"Fancy," an aged woman said to us, "that I have to pay twenty marks because I forgot my antiquity card!"
One Sat.u.r.day, a farmer"s wife, perched on a ladder out of doors, was eagerly polishing the gla.s.s of a bull"s-eye window.
Two gendarmes on horseback pa.s.sed by and gave heed to this commendable zeal:
"Matam! ... carte...."
"Hem, hem! Ah, yes, my ident.i.ty card; wait a minute, it is lying on the table...."
"Ha! ha! no, not enter ... no card ... fine...."
So she had to pay the fine.
One of our neighbours was taking his cows out of the stable. Suddenly one of them seemed to smell some enlivening odour--was it that of powder?--she bent a frolicsome head on one side, lifted up her sprightly nostrils, raised a swaggering tail, and, as fast as she could tear, went full gallop towards the meadows, the brooklet, the rosy horizon where the setting sun pleased her. The owner took to his heels in his turn, and fled after the giddy-pated creature. The better to run, he tore off his jacket, and succeeded in getting hold of the tether. Then he stopped panting, all in a sweat, and rapped out a tremendous oath.
As if by miracle, a gendarme happened to stand there, his note-book in hand.
"Card, card...."
"Ah! oh, it is in my jacket pocket...."
The jacket was smiling in the distance, a small spot lying on the green.
"Ach!" the Prussian said with a sneer, "not fetch: fine."
Cost fifty francs.
Rascally cow!
I treat the matter as a joke. Sometimes we did joke. We could not have our minds always on the stretch. We already were half-crazy, and we should have gone quite mad if we had not occasionally laughed. We often laughed, with rage, with an empty stomach, with our brain confused after a troubled night. Our race needs to laugh in the midst of tears, and tears are shed in secret, whereas laughter bursts forth in public.
When the Germans laugh, it is always a peal. As to tears, they trickle down their cheeks for a trifle; they bathe in them, they pour them forth everywhere. I had always looked upon this lachrymal faculty so often spoken of as a legend, but we have come to the conclusion that there is nothing more real.
An untoward event, a deception, bad news, or simply home-sickness and melancholy--anything is an excuse for tears. Here is a famous example.
Those who have visited the battlefields of Mars-la-Tour and Gravelotte have seen the famous monument--a granite armchair in the midst of a lawn, surrounded with a bal.u.s.trade. This n.o.ble simplicity should speak to the soul of itself. Yet an inscription explains:
"During the battle of Mars-la-Tour, the Emperor Wilhelm the First sat here and wept."
Of course he thought the game was lost. But if his descendants are faithful to tradition, where will they get the torrents of tears they will have to shed within a short time!
However, we are not always crying. We even tried to enjoy the summer, to make up for the sad spring we had spent. As we had to plead a practical object to obtain leave to take walks out of the village, we begged to be allowed "to go and fetch wood."
And, lying on the gra.s.s in the open country, we tried to forget the war for a few moments, Genevieve and I, lost in the surrounding calm and beauty; but distant rumours soon belied our short-lived illusions, and dispelled the poor creations of the fancy.
No, it was not peace. Our stomachs, always clamouring for food, never failed to tell us so. During the month of June we hardly ate anything except asparagus and cherries. These things are not highly nutritious.
No potatoes, a slice of horrid, sticky, sour German bread. Then came carrots, green peas, and artichokes, and we no longer starved; and when in the second fortnight of August there arrived the food sent by the Spanish-American Board of Relief, we thought we had been transported to a Land of c.o.c.kayne. Twenty grammes of bacon daily, a dish of rice on Sunday, a dish of beans on Thursday, eatable bread; what would you ask more? No matter. I wonder, when we are once out of this vale of hunger, how long it will be before we recover our former health.
During the month of July we spent the hot hours of the day out of doors stretched on the gra.s.s. Being near a field of corn, we put out a timid hand and from time to time broke off ripe ears; we rubbed them between our fingers, and their plump grains, stripped of the husks, seemed to us delicious food. It was strictly forbidden to pluck corn, "however small the quant.i.ty might be." "Our leather bags may be searched," we thought, "but they cannot make a post-mortem examination of us to make sure of a possible theft." For there is no doubt that we were committing highway robbery to the prejudice of the Germans.
When we had yawned the whole long day away, in wearisomeness and hunger, we might have hoped to slumber at night, for sleep is as good as a dinner.
Alas! remember the Germans" revels! These gentry were no longer allowed to find their amus.e.m.e.nt out of the village in which they were quartered.
Every night the officers of Morny will disport themselves in Morny!
Yes, indeed! They spent their evenings in a house which they had transformed into a casino, amid laughter and songs. Only the immediate neighbours were kept awake. But about twelve or one o"clock we never failed to start up in our beds, as the songs and cries came nearer.
"Here are the brutes going home. What whim will they take into their heads to-night?"
We heard them approach to the strains of accordeons and mouth-organs.
From upstairs we saw them dressed up like women, with plumed hats on, stopping at every door, trying, it would seem, who could bawl the loudest. Or they tricked themselves out as house-painters, carried buckets and brooms and set high ladders against the walls, and climbed up as if to storm the house. Another time they would pretend to be strolling musicians, and, armed with saucepans and cauldrons, would give a mock serenade that would have put the dead to flight. Or, what was far worse, the noise of their steps would be scarcely audible; they would talk in whispers and stifle their laughter.
And, lying in the dark, we said to ourselves, still half asleep:
"They seem quiet to-night; perhaps we shall be able to go to sleep again."
But all of a sudden: bing, bang, formidable blows with revolvers shook the wooden shutters, and resounded in the room like peals of thunder.
The unexpected noise startled us out of our torpor, and we could hardly recover our breath.
The next day, Mme. Lantois, half-sour, half-sweet, asked her lieutenant:
"Well, you had some fun last night?"
"Oh, yes! We knocked hard at the windows of all houses where there are young girls."
Maybe the officer read disapproval in the features of his interlocutor, for he went on:
"We are merry.... You may be sure that the French officers amuse themselves in the same way...."
In the same way? Oh no, Mr. ex-law student of Heidelberg!
One evening, an officer whose rooms were not far from our house refused to take part in a drunken orgy. He was tired; he had a headache; in short, he preferred to go to bed. There were guests in Morny, and before they left to drive home, the whole band made an irruption into the refractory officer"s room, tore him from his bed, and, with shouts of laughter, hoisted him into the visitors" carriage and ordered the coachman to drive on.
At the end of the village our man was stripped of his night-shirt, deposited on the road, and his comrades went away at full speed. As naked as when he was born, he had to walk along the high street to get back to his quarters.
The commandant of the village, to whom we gave hospitality, did not care to put a stop to these extravagances. Being but twenty-five, he had little authority over his comrades, and besides, from time to time he liked an orgy himself. He was famous for his worship of Bacchus. He was as long as a day without bread; he had a small boy"s head, adorned with large outstretched ears at the top of it. The women of the village, at the sight of his slender calves, had surnamed him "Jackdaw"s Leg." More stupid than bad, he felt frightfully dull at Morny, and talked with raptures of his stay in Belgium. "What a good time I had of it!" he used to say. "I was drunk from morning till night!" That he might not get quite out of practice, Jackdaw"s Leg tippled as often as he could, and many a night his unsteady legs were at much pains to convey him home without accident. We knew him by his uncertain gait; and when drunk he never failed to prevent us from sleeping the livelong night. He sought laboriously for the dancing keyhole. Then he banged-to the door. At length he succeeded in getting to his room, and his door was hardly shut, when the result of his excess burst forth noisily and--sinister detail--we perceived a characteristic clash of washhand-basin and slop-pail. Then desperate hiccups, groanings, and sighs were audible, and the whole house resounded with his laborious efforts.
Upstairs we heard Colette, furious and disgusted, rail against the tipsy fellow:
"You dirty, loathsome brute ... pig...."
Then nothing was heard but snores. The officer had certainly flung himself upon his bed with his boots on.
And the following morning plump Hans, his servant, was to be seen all a-flutter running to and fro with water, pails, and floor-cloths.
Sometimes the painful scene took place in the street; the disreputable traces of it were still to be seen on wall and pathway the next morning, and the lieutenant made for his rooms with deep sighs. Yet he was able to walk by himself to our house. What could we say of that captain who, in Jouville, used to be wheeled home in a barrow by his servants?
At that time an adventure happened by night which I cannot recall without an inward thrill of fear. It was already late in the evening, and we were shut up in our room, Genevieve and I. Our windows were open, and the strong wooden shutters were carefully closed. We had been talking for some time, lying in the dark, and were about to fall asleep, when we heard a carriage rattle by and then stop at the farther end of the house. It was about half-past eleven.
"Kolb, Kolb," cried a loud voice.