"Bichelberg, Feb. 25, 1814.
"Dear Aurelia: Thy good letter of January 29th reached Coblentz too late; the regiment was on its way to Alsace.
"We have had a great many discomforts, from rain and snow. The regiment came first to Bitche, one of the most terrible forts possible, built upon rocks up in the sky. We were to take part in blockading it, but a new order sent us on farther to the fort of Lutzelstein, on the mountain, where we remained two days at the village of Pétersbach, to summon that little place to surrender. The veterans who held it having replied by cannon, our colonel did not judge it necessary to storm it, and, thank God! we received orders to go and blockade another fortress surrounded by good villages which furnish us provisions in abundance; this is Phalsburg, a couple of leagues from Saverne. We relieve, here, the Austrian regiment of Vogelgesang, which has left for Lorraine.
"Thy good letter has followed me everywhere, and it fills me now with joy. Embrace little Sabrina and our dear little Henry for me a hundred times, and receive my embraces yourself, too, thou dear, adored wife!
"Ah! when shall we be together again in our little pharmacy? When shall I see again my vials nicely labelled upon their shelves, with the heads of Æsculapius and Hippocrates above the door? When shall I take my pestle, and mix my drugs again after the prescribed formulas? When shall I have the joy of sitting again in my comfortable arm-chair, in front of a good fire, in our back shop, and hear Henry's little wooden horse roll upon the floor,—Henry whom I so long for? And thou, dear, adored wife, when wilt thou exclaim: 'It is my Henry!' as thou seest me return crowned with palms of victory."
"These Germans," interrupted the sergeant, "are blockheads as well as asses! They are to have 'palms of victory!' What a silly letter!"
But Sorlé and Zeffen listened as I read, with tears in their eyes. They held our little ones in their arms, and I, too, thinking that Baruch might have been in the same condition as this poor man, was greatly moved.
Now, Fritz, hear the end:
"We are here in an old tile-kiln, within range of the cannon of the fort. A few shells are fired upon the city every evening, by order of the Russian general, Berdiaiw, with the hope of making the inhabitants decide to open the gates. That must be before long; they are short of provisions! Then we shall be comfortably lodged in the citizens' houses, till the end of this glorious campaign; and that will be soon, for the regular armies have all passed without resistance, and we hear daily of great victories in Champagne. Bonaparte is in full retreat; field-marshals Blücher and Schwartzenberg have united their forces, and are only five or six days' march from Paris——"
"What? What? What is that? What does he say?" stammered out the sergeant, leaning over toward the letter. "Read that again!"
I looked at him; he was very pale, and his cheeks shook with anger.
"He says that generals Blücher and Schwartzenberg are near Paris."
"Near Paris! They! The rascals!" he faltered out.
Suddenly, with a bad look on his face, he gave a low laugh and said:
"Ah! thou meanest to take Phalsburg, dost thou? Thou meanest to return to thy land of sauerkraut with palms of victory? He! he! he! I have given thee thy palms of victory!"
He made the motions of pricking with his bayonet as he spoke, "One—two—hop!"
It made us all tremble only to look at him.
"Yes, Father Moses, so it is," said he, emptying his glass by little sips. "I have nailed this sort of an apothecary to the door of the tile-kiln. He made up a funny face—his eyes starting from his head. His Aurelia will have to expect him a good while! But never mind! Only, Madame Sorlé, I assure you that it is a lie. You must not believe a word he says. The Emperor will give it to them! Don't be troubled."
I did not wish to go on. I felt myself grow cold, and I finished the letter quickly, passing over three-quarters of it which contained no information, only compliments for friends and acquaintances.
The sergeant himself had had enough of it, and went out soon afterward, saying, "Good-night! Throw that in the fire!"
Then I put the letter aside, and we all sat looking at each other for some minutes. I opened the door. The sergeant was in his room at the end of the passage, and I said, in a low voice:
"What a horrible thing! Not only to kill the father of a family like a fly, but to laugh about it afterward!"
"Yes," replied Sorlé. "And the worst of it is that he is not a bad man. He loves the Emperor too well, that is all!"
The information contained in the letter caused us much serious reflection, and that night, notwithstanding our stroke of good fortune in our sales, I woke more than once, and thought of this terrible war, and wondered what would become of the country if Napoleon were no longer its master. But these questions were above my comprehension, and I did not know how to answer them.
After this story of the landwehr, we were afraid of the sergeant, though he did not know it, and came regularly to take his glass of cherry-brandy. Sometimes in the evening he would hold the bottle before our lamp, and exclaim:
"It is getting low, Father Moses, it is getting low! We shall soon be put upon half-rations, and then quarter, and so on. It is all the same; if a drop is left, anything more than the smell, in six months, Trubert will be very glad."
He laughed, and I thought with indignation:
"You will be satisfied with a drop! What are you in want of? The city storehouses are bomb-proof, the fires at the guard-house are burning every day, the market furnishes every soldier with his ration of fresh meat, while respectable citizens are glad if they can get potatoes and salt meat!"
This is the way I felt in my ill-humor, while I treated him pleasantly, all the same, on account of his terrible wickedness.
And it was the truth, Fritz, even our children had nothing more nourishing to eat than soup made of potatoes and salt beef, which cause many dangerous maladies.
The garrison had no lack of anything; but, notwithstanding, the governor was all the time proclaiming that the visits were to be recommenced, and that those who should be found delinquent should be punished with the rigor of military law. Those people wanted to have everything for themselves; but nobody minded them, everybody hid what he could.
Fortunate in those times was he who kept a cow in his cellar, with some hay and straw for fodder; milk and butter were beyond all price. Fortunate was he who owned a few hens; a fresh egg, at the end of February, was valued at fifteen sous, and they were not to be had even at that price. The price of fresh meat went up, so to speak, from hour to hour, and we did not ask if it was beef or horse-flesh.
The council of defence had sent away the paupers of the city before the blockade, but a large number of poor people remained. A good many slipped out at night into the trenches by one of the posterns; they would go and dig up roots from under the snow, and cut the nettles in the bastions to boil for spinach. The sentries fired from above, but what will not a man risk for food? It is better to feel a ball than to suffer with hunger.
We needed only to meet these emaciated creatures, these women dragging themselves along the walls, these pitiful children, to feel that famine had come, and we often said to ourselves:
"If the Emperor does not come and help us, in a month we shall be like these wretched creatures! What good will our money do us, when a radish will cost a hundred francs?"
Then, Fritz, we smiled no more as we saw the little ones eating around the table; we looked at each other, and this glance was enough to make us understand each other.
The good sense and good feeling of a brave woman are seen at times like this. Sorlé had never spoken to me about our provisions; I knew how prudent she was, and supposed that we must have provisions hidden somewhere, without being entirely sure of it. So, at evening, as we sat at our meagre supper, the fear that our children might want the necessary food sometimes led me to say:
"Eat! feast away! I am not hungry. I want an omelet or a chicken. Potatoes do not agree with me."
I would laugh, but Sorlé knew very well what I was thinking.
"Come, Moses," she said to me one day; "we are not as badly off as you think; and if we should come to it, ah, well! do not be troubled, we shall find some way of getting along! So long as others have something to live upon, we shall not perish, more than they."
She gave me courage, and I ate cheerfully, I had so much confidence in her.
That same evening, after Zeffen and the children had gone to bed, Sorlé took the lamp, and led me to her hiding-place.
Under the house we had three cellars, very small and very low, separated by lattices. Against the last of these lattices, Sorlé had thrown bundles of straw up to the very top; but after removing the straw, we went in, and I saw at the farther end, two bags of potatoes, a bag of flour, and on the little oil-cask a large piece of salt beef.
We stayed there more than an hour, to look, and calculate, and think. These provisions might serve us for a month, and those in the large cellar under the street, which we had declared to the commissary of provisions, a fortnight. So that Sorlé said to me as we went up:
"You see that, with economy, we have what will do for six weeks. A time of great want is now beginning, and if the Emperor does not come before the end of six weeks, the city will surrender. Meanwhile, we must get along with potatoes and salt meat."
She was right, but every day I saw how the children were suffering from this diet. We could see that they grew thin, especially little David; his large bright eyes, his hollow cheeks, his increasing dejected look, made my heart ache.
I held him, I caressed him; I whispered to him that, when the winter was over, we would go to Saverne, and his father would take him to drive in his carriage. He would look at me dreamily, and then lay his head upon my shoulder, with his arm around my neck, without answering. At last he refused to eat.
Zeffen, too, became disheartened; she would often sob, and take her babe from me, and say that she wanted to go, that she wanted to see Baruch! You do not know what these troubles are, Fritz; a father's troubles for his children; they are the cruelest of all! No child can imagine how his parents love him, and what they suffer when he is unhappy.
But what was to be done in the midst of such calamities? Many other families in France were still more to be pitied than we.
During all this time, you must remember that we had the patrols, the shells in the evening, requisition and notices, the call to arms at the two barracks and in front of the mayoralty, the cries of "Fire!" in the night, the noise of the fire-engines, the arrival of the envoys, the rumors spread through the city that our armies were retreating, and that the city was to be burned to the ground!
The less people know the more they invent.
It is best to tell the simple truth. Then every one would take courage, for, during all such times, I have always seen that the truth, even in the greatest calamities, is never so terrible as these inventions. The republicans defended themselves so well, because they knew everything, nothing was concealed from them, and every one considered the affairs of his nation as his own.
But when men's own affairs are hidden from them, how can they have confidence? An honest man has nothing to conceal, and I say it is the same with an honest government.
In short, bad weather, cold, want, rumors of all kinds, increased our miseries. Men like Burguet, whom we had always seen firm, became sad; all that they could say to us was:
"We shall see!—we must wait!" The soldiers again began to desert, and were shot!
Our brandy-selling always kept on: I had already emptied seven pipes of spirit, all my debts were paid, my storehouse at the market was full of goods, and I had eighteen thousand francs in the cellar; but what is money, when we are trembling for the life of those we love?
On the sixth of March, about nine o'clock in the evening, we had just finished supper as usual, and the sergeant was smoking his pipe, with his legs crossed, near the window, and looking at us without speaking.
It was the hour when the bombarding began; we heard the first cannon-shots, behind the Fiquet bottom-land; a cannon-shot from the outposts had answered them; that had somewhat roused us, for we were all thoughtful.
"Father Moses," said the sergeant, "the children are pale!"
"I know it very well," I replied, sorrowfully.
He said no more, and as Zeffen had just gone out to weep, he took little David on his knee, and looked at him for a long time. Sorlé held little Esdras asleep in her arms. Sâfel took off the table-cloth and rolled up the napkins, to put them back in the closet.
"Yes," said the sergeant. "We must take care, Father Moses; we will talk about it another time."
I looked at him with surprise; he emptied his pipe at the edge of the stove, and went out, making a sign for me to follow him. Zeffen came in, and I took a candle from her hand. The sergeant led me to his little room at the end of the passage, shut the door, sat down on the foot of the bed, and said:
"Father Moses, do not be frightened—but the typhus has just broken out again in the city; five soldiers were taken to the hospital this morning; the commandant of the place, Moulin, is taken. I hear, too, of a woman and three children!"
He looked at me, and I felt cold all over.
"Yes," said he, "I have known this disease for a long time; we had it in Poland, in Russia, after the retreat, and in Germany. It always comes from poor nourishment."
Then I could not help sobbing and exclaiming:
"Ah, tell me! What can I do? If I could give my life for my children, it would all be well! But what can I do?"
"To-morrow, Father Moses, I will bring you my portion of meat, and you shall have soup made of it for your children. Madame Sorlé may take the piece at the market, or, if you prefer, I will bring it myself. You shall have all my portions of fresh meat till the blockade is over, Father Moses."
I was so moved by this, that I went to him and took his hand, saying:
"Sergeant, you are a noble man! Forgive me, I have thought evil of you."
"What about?" said he, scowling.
"About the landwehr at the tile-kiln!"
"Ah, good! That is a different thing! I do not care about that," said he. "If you knew all the kaiserlichs that I have despatched these ten years, you would have thought more evil of me. But that is not what we are talking about; you accept, Father Moses?"
"And you, sergeant," said I, "what will you have to eat?"
"Do not be troubled about that; Sergeant Trubert has never been in want!"
I wanted to thank him. "Good!" said he, "that is all understood. I cannot give you a pike, or a fat goose, but a good soup in blockade times is worth something, too."
He laughed and shook hands with me. As for myself I was quite overcome, and my eyes were full of tears.
"Let us go; good-night!" said he, as he led me to the door. "It will all come out right! Tell Madame Sorlé that it will all come out right!"
I blessed that man as I went out, and I told it all to Sorlé, who was still more affected by it than myself. We could not refuse; it was for the children! and during the last week there had been nothing but horse-meat in the market.
So the next morning we had fresh meat to make soup for those poor little ones. But the dreadful malady was already upon us, Fritz! Now, when I think of it, after all these years, I am quite overcome. However, I cannot complain; before going to take the bit of meat, I had consulted our old rabbi about the quality of this meat according to the law, and he had replied:
"The first law is to save Israel; but how can Israel be saved if the children perish?"
But after a while I remembered that other law:
"The life of the flesh is in the blood, therefore I said unto the children of Israel: Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh, for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof; whosoever eateth it shall be cut off; and whosoever eateth of any sick beast shall be unclean."
In my great misery the words of the Lord came to me, and I wept.
All these animals had been sick for six weeks; they lived in the mire, exposed to the snow and wind, between the arsenal and guard bastions.
The soldiers, almost all of whom were sons of peasants, ought to have known that they could not live in the open air, in such cold weather; a shelter could easily have been made. But when officers take the whole charge, nobody else thinks of anything; they even forget their own village trades. And if, unfortunately, their commanders do not give the order, nothing is done.
This is the reason that the animals had neither flesh nor fat; this is the reason that they were nothing but miserable, trembling carcasses, and their suffering, unhealthy flesh had become unclean, according to the law of God.
Many of the soldiers died. The wind brought to the city the bad air from the bodies, scattered by hundreds around the tile-kiln, the Ozillo farm, and in the gardens, and this also caused much sickness.
The justice of the Lord is shown in all things; when the living neglect their duties toward the dead, they perish.
I have often remembered these things when it was too late, so that I think of them only with grief.
The most painful of all my recollections, Fritz, is the way in which that terrible disease came to our family.
On the twelfth of March we heard of a large number of men, women, and children who were dying. We dared not listen; we said:
"No one in our house is sick, the Lord watches over us!"
After David had come, after supper, to cuddle in my arms, with his little hand on my shoulder, I looked at him; he seemed very drowsy, but children are always sleepy at night. Esdras was already asleep, and Sâfel had just bidden us good-night.
At last Zeffen took the child, and we all went to bed.
That night the Russians did not fire; perhaps the typhus was among them, too. I do not know.
About midnight, when by God's goodness we were asleep, I heard a terrible cry.
I listened, and Sorlé said to me:
"It is Zeffen!"
I rose at once, and tried to light the lamp; but I was so much agitated that I could not find anything.
Sorlé struck a light, I drew on my pantaloons and ran to the door. But I was hardly in the passage-way when Zeffen came out of her room like an insane person, with her long black hair all loose.
"The child!" she screamed.
Sorlé followed me. We went in, we leaned over the cradle. The two children seemed to be sleeping; Esdras all rosy, David as white as snow.
At first I saw nothing, I was so frightened, but at last I took up David to waken him; I shook him, and called, "David!"
And then we first saw that his eyes were open and fixed.
"Wake him! wake him!" cried Zeffen.
Sorlé took my hands and said:
"Quick! make a fire! heat some water!"
And we laid him across the bed, shaking him and calling him by name. Little Esdras began to cry.
"Light a fire!" said Sorlé again to me. "And, Zeffen, be quiet! It does no good to cry so! Quick, quick, a fire!"
But Zeffen cried out incessantly, "My poor child!"
"He will soon be warm again," said Sorlé; "only, Moses, make haste and dress yourself, and run for Doctor Steinbrenner."
She was pale and more alarmed than we, but this brave woman never lost her presence of mind or her courage. She had made a fire, and the fagots were crackling in the chimney.
I ran to get my cloak, and went down, thinking to myself:
"The Lord have mercy upon us! If the child dies I shall not survive him! No, he is the one that I love best, I could not survive him!"
For you know, Fritz, that the child who is most unhappy, or in the greatest danger, is always the one that we love best; he needs us the most; we forget the others. The Lord has ordered it so, doubtless for the greatest good.
I was already running in the street.
A darker night was never known. The wind blew from the Rhine, the snow blew about like dust; here and there the lighted windows showed where people were watching the sick.
My head was uncovered, yet I did not feel the cold. I cried within myself:
"The last day had come! That day of which the Lord has said: 'Afore the harvest, when the bud is perfect, and the sour grape is ripening in the flower, he shall both cut off the sprigs with pruning-hooks, and take away and cut down the branches."
Full of these fearful thoughts, I went across the large market-place, where the wind was tossing the old elms, full of frost.
As the clock struck one, I pushed open Doctor Steinbrenner's door; its large pulley rattled in the vestibule. As I was groping about, trying to find the railing, the servant appeared with a light at the top of the stairs.
"Who is there?" she asked, holding the lantern before her.
"Ah!" I replied, "tell the doctor to come immediately; we have a child sick, very sick."
I could not restrain my sobs.
"Come up, Monsieur Moses," said the girl: "the doctor has just come in, and has not gone to bed. Come up a moment and warm yourself!"
But Father Steinbrenner had heard it all.
"Very well, Theresa!" said he, coming out of his room; "keep the fire burning. I shall be back in an hour at latest."
He had already put on his large three-cornered cap, and his goat's-hair great-coat.
We walked across the square without speaking. I went first; in a few minutes we ascended our stairs.
Sorlé had placed a candle at the top of the stairs; I took it and led M. Steinbrenner to the baby's room.
All seemed quiet as we entered. Zeffen was sitting in an arm-chair behind the door, with her head on her knees, and her shoulders uncovered; she was no longer crying but weeping. The child was in bed. Sorlé, standing at its side, looked at us.
The doctor laid his cap on the bureau.
"It is too warm here," said he, "give us a little air."
Then he went to the bed. Zeffen had risen from her chair, as pale as death. The doctor took the lamp, and looked at our poor little David; he raised the coverlet and lifted out the little round limbs; he listened to the breathing. Esdras having begun to cry, he turned round and said: "Take the other child away from this room—we must be quiet! and besides, the air of a sick-room is not good for such small children."
He gave me a side look. I understood what he meant to say. It was the typhus! I looked at my wife; she understood it all.
I felt at that moment as if my heart were torn; I wanted to groan, but Zeffen was there leaning over, behind us, and I said nothing; nor did Sorlé.
The doctor asked for paper to write a prescription, and we went out together. I led him to our room, and shut the door, and began to sob.
"Moses," said he, "you are a man, do not weep! Remember that you ought to set an example of courage to two poor women."
"Is there no hope?" I asked him in a low voice, afraid of being heard.
"It is the typhus!" said he. "We will do what we can. There, that is the prescription; go to Tribolin's; his boy is up at night now, and he will give you the medicine. Be quick! And then, in heaven's name, take the other child out of that room, and your daughter too, if possible. Try to find some one out of the family, accustomed to sickness; the typhus is contagious."
I said nothing.
He took his cap and went.
Now what can I say more? The typhus is a disease engendered by death itself; the prophet speaks of it, when he says:
"Hell from beneath is moved for thee, to meet thee at thy coming!"
How many have I seen die of the typhus in our hospitals, on the Saverne hill, and elsewhere!
When men tear each other to pieces, without mercy, why should not death come to help them? But what had this poor babe done that it must die so soon? This, Fritz, is the most dreadful thing, that all must suffer for the crimes of a few. Yes, when I think that my child died of this pestilence, which war had brought from the heart of Russia to our homes, and which ravaged all Alsace and Lorraine for six months, instead of accusing God, as the impious do, I accuse men. Has not God given them reason? And when they do not use it—when they let themselves rage against each other like brutes—is He to blame for it?
But of what use are right ideas, when we are suffering!
I remember that the sickness lasted for six days, and those were the cruelest days of my life. I feared for my wife, for my daughter, for Sâfel, for Esdras. I sat in a corner, listening to the babe's breathing. Sometimes he seemed to breathe no longer. Then a chill passed over me; I went to him and listened. And when, by chance, Zeffen came, in spite of the doctor's prohibition, I went into a sort of fury; I pushed her out by the shoulders, trembling.
"But he is my child! He is my child!" she said.
"And art thou not my child too?" said I. "I do not want you all to die!"
Then I burst into tears, and fell into my chair, looking straight before me, my strength all gone; I was exhausted with grief.
Sorlé came and went, with firm-closed lips; she prepared everything, and cared for everybody.
At that time musk was the remedy for typhus; the house was full of musk. Often the idea seized me that Esdras, too, was going to be sick. Ah, if having children is the greatest happiness in the world, what agony is it to see them suffer! How fearful to think of losing them!—to be there, to hear their labored breathing, their delirium, to watch their sinking from hour to hour, from minute to minute, and to exclaim from the depths of the soul:
"Death is near at hand! There is nothing, nothing more that can be done to save thee, my child! I cannot give thee my life! Death does not wish for it!"
What heart-rending and what anguish, till the last moment when all is over!
Then, Fritz, money, the blockade, the famine, the general desolation—all were forgotten. I hardly saw the sergeant open our door every morning, and look in, asking:
"Well, Father Moses, well?"
I did not know what he said; I paid no attention to him.
But, what I always think of with pleasure, what I am always proud of, is that, in the midst of all this trouble, when Sorlé, Zeffen, myself, and everybody were beside ourselves, when we forgot all about our business, and let everything go, little Sâfel at once took charge of our shop. Every morning we heard him rise at six o'clock, go down, open, the warehouse, take up one or two pitchers of brandy, and begin to serve the customers.
No one had said a word to him about it, but Sâfel had a genius for trade. And if anything could console a father in such troubles, it would be to see himself, as it were, living over again in so young a child, and to say to himself: "At least the good race is not extinct; it still remains to preserve common-sense in the world." Yes, it is the only consolation which a man can have.
Ourschabesgoïédid the work in the kitchen, and old Lanche helped us watch, but Sâfel took the charge of the shop; his mother and I thought of nothing but our little David.
He died in the night of the eighteenth of March, the day when the fire broke out in Captain Cabanier's house.
That same night two shells fell upon our house; the blindage made them roll into the court, where they both burst, shattering the laundry windows and demolishing the butcher's door, which fell down at once with a fearful crash.
It was the most powerful bombardment since the blockade began, for, as soon as the enemy saw the flame ascending, they fired from Mittelbronn, from the Barracks, and the Fiquet lowlands, to prevent its being extinguished.
I stayed all the while with Sorlé, near the babe's bed, and the noise of the bursting shells did not disturb us.
The unhappy do not cling to life; and then the child was so sick! There were blue spots all over his body.
The end was drawing near.
I walked the room. Without they were crying "Fire! Fire!"
People passed in the street like a torrent. We heard those returning from the fire telling the news, the engines hurrying by, the soldiers ranging the crowd in the line, the shells bursting at the right and left.
Before our windows the long trails of red flame descended upon the roofs in front, and shattered the glass of the windows. Our cannon all around the city replied to the enemy. Now and then we heard the cry: "Room! Room!" as the wounded were carried away.
Twice some pickets came up into my room to put me in the line, but, on seeing me sitting with Sorlé by our child, they went down again.
The first shell burst at our house about eleven o'clock, the second at four in the morning; everything shook, from the garret to the cellar; the floor, the bed, the furniture seemed to be upheaved; but, in our exhaustion and despair, we did not speak a single word.
Zeffen came running to us with Esdras and little Sâfel, at the first explosion. It was evident that little David was dying. Old Lanche and Sorlé were sitting, sobbing. Zeffen began to cry.
I opened the windows wide, to admit the air, and the powder-smoke which covered the city came into the room.
Sâfel saw at once that the hour was at hand. I needed only to look at him, and he went out, and soon returned by a side street, notwithstanding the crowd, with Kalmes the chanter, who began to recite the prayer of the dying:
"The Lord reigneth! The Lord reigneth! The Lord shall reign everywhere and forever!
"Praise, everywhere and forever, the name of His glorious reign!
"The Lord is God! The Lord is God! The Lord is God!
"Hear, oh Israel, the Lord our God is one God!
"Go, then, where the Lord calleth thee—go, and may His mercy help thee!
"May the Lord, our God, be with thee; may His immortal angels lead thee to heaven, and may the righteous be glad when the Lord shall receive thee into His bosom!
"God of mercy, receive this soul into the midst of eternal joys!"
Sorlé and I repeated, weeping, those holy words. Zeffen lay as if dead, her arms extended across the bed, over the feet of her child. Her brother Sâfel stood behind her, weeping bitterly, and calling softly, "Zeffen! Zeffen!"
But she did not hear; her soul was lost in infinite sorrows.
Without, the cries of "Fire!" the orders for the engines, the tumult of the crowd, the rolling of the cannonade still continued; the flashes, one after another, lighted up the darkness.
What a night, Fritz! What a night!
Suddenly Sâfel, who was leaning over under the curtain, turned round to us in terror. My wife and I ran, and saw that the child was dead. We raised our hands, sobbing, to indicate it. The chanter ceased his psalm. Our David was dead!
The most terrible thing was the mother's cry! She lay, stretched out, as if she had fainted; but when the chanter leaned over and closed the lips, saying "Amen!" she rose, lifted the little one, looked at him, then, raising him above her head, began to run toward the door, crying out with a heart-rending voice:
"Baruch! Baruch! save our child!"
She was mad, Fritz! In this last terror I stopped her, and, by main force, took from her the little body which she was carrying away. And Sorlé, throwing her arms round her, with ceaseless groanings, Mother Lanche, the chanter, Sâfel, all led her away.
I remained alone, and I heard them go down, leading away my daughter.
How can a man endure such sorrows?
I put David back in the bed and covered him, because of the open windows. I knew that he was dead, but it seemed to me as if he would be cold. I looked at him for a long time, so as to retain that beautiful face in my heart.
It was all heart-rending—all! I felt as if my bowels were torn from me, and in my madness I accused the Lord, and said:
"I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of Thy wrath. Surely against me is He turned. My flesh and my skin hath He made old: He hath broken my bones. He hath set me in dark places. Also when I cry and shout He shutteth out my prayer. He was unto me as a lion in secret places!"
Thus I walked about, groaning and even blaspheming. But God in His mercy forgave me; He knew that it was not myself that spoke, but my despair.
At last I sat down, the others came back. Sorlé sat next to me in silence. Sâfel said to me:
"Zeffen has gone to the rabbi's with Esdras."
I covered my head without answering him.
Then some women came with old Lanche; I took Sorlé by the hand, and we went into the large room, without speaking a word.
The mere sight of this room, where the two little brothers had played so long, made my tears come afresh, and Sorlé, Sâfel, and I wept together. The house was full of people; it might have been eight o'clock, and they knew already that we had a child dead.
Then, Fritz, the funeral rites began. All who died of typhus had to be buried the same day: Christians behind the church, and Jews in the trenches, in the place now occupied by the riding-school.
Old women were already there to wash the poor little body, and comb the hair, and cut the nails, according to the law of the Lord. Some of them sewed the winding-sheet.
The open windows admitted the air, the shutters struck against the walls. Theschamess* went through the streets, striking the doors with his mace, to summon our brethren.
* Beadle.
Sorlé sat upon the ground with her head veiled. Hearing Desmarets come up the stairs, I had courage to go and meet him, and show him the room. The poor angel was in his little shirt on the floor, the head raised a little on some straw, and the littlethalethin his fingers. He was so beautiful, with his brown hair, and half-opened lips, that I thought as I looked at him: "The Lord wanted to have thee near his throne!"
And my tears fell silently: my beard was full of them.
Desmarets then took the measure and went. Half an hour afterward, he returned with the little pine coffin under his arm, and the house was filled anew with lamentations.
I could not see the coffin closed! I went and sat upon the sack of ashes, covering my face with both hands, and crying in my heart like Jacob, "Surely I shall go down to the grave with this child; I shall not survive him."
Only a very few of our brethren came, for a panic was in the city; men knew that the angel of death was passing by, and that drops of blood rained from his sword upon the houses; each emptied the water from his jug upon the threshold and entered quickly. But the best of them came silently, and as evening approached, it was necessary to go and descend by the postern.
I was the only one of our family. Sorlé was not able to follow me, nor Zeffen. I was the only one to throw the shovelful of earth. My strength all left me, they had to lead me back to our door. The sergeant held me by the arm; he spoke to me and I did not hear him; I was as if dead.
All else that I remember of that dreadful day, is the moment when, having come into the house, sitting on the sack, before our cold hearth, with bare feet and bent head, and my soul in the depths, theschamesscame to me, touched my shoulder and made me rise; and then took his knife from his pocket and rent my garment, tearing it to the hip. This blow was the last and the most dreadful; I fell back, murmuring with Job:
"Let the day perish wherein I was born, and the night in which it was said, there is a man child conceived! Let a cloud dwell upon it, let the blackness of the day terrify it! For mourning, the true mourning does not come down from the father to the child, but goes up from the child to the father. Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should suck? For now I should have lain still in the tomb and been at rest!"
And my grief, Fritz, had no bounds; "What will Baruch say," I exclaimed, "and what shall I answer him when he asks me to give him back his child?"
I felt no longer any interest in our business. Zeffen lived with the old rabbi; her mother spent the days with her, to take care of Esdras and comfort her.
Every part of our house was opened; theschabesgoïéburned sugar and spices, and the air from without had free circulation. Sâfel went on selling.
As for myself, I sat before the hearth in the morning, cooked some potatoes, and ate them with a little salt, and then went out, without thought or aim. I wandered sometimes to the right, sometimes to the left, toward the old gendarmerie, around the ramparts, in out-of-the-way places.
I could not bear to see any one, especially those who had known the child.
Then, Fritz, our miseries were at their height; famine, cold, all kinds of sufferings weighed upon the city; faces grew thin, and women and children were seen, half-naked and trembling, groping in the shadow in the deserted by-ways.
Ah! such miseries will never return! We have no more such abominable wars, lasting twenty years, when the highways looked like ruts, and the roads like streams of mud; when the ground remained untilled for want of husbandmen, when houses sank for want of inhabitants; when the poor went barefoot and the rich in wooden shoes, while the superior officers passed by on superb horses, looking down contemptuously on the whole human race.
We could not endure that now!
But at that time everything in the nation was destroyed and humiliated; the citizens and the people had nothing left; force was everything. If a man said, "But there is such a thing as justice, right, truth!" the way was to answer with a smile, "I do not understand you!" and you were taken for a man of sense and experience, who would make his way.
Then, in the midst of my sorrow, I saw these things without thinking about them; but since then, they have come back to me, and thousands of others; all the survivors of those days can remember them, too.
One morning, I was under the old market, looking at the wretches as they bought meat. At that time they knocked down the horses of Rouge-Colas and those of the gendarmes, as fleshless as the cattle in the trenches, and sold the meat at very high prices.
I looked at the swarms of wrinkled old women, of hollow-eyed citizens, all these wretched creatures crowding before Frantz Sepel's stall, while he distributed bits of carcass to them.
Frantz's large dogs were seen no longer prowling about the market, licking up the bloody scraps. The dried hands of old women were stretched out at the end of their fleshless arms, to snatch everything; weak voices called out entreatingly, "A little more liver, Monsieur Frantz, so that we can make merry!"
I saw all this under the great dark roof, through which a little light came, in the holes made by the shells. In the distance, among the worm-eaten pillars, some soldiers, under the arch of the guard-house, with their old capes hanging down their thighs, were also looking on;—it seemed like a dream.
My great sorrow accorded with these sad sights. I was about leaving at the end of a half hour, when I saw Burguet coming along by Father Brainstein's old country-house, which was now staved in by the shells, and leaning, all shattered, over the street.
Burguet had told me several days before our affliction, that his maid-servant was sick. I had thought no more of it, but now it came to me.
He looked so changed, so thin, his cheeks so marked by wrinkles, it seemed as if years had passed since I had seen him. His hat came down to his eyes, and his beard, at least a fortnight old, had turned gray. He came in, looking round in all directions; but he could not see me where I was, in the deep shadow, against the planks of the old fodder-house; and he stopped behind the crowd of old women, who were squeezed in a semicircle before the stall, awaiting their turn.
After a minute he put some sous in Frantz Sepel's hand, and received his morsel, which he hid under his cloak. Then looking round again, he was going away quickly, with his head down.
This sight moved my heart: I hurried away, raising my hands to heaven, and exclaiming: "Is it possible? Is it possible? Burguet too! A man of his genius to suffer hunger and eat carcasses! Oh, what times of trial!"
I went home, completely upset.
We had not many provisions left; but, still, the next morning, as Sâfel was going down to open the shop, I said to him:
"Stop, my child, take this little basket to M. Burguet; it is some potatoes and salt beef. Take care that nobody sees it, they would take it from you. Say that it is in remembrance of the poor deserter."
The child went. He told me that Burguet wept.
This, Fritz, is what must be seen in a blockade, where you are attacked from day to day. This is what the Germans and Spaniards had to suffer, and what we suffered in our turn. This is war!
Even the siege rations were almost gone; but Moulin, the commandant of the place, having died of typhus, the famine did not prevent the lieutenant-colonel, who took his place, from giving balls and fêtes to the envoys, in the old Thevenot house. The windows were bright, music played, the staff-officers drank punch and warm wine, to make believe that we were living in abundance. There was good reason for bandaging the eyes of these envoys till they reached the very ball-room, for, if they had seen the look of the people, all the punch-bowls and warm wines in the world would not have deceived them.
All this time, the grave-digger Mouyot and his two boys came every morning to take their two or three drops of brandy. They might say "We drink to the dead!" as the veterans said "We drink to the Cossacks!" Nobody in the city would willingly have undertaken to bury those who had died of typhus; they alone, after taking their drop, dared to throw the bodies from the hospital upon a cart, and pile them up in the pit, and then they passed for grave-diggers, with Father Zébédé.
The order was to wrap the dead in a sheet. But who saw that it was done? Old Mouyot himself told me that they were buried in their cloaks or vests, as it might be, and sometimes entirely naked.
For every corpse, these men had their thirty-five sous; Father Mouyot, the blind man, can tell you so; it was his harvest.
Toward the end of March, in the midst of this fearful want, when there was not a dog, and still less a cat, to be seen in the streets, the city was full of evil tidings; rumors of battles lost, of marches upon Paris, etc.
As the envoys had been received, and balls given in their honor, something of our misfortunes became known either through the family or the servants.
Often, in wandering through the streets which ran along the ramparts, I mounted one of the bastions, looking toward Strasburg, or Metz, or Paris. I had no fear then of stray balls. I looked forth upon the thousand bivouac fires scattered over the plain, the soldiers of the enemy returning from the villages with their long poles hung with quarters of meat, at others crouched around the little fires which shone like stars upon the edge of the forest, and at their patrols and their covered batteries from which their flag was flying.
Sometimes I looked at the smoke of the chimneys at Quatre-Vents, or Bichelberg, or Mittelbronn. Our chimneys had no smoke, our festive days were over.
You can never imagine how many thoughts come to you, when you are so shut up, as your eyes follow the long white highways, and you imagine yourself walking there, talking with people about the news, asking them what they have suffered, and telling them what you have yourself endured.
From the bastion of the guard, I could see even the white peaks of the Schneeberg; I imagined myself in the midst of foresters, wood-cutters, and wood-splitters. There was a rumor that they were defending their route from Schirmeck; I longed to know if it were true.
As I looked toward the Maisons-Rouges, on the road to Paris, I imagined myself to be with my old friend Leiser; I saw him at his hearth, in despair at having to support so many people, for the Russian, Austrian, and Bavarian staff-officers remained upon this route, and new regiments went by continually.
And spring came! The snow began to melt in the furrows and behind the hedges. The great forests of La Bonne-Fontaine and the Barracks began to change their tents.
The thing which affected me most, as I have often remembered, was hearing the first lark at the end of March. The sky was entirely clear, and I looked up to see the bird. I thought of little David, and I wept, I knew not why.
Men have strange thoughts; they are affected by the song of a bird, and sometimes, years after, the same sounds recall the same emotions, so as even to make them weep.
At last the house was purified, and Zeffen and Sorlé came back to it.
The time of the Passover drew near; and the floors must be washed, the walls scoured, the vessels cleansed. In the midst of these cares, the poor women forgot, in some measure, our affliction; but as the time drew nearer our anxiety increased; how, in the midst of this famine, were we to obey the command of God:
"This month shall be the first month of the year to you.
"In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for a house.
"Ye shall take it out from the sheep or from the goats.
"And ye shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month.
"And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire, and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs shall they eat it."
But where was the sacrificial lamb to be found? Schmoûlé alone, the oldschamess, had thought of it for us all, three months before; he had nourished a male goat of that year in his cellar, and that was the goat that was killed.
Every Jewish family had a portion of it, small indeed, but the law of the Lord was fulfilled.
We invited on that day, according to the law, one of the poorest of our brethren, Kalmes. We went together to the synagogue; the prayers were recited, and then we returned to partake of the feast at our table.
Everything was ready and according to the proper order, notwithstanding the great destitution; the white cloth, the goblet of vinegar, the hard egg, the horseradish, the unleavened bread, and the flesh of the goat. The lamp with seven burners shone above it; but we had not much bread.
Having taken my seat in the midst of my family, Sâfel took the jug and poured water upon my hands; then we all bent forward, each took a piece of bread, saying with heavy hearts:
"This is the bread of affliction which our fathers ate in Egypt. Whosoever is hungry, let him come and eat with us. Whosoever is poor, let him come and make the Passover!"
We sat down again, and Sâfel said to me:
"What mean ye by this service, my father?"
And I answered:
"We were slaves in Egypt, my child, and the Lord brought us forth with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm!"
These words inspired us with courage; we hoped that God would deliver us as He had delivered our fathers, and that the Emperor would be His right arm; but we were mistaken, the Lord wanted nothing more of that man!