip-handle; but a couple of sentinels marching up and downwith arms shouldered, would certainly have passed their bayonetsthrough me. I turned pale, and went into Finck's public-house, whereGeorge had turned in before me. The small parlor was full of soldiers,who were eating and drinking as none but Prussians can eat and drink;almost putting it into their noses.
The sight and the smell drove us out, and George, standing at the door,said to me: "Our wives will be anxious; had we not better find somebodyto tell them what has happened to us?"
But it was no use wishing or looking; there was nobody.
The officers' horses along the wall, their bridles loose, were quietlymunching their feed, and ours, which were already tired, got nothing.
"Hey!" said I to the _feld-weibel_, who was overlooking the loading ofthe carts; "I hope you will not think of starting without giving ahandful to our horses?"
"If you have got any money, you clown," said he, grinning, "you cangive them hay, and even oats, as much as you like. There, look at thesign-board before you: 'Hay and oats sold here.'"
That moment I heaped up more hatred against the Prussians than I shallbe able to satiate in all my life.
"Come on," cried George, pulling me by the arm; for he saw myindignation.
And we went into the "Bay Horse," which was as full of people as theother, but larger and higher. We fed our horses; then, sitting alonein a corner we ate a crust of bread and took a glass of wine, watchingthe movements of the troops outside. I went out to give my horses acouple of buckets of water, for I knew that the Germans would nevertake that trouble.
George called to him the little pedler Friedel, who was passing by withhis pack, to tell him to inform our wives that we should not be hometill to-morrow morning, being obliged to go on to Sarreguemines.Friedel promised, and went on his way.
Almost immediately, the word of command and the rattle of arms warnedus that the battalion was about to march. We only had the time to payand to lay hold of the horses' bridles.
It was pleasant weather for walking--neither too much sun nor too muchshade; fine autumn weather.
And since, in comparing the Germans with our own soldiers as to theirmarching powers, I have often thought that they never would havereached Paris but for our railroads. Their infantry are just asconspicuous for their slowness and their heaviness as their cavalry arefor their swiftness and activity. These people are splay-footed, andthey cannot keep up long. When they are running, their clumsy bootsmake a terrible clatter; which is perhaps the reason why they wearthem: they encourage each other by this means, and imagine they dismaythe enemy. A single company of theirs makes more noise than one of ourregiments. But they soon break out in a perspiration, and their greatdelight is to get up and have a ride.
Toward evening, by five o'clock, we had only gone about three leaguesfrom Droulingen, when, instead of continuing on their way, thecommander gave the battalion orders to turn out of it into a parishroad on the left. Whether it was to avoid the lodgings by the way,which were all exhausted, or for some other reason, I cannot say.
Seeing this, I ran to the commanding officer in the greatest distress.
"But in the name of heaven, captain," said I, "are you not going on toSarreguemines? We are fathers of families; we have wives and children!You promised that at Sarreguemines we might unload and return home."
George was coming, too, to complain; but he had not yet reached us,when the commander, from on horseback, roared at us with a voice ofrage: "Will you return to your carts, or I will have you beaten tillall is blue? Will you make haste back?"
Then we r
eturned to take hold of our bridles, with our heads hangingdown. Three hours after, at nightfall, we came into a miserablevillage, full of small crosses along the road, and where the people hadnothing to give us; for famine had overtaken them.
We had scarcely halted, when a convoy of bread, meat, and wine arrived,escorted by a few hussars. No doubt it came from Alberstoff. Everysoldier received his ration, but we got not so much as an onion: not acrust of bread--nothing--nor our horses either.
That night George and I alone rested under the shelter of a desertedsmithy, while the Prussians were asleep in every hut and in the barns,and the sentinels paced their rounds about our carts, with theirmuskets shouldered; we began to deliberate what we ought to do.
George, who already foreboded the miseries which were awaiting us,would have started that moment, leaving both horses and carts; but Icould not entertain such an idea as that. Give up my pair of beautifuldappled gray horses, which I had bred and reared in my own orchard atthe back of the mill! It was impossible.
"Listen to me," said George. "Remember the Alsacians who have beenpassing by us the last fortnight: they look as if they had come out oftheir graves; they had never received the smallest ration: they wouldhave been carried even to Paris if they had not run away. You see thatthese Germans have no bowels. They are possessed with a bitter hatredagainst the French, which makes them as hard as iron; they have beenincited against us at their schools; they would like to exterminate usto the last man. Let us expect nothing of them; that will be thesafest. I have only six francs in my pocket; what have you?"
"Eight livres and ten sous."
"With that, Christian, we cannot go far. The nearer we get to Metz,the worse ruin we shall find the country in. If we were but able towrite home, and ask for a little money! but you see they have sentinelson every road, at all the lane ends: they allow neitherfoot-passengers, nor letters, nor news to pass. Believe me, let us tryto escape."
All these good arguments were useless. I thought that, with a littlepatience, perhaps at the next village, other horses and other carriagesmight be found to requisition, and that we might be allowed quietly toreturn home. That would have been natural and proper; and so in anycountry in the world they would have done.
George, seeing that he was unable to shake my resolution, lay down upona bench and went to sleep. I could not shut my eyes.
Next day, at six o'clock, we had to resume the march; the Silesianswell-refreshed, we with empty stomachs.
We were moving in the direction of Gros Tenquin. The farther weadvanced, the less I knew of the country. It was the country aroundMetz, le pays Messin, an old French district, and our misery increasedat every stage. The Prussians continued to receive whatever theyrequired, and took no further trouble with us than merely preventing usfrom leaving their company: they treated us like beasts of burden; and,in spite of all our economy, our money was wasting away.
Never was so sad a position as ours; for, on the fourth or fifth day,the officer, guessing from our appearance that we were meditatingflight, quite unceremoniously said in our presence to the sentinels:"If those people stir out of the road, fire upon them."
We met many others in a similar position to ours, in the midst of thesesquadrons and these regiments, which were continually crossing eachother and were covering the roads. At the sight of each other, we feltas if we could burst into tears.
George always kept up his spirits, and even from time to time heassumed an air of gayety, asking a light of the soldiers to light hispipe, and singing sea-songs, which made the Prussian officers laugh.They said: "This fellow is a real Frenchman: he sees things in a brightlight."
I could not understand that at all: no, indeed! I said to myself thatmy cousin was losing his senses.
What grieved me still more was to see my fine horses perishing--my poorhorses, so sleek, so spirited, so steady; the best horses in thecommune, and which I had reared with so much satisfaction. Oh, howdeplorable! ... Passing along the hedges, by the roadside, I pulledhere and there handfuls of grass, to give them a taste of somethinggreen, and in a moment they would stare at it, toss up their heads, anddevour this poor stuff. The poor brutes could be seen wasting away,and this pained me more than anything.
Then the thoughts of my wife and Gredel, and their uneasiness, whatthey were doing, what was becoming of the mill and our village--whatthe people would say when they knew that their mayor was gone, and thenthe town, and Jacob--everything overwhelmed me, and made my heart sinkwithin me.
But the worst of all, and what I shall never forget, was in theneighborhood of Metz.
For a fortnight or three weeks there had been no more fighting; thecity and Bazaine's army were surrounded by huge earthworks, which thePrussians had armed with guns. We could see that afar off, followingthe road on our right. We could see many places, too, where the soilhad been recently turned over; and George said they were pits, in whichhundreds of dead lay buried. A few burnt and bombarded villages,farms, and castles in ruins, were also seen in the neighborhood. Therewas no more fighting; but there was a talk of francs-tireurs, and theSilesians looked uncomfortable.
At last, on the tenth day since our departure, after having crossed andrecrossed the country in all directions, we arrived about three o'clockat a large village on the Moselle, when the battalion came to a halt.Several detachments from our battalion had filled up the gaps in otherbattalions, so that there remained with us only the third part of themen who had come from Droulingen.
After the distribution of provender, seeing that the officers' horseshad been fed, and that they were putting their bridles on, I just wentand picked up a few handfuls of hay and straw which were lying on theground, to give to mine. I had collected a small bundle, when acorporal on guard in the neighborhood, having noticed what I was doing,came and seized me by the whiskers, shaking me, and striking me on theface.
"Ah! you greedy old miser! Is that the way you feed your beasts?"
I was beside myself with rage, and had already lifted my whip-handle tosend the rascal sprawling on the earth, when Cousin George precipitatedhimself between us, crying: "Christian! what are you dreaming of?"
He wrested the whip from me, and whilst I was quivering in every limb,he began to excuse me to the dirty Prussian; saying that I had actedhastily, that I had thought the hay was to be left, that it ought to beconsidered that our horses too followed the battalion, etc.
The fellow listened, drawn up like a gendarme, and said: "Well, then, Iwill pass it over this time; but if he begins his tricks again, it willbe quite another thing."
Then I went into the stable and stretched myself in the empty rack, myhat drawn over my face, without stirring for a couple of hours.
The battalion was going to march again. George was looking for meeverywhere. At last he found me. I rose, came out, and the sight ofall these soldiers dressed in line, with their rifles and theirhelmets, made my blood run cold: I wished for death.
George spoke not a word, and we moved forward; but from that moment Ihad resolved upon flight, at any price, abandoning everything.
The same evening, an extraordinary event happened; we received a littlestraw! We lay in the open air, under our carts, because the village atwhich we had just arrived was full of troops. I had only twelve sousleft, and George but twenty or thirty. He went to buy a little breadand eau-de-vie in a public-house; we dipped our bread in it, and inthis way we were just able to sustain life.
Every time the corporal passed, who had laid his hand upon me, my knifemoved of its own accord in my pocket, and I said to myself: "Shall anAlsacian, an old Alsacian, endure this affront without revenge? Shallit be said that Alsacians allow themselves to be knocked about by suchspawn as these fellows, whom we have thrashed a hundred times in daysgone by, and who used to run away from us like hares?"
George, who could see by my countenance what I was thinking of, said:"Christian! Listen to me. Don't get angry. Set down these blows tothe account of the Plebis
cite, like the bonds for bread, flour, hay,meat, and the rest. It was you who voted all that: the Germans are notthe causes! They are brute beasts, so used to have their facesslapped, that they catch every opportunity to give others the like,when there is no danger, and when they are ten to one. These slapsdon't produce the same effect on them as on us; they are felt only onthe surface, no farther! So comfort yourself; this monstrous beastnever thought he was inflicting any disgrace upon you: he took you forone of his own sort."
But, instead of pacifying me, George only made me the more indignant;especially when he told me that the Germans, talking together, had toldhow Queen Augusta of Prussia had just sent her own cook to the EmperorNapoleon to cook nice little dishes for him, and her own band to playagreeable music under his balcony!
I had had enough! I lay under our cart, and all that night I had nonebut bad dreams.
We had always hoped that, on coming near a railway, the remains of thebattalion would get in, and that we should be sent home; unhappily ourmen were intended to fill up gaps in other battalions: companies weredetached right and left, but there were always enough left to want ourconveyances, and to prevent us from setting off home.
We had not had clean shirts for a fortnight; we had not once taken offour shoes, knowing that we should have too much difficulty in gettingthem on again; we had been wetted through with rain and dried by thesun five and twenty times; we had suffered all the misery andwretchedness of hunger, we were reduced to scarecrows by weariness andsuffering; but neither cousin nor I suffered from dysentery like thoseGermans; the poorest nourishment still sustained us; but the bacon, thefresh meat, the fruits, the raw vegetables, devoured by these creatureswithout the least discretion, worked upon them dreadfully: noexperience could teach them wisdom; their natural voracity made themdevoid of all prudence.
As a climax to our miseries, the officers of our battalion were talkingof marching on Paris.
The Prussians knew a month beforehand that Bazaine would never come outof his camp, and that he would finally surrender after he had consumedall the provisions in Metz; they said this openly, and looked uponMarshal Bazaine as our best general: they praised and exalted him forhis splendid campaign. The only fault they could find was, that he hadnot shut himself up sooner; because then things would have been settledmuch earlier. They complained, too, of our Emperor, and affirmed thatthe best thing we could do would be to set him on his throne again.
George and I heard these things repeated a hundred times at the innsand public-houses where we halted. The French innkeepers made us sitbehind the stove, and for pity, passed us sometimes the leavings of thesoup; but for this, we should have perished of hunger. They asked usin whispers what the Germans were saying, and when we repeated theirsayings, the poor people said to us: "Really, how fond the Prussiansare of us! Certainly they do owe some comfort to the men who havesurrendered! Every brave deed deserves to be rewarded."
One of the Lorraine innkeepers said this to us; he was also the firstto tell us that Gambetta, having escaped from Paris in a balloon, wasnow at Tours with Glais-Bizoin and several others, to raise a powerfularmy behind the Loire. In these parts they got the Belgian papers, andwhenever we heard a bit of good news it screwed up our courage a little.
Quantities of provisions and stores were passing: immense flocks ofsheep and herds of oxen, cases of sausages, barrels of bread, wine, andflour; sometimes regiments also. The trains for the East were carryingwounded in heaps, stretched one over another in the carriages uponmattresses, their pale faces seeking fresh air and coolness at all thewindows. German doctors with the red cross upon their arms wereaccompanying them, and in every village there were ambulances.
The heavy rains and the first frosts had come. A thousand rumors wereafloat of great battles under the walls of Paris. The Prussians wereespecially wroth with Gambetta: "that Gambetta! the bandit!" as theycalled him, who was preventing them from having peace and bringing backNapoleon. Never have I seen men so enraged with an enemy because hewould not surrender. The officers and soldiers talked of nothing else.
"That Gambetta," said they, "is the cause of all our trouble. Hisfrancs-tireurs deserve to be strung up. But for him, peace would bemade. We should already have got Alsace and Lorraine; and the EmperorNapoleon, at the head of the army of Metz, would have been on his wayto restore order at Paris."
At every convoy of wounded their indignation mounted higher. Theythought it perfectly natural and proper that _they_ should set fire tous, devastate our country, plunder and shoot us; but for us to defendourselves, was infamous!
Is it possible to imagine a baser hypocrisy? For they did not thinkwhat they were saying; they wanted to make us believe that our causewas a bad one; yet how could there be a holier and a more glorious one?
Of course every Frenchman, from the oldest to the youngest--andprincipally the women--prayed for Gambetta's success, and more thanonce tears of emotion dropped at the thought that, perhaps, he mightsave us. Crowds of young men left the country to join him, and thenthe Prussians burdened their parents with a war contribution of fiftyfrancs a day. They were ruining them; and yet this did not preventothers from following in numerous bands.
The Prussians threatened with the galleys whosoever should connive atthe flight, as they called it, of these volunteers, whether by givingthem money, or supplying them with guides, or by any other means.Violence, cruelty, falsehood--all sorts of means seemed good to theGermans to reduce us to submission; but arms were the least resorted toof all these means, because they did not wish to lose men, and infighting they might have done so.
We had stopped three days at the village of Jametz, in the direction ofMontmedy. It was in the latter part of October; the rain was pouring;George and I had been received by an old Lorraine woman, tall andspare, Mother Marie-Jeanne, whose son was serving in Metz. She had asmall cottage by the roadside, with a little loft above which youreached by a ladder, and a small garden behind, entirely ravaged. Afew ropes of onions, a few peas and beans in a basket, were all herprovisions. She concealed nothing; and whenever a Prussian came in toask for anything she feigned deafness and answered nothing. Hermisery, her broken windows, her dilapidated walls and the littlecupboard left wide open, soon induced these greedy gluttons to gosomewhere else, supposing there was nothing for them there.
This poor woman had observed our wretched plight; she had invited usin, asking us where we were from, and we had told her of ourmisfortunes. She herself had told us that there remained a few bundlesof hay in the loft and that we might take them, as she had no need forthem; the Germans having eaten her cow.
We climbed up there to sleep by night and drew up the ladder after us,listening to the rain plashing on the roof and running off the tiles.
George had but ten sous left and I had nothing, when, on the third day,as we were lying in the hayloft, about two in the morning, the buglesounded. Something had happened: an order had come--I don't know what.
We listened attentively. There were hurrying footsteps; the butts ofthe muskets were rattling on the pavement: they were assembling,falling in, and in all directions were cries:
"The drivers! the drivers! where are they?"
The commander was swearing: he shouted furiously,
"Fetch them here! find them! shoot the vagabonds."
We did not stir a finger.
Suddenly the door burst open. The Prussians demanded in German and inFrench: "Where are the drivers--those Alsacian drivers?"
The aged dame answered not a word; she shook her head, and looked asdeaf as a post, just as usual. At last, out they rushed again. Therascals had indeed seen the trap-door in the ceiling, but it seems theywere in a hurry and could not find a ladder without losing time. Atlast, whether they saw it or not, presently we heard the tramping ofthe men in the mud, the cracking of the whips, the rolling of thecarts, and then all was silent.
The battalion had disappeared.
Then only, after they had left half an
hour, the kind old woman belowbegan to call us. "You can come down," she said; "they are gone now."
And we came down.
The poor woman said, laughing heartily, "Now you are safe! Only youmust lose no time; there might come an order to catch you. There, eatthat."
She took out of the cupboard a large basin full of soup made ofbeans--for she used to cook enough for three or four days at atime--and warmed it over the fire.
"Eat it all; never mind me! I have got more beans left."
There was no need for pressing, and in a couple of minutes the basinwas empty.
The good woman looked on with pleasure, and George said to her: "Wehave not had such a meal for a week."
"So much the better! I am glad to have done you any service! And nowgo. I wish I could give you some money; but I have none."
"You have saved our lives," I said. "God grant you may see your sonagain. But I have another request to make before we go."
"What is it, then?"
"Leave to give you a kiss."
"Ah, gladly, my poor Alsacians, with all my heart! I am not pretty asI used to be; but it is all the same."
And we kissed her as we would a mother.
When we went to the door, the daylight was breaking.
"Before you lies the road to Dun-sur-Meuse," she said, "don't takethat; that is the road the Prussians have taken: no doubt the commanderhas given a description of you in the next village. But here is theroad to Metz by Damvillers and Etain; follow that. If you are stoppedsay that your horses were worked to death, and you were released."
This poor old woman was full of good sense. We pressed her hand again,with tears in our eyes, and then we set off, following the road she hadpointed out to us.
I should be very much puzzled now to tell you all the villages wepassed between Jametz and Rothalp. All that country between Metz,Montmedy and Verdun was swarming with cavalry and infantry, living atthe expense of the people, and keeping them, as it were, in a net, toeat them as they were wanted. The troops of the line, and especiallythe gunners, kept around the fortresses; the rest, the Landwehr inmasses, occupied even the smallest hamlets and made requisitionseverywhere.
In one little village between Jametz and Damvillers, we heard on ourright a sharp rattle of musketry along a road, and George said to me:"Behind there our battalion is engaged. All I hope is that the bravecommander who talked of shooting us may get a ball through him, andyour corporal too."
The village people standing at their doors said, "It is thefrancs-tireurs!"
And joy broke out in every countenance, especially when an old man ranup from the path by the cemetery, crying: "Two carriages, full ofwounded, are coming--two large Alsacian wagons; they are escorted byhussars."
We had just stopped at a grocer's shop in the market square, and wereasking the woman who kept this little shop if there was no watchmakerin the place--for my cousin wished to sell his watch, which he hadhidden beneath his shirt, since we had left Droulingen--and the womanwas coming down the steps to point out the spot, when the old man beganto cry, "Here come the Alsacian carts!"
Immediately, without waiting for more, we set off at a run to the otherend of the village; but near to a little river, whose name I cannotremember, just over a clump of pollard willows, we caught the glitterof a couple of helmets, and this made us take a path along theriver-side, which was then running over in consequence of the heavyrains. We went on thus a considerable distance, having sometimes thewater up to our knees.
In about half an hour we were getting out of these reed beds, and hadjust caught sight, above the hill on our left, of the steeple ofanother village, when a cry of "Wer da!"* stopped us short, near adeserted hut two or three hundred paces from the first house. At thesame moment a Landwehr started out of the empty house, his riflepointed at us; and his finger on the trigger.
* "Who goes there?"
George seeing no means of escape, answered, "Guter freund!"*
* "A friend."
"Stand there," cried the German: "don't stir, or I fire."
We were, of course, obliged to stop, and only ten minutes afterward, apicket coming out of the village to relieve the sentinel, carried usoff like vagrants to the mayoralty-house. There the captain of theLandwehr questioned us at great length as to who we were, whence wecame, the cause of our departure, and why we had no passes.
We repeated that our horses were dead of overwork, and that we had beentold to return home; but he refused to believe us. At last, however,as George was asking him for money to pursue our journey, he began toexclaim: "To the ---- with you, scoundrels! Am I to furnish you withprovisions and rations! Go; and mind you don't come this way again, orit will be worse for you!"
We went out very well satisfied.
At the bottom of the stairs, George was thinking of going up again toask for a pass; but I was so alarmed lest this captain should changehis mind, that I obliged my cousin to put a good distance between thatfellow and ourselves with all possible speed; which we did, without anyother misadventure until we came to Etain. There George sold his goldwatch and chain for sixty-five francs; making, however, the watchmakerpromise that if he remitted to him seventy-five francs before the endof the month, the watch and chain should be returned to him.
The watchmaker promised, and cousin then taking me by the arm, said:"Now, Christian, come on; we have fasted long enough, let us have abanquet."
And a hundred paces farther on, at the street corner, we went into oneof those little inns where YOU may have a bed for a few sous.
The men there, in a little dark room, were not gentlemen; they weretaking their bottles of wine, with their caps over one ear, and shirtcollars loose and open; but seeing us at the door, ragged as we were,with three-weeks' shirts, and beards and hats saturated and out of allshape and discolored with rain and sun, they took us at first forbear-leaders, or dromedary drivers.
The hostess, a fat woman, came forward to ask what we wanted.
"Your best strong soup, a good piece of beef, a bottle of good wine,and as much bread as we can eat," said George.
The fat woman gazed at us with winking eyes, and without moving, as ifto ask: "All very fine! but who is going to pay me?"
George displayed a five-franc piece, and at once she replied, smiling:"Gentlemen, we will attend to you immediately."
Around us were murmurings: "They are Alsacians! they are Germans! theyare this, they are that!"
But we heeded nothing, we spread our elbows upon the table; and thesoup having appeared in a huge basin, it was evident that our appetiteswere good; as for the beef, a regular Prussian morsel, it was gone in atwinkling, although it weighed two pounds, and was flanked withpotatoes and other vegetables. Then, the first bottle havingdisappeared, George had called for a second; and our eyes werebeginning to be opened; we regarded the people in another light; andone of the bystanders having ventured to repeat that we were Germans,George turned sharply round and cried: "Who says we are Germans? Comelet us see! If he has any spirit, let him rise. We Germans!"
Then he took up the bottle and shattered it upon the table in athousand fragments. I saw that he was losing his head, and cried tohim: "George, for Heaven's sake don't: you will get us taken up!"
But all the spectators agreed with him.
"It is abominable!" cried George. "Let the man who said we are Germansstand out and speak; let him come out with me; let him choose sabre, orsword, whatever he likes, it is all the same to me."
The speaker thus called upon, a youth rose and said: "Pardon me, Iapologize; I thought----"
"You had no right to think," said George; "such things never should besaid. We are Alsacians, true Frenchmen, men of mature age; mycompanion's son is at Phalsbourg in the Mobiles, and I have served inthe Marines. We have been carried away, dragged off by the Germans; wehave lost our horses and our carriages, and now on arriving here, ourown fellow-countrymen insult us in this way because we have said a fewwords in Alsacian, just as B
retons would speak in Breton and Provencalsin Provencal."
"I ask your pardon," repeated the young man. "I was in the wrong--Iacknowledge it. You are good Frenchmen."
"I forgive you," said George, scrutinizing him; "but how old are you?"
"Eighteen."
"Well, go where you ought to be, and show that you, too, are as good aFrenchman as we are. There are no young men left in Alsace. Youunderstand my meaning."
Everybody was listening. The young man went out, and as cousin wasasking for another bottle, the landlady whispered to him over hisshoulder: "You are good Frenchmen; but you have spoken before a greatmany people--strangers, that I know nothing of. You had better go."
Immediately, George recovered his senses; he laid a cent-sous piece onthe table, the woman gave him two francs fifty centimes change, and wewent out.
Once out, George said to me: "Let us step out: anger makes a fool of aman."
And we set off down one little street, then up another, till we cameout into the open fields. Night was approaching; if we had been takenagain, it would have been a worse business than the first; and we knewthat so well, that that night and the next day we dared not even enterthe villages, for fear of being seized and brought back to ourbattalion.
At last, fatigue obliged us to enter an enclosure. It was very coldfor the season; but we had become accustomed to our wretchedness, andwe slept against a wall, upon a bit of straw matting, just as in ourown beds. Rising in the morning at the dawn of day, we found ourselvescovered with hoar-frost, and George, straining his eyes in thedistance, asked: "Do you know that place down there, Christian?"
I looked.
"Why, it is Chateau-Salins!"
Ah! now all was well. At Chateau-Salins lived an old cousin,Desjardins, the first dyer in the country: Desjardins's grandfather andours had married sisters before the Revolution. He was a Lutheran, andeven a Calvinist; we were Catholics; but nevertheless, we knew eachother, and were fond of each other, as very near relations.
The Plébiscite; or, A Miller's Story of the War Page 9
