All this Hullin saw and heard in less than a minute, for the whole town was in the greatest excitement. Strange, serious, and comic scenes succeeded each other without interruption.
Near the narrow street leading to the a.r.s.enal, a few National Guards were drawing a twenty-four pounder. These honest fellows had a very steep ascent to climb; they could do no more. "Ho! all together!
Mille tonnerres! Once again! Forward!" They all shouted at once, pushing the wheels, and the great cannon, stretching out its long neck over its immense carriage, above their heads, rolled slowly along, making the pavement tremble.
Hullin, quite rejoiced, was no longer the same man. His soldier-like instincts, the remembrance of the bivouac, of the marches, of the firing, and of the battles--all returned. His eyes sparkled, his heart beat faster, and already thoughts of defence, of entrenchments, of death-struggles came and went in his head.
"Faith!" said he, "all goes well! I have made enough shoes in my life, and since the occasion to take up the musket presents itself, well, so much the better: we will show the Prussians and Austrians that we have not forgotten to charge at the double."
Thus reasoned the good man, carried away by his warlike instincts; but his joy did not last long.
Before the church, on the _place-d"armes_, were standing fifteen or twenty carts, full of wounded, arrived from Leipzig and Hanau. These unhappy creatures, pale, ghastly, heavy-eyed, some whose limbs were already amputated, others with their wounds still untouched, tranquilly awaited death. Near them, a few worn-out jades were eating their meagre allowance, while the conductors, poor wretches, who had been brought into requisition in Alsace, wrapped in their old mantles, slept notwithstanding the cold--their great hats turned down over their faces and their arms folded--on the steps of the church. One shuddered to see these sad groups of men, with their gray hoods, heaped up on the b.l.o.o.d.y straw--one carrying his broken arm on his knees; another with his head bandaged in an old handkerchief; a third, already dead, being used as a seat for the living, his black hands hanging down the ladder.
Hullin, in front of this mournful spectacle, stopped rooted to the ground. He could not lift his eyes from it. Great human suffering has this strange power of fascination over us: we look to see men perish, how they regard death: the best among us are not exempt from this frightful curiosity. It seems as though eternity is going to deliver up its secret!
There, then, near the shafts of the first cart, to the right of the file, were crouched two carbineers in little sky-blue vests, veritable giants, whose powerful natures gave way under the clutch of pain: like two caryatides crushed by the weight of some heavy ma.s.s. One, with great red mustaches and ashy cheeks, looked at you out of his sunken eyes, as though from the depths of some fearful nightmare; the other, bent double, with blue hands, and shoulder torn by shot, sank more and more; then would raise himself with a jerk, talking softly as though dreaming. Behind lay stretched, two and two, some infantry soldiers, the greater number struck by ball, with a leg or an arm broken. They seemed to support their fate with more firmness than the giants. These poor creatures said nothing: a few only, the youngest, furiously demanded water and bread; and in the next cart, a plaintive voice--the voice of a conscript--called, "My mother! my mother!" while the older men smiled gloomily, as though to say: "Yes, yes, she will come, thy mother!" Perhaps they did not think of anything all the time.
Now and then a shudder would pa.s.s along the whole of them. Then several wounded could be seen half lifting themselves, with deep groans, and falling back as if death had gone its rounds at that moment.
And again everything relapsed into silence. While Hullin was watching, and feeling sick to his heart"s core, a shopkeeper in the vicinity, Some the baker, came out of his house carrying a large basin of soup.
Then you should have seen all these spectres move, their eyes sparkle, their nostrils dilate; they seemed born again. The unhappy fellows were dying of hunger!
Good Father Some, with tears in his eyes, approached, saying, "I am coming, my children. A little patience! It is I, you know me!"
But hardly was he near the first cart, when the great carbineer with the ashy cheeks, reviving, plunged his arm up to the elbow in the boiling basin, seized the meat, and hid it under his vest. It was done with the rapidity of lightning. Savage yells arose on all sides: those men, if they had had strength to move, would have devoured their comrade. He, his arms pressed tightly to his chest, the teeth on has prey, and glaring round him, appeared to hear nothing. At these cries an old soldier, a sergeant, rushed out of the nearest inn. He was an old hand; he understood at once what it was about, and, without useless reflections, he tore away the meat from the wild beast, saying to him, "Thou dost not deserve any! It must be divided into parts. We will cut ten rations!"
"We are only eight!" said one of the wounded, very calm to all appearance, but with eyes gleaming out of their bronze mask.
"How, eight?"
"You can see, sergeant, that those two are dying fast: it would be so much food lost!"
The old sergeant looked.
"Eight," said he; "eight rations!"
Hullin could bear it no longer. He went over to the innkeeper Wittmann"s opposite, as white as death; Wittmann was also a fur and leather merchant. Seeing him enter, "He! is it you, Master Jean-Claude?" he exclaimed. "You arrive sooner than usual; I did not expect you till next week." Then seeing how he staggered--"But say, you are ill?"
"I have just seen the wounded."
"Ah, yes! the first time, it shocks you; but if you had seen fifteen thousand pa.s.s, as we have, you would not think anything more about it."
"A gla.s.s of wine, quick?" said Hullin, who felt badly. "Oh, mankind, mankind! And to think that we are brothers!"
"Yes, brothers until it touches your purse," replied Wittmann. "Come, drink! that will set you right."
"And you have seen fifteen thousand go by?" rejoined the shoemaker.
"At the least, for two months, without speaking of those who have remained in Alsace and the other side of the Rhine; for, you comprehend, they cannot find carts enough for all, and then many are not worth the trouble of being carried away."
"Yes, I comprehend! But why are they there, those poor creatures? Why do they not go into the hospital?"
"The hospital! What is one hospital, ten hospitals, for fifty thousand wounded? Every hospital, from Mayence and Coblentz as far as Phalsbourg, is crowded. And, besides, that terrible fever, typhus, you see, Hullin, kills more than the bullet. All the villages of the plain twenty leagues round are infected with it; they die everywhere like flies. Luckily the town has been in a state of siege these three days; the gates will be closed, and no more will enter. I have lost, for my part, my Uncle Christian and my Aunt Lisbeth, as healthy, solid people as you and I, Master Jean-Claude. At last the cold has arrived; last night there was a white frost."
"And the wounded remained on the pavements all night?"
"No, they came from Saverne this morning; in an hour or two, when the horses are rested, they will leave for Sarrebourg."
At that moment, the old sergeant, who had re-established order in the carts, came in rubbing his hands.
"He! he!" said he, "it freshens, Papa Wittmann. You did well to light the fire in the stove. A little gla.s.s of cognac to drive away the fog.
Hum! hum!"
His small half-closed eyes, his beaked nose, the cheek-bones being separated from it by two flourishing wrinkles, which were lost to sight in a long reddish imperial--everything looked gay in his face, and told of a jovial, kind disposition. It was a regular military face, scorched, burnt by the open air, full of frankness, but also of a cheery slyness; his great shako, his blue-gray cloak, the shoulder-belt, the epaulette, seemed to partake of his individuality.
One could not have represented him without them. He walked up and down the room, continuing to rub his hands, while Wittmann poured him a gla.s.s of brandy. Hullin, seated near the window, had at once noticed the number of his regiment--6th Light Infantry. Gaspard, the son of Madame Lefevre, served in this regiment. Jean-Claude could now obtain some tidings of the lover of Louise; but, as he was going to speak, his heart beat loud. If Gaspard was dead; if he had perished like so many others!
The worthy shoemaker felt nearly suffocated; he kept silent. "Better to know nothing," thought he. However, a few minutes later, he could do so no longer. "Sergeant," said he, in a hoa.r.s.e voice, "you are in the 6th Light Infantry?"
"Yes, my citizen," said the other, turning round in the middle of the room.
"Do you know one called Gaspard Lefevre?"
"Gaspard Lefevre, of the 2d division of the 1st? Parbleu, if I know him! It is I who taught him his drill. A brave soldier! hardened against fatigue. If we had a hundred thousand of that stamp----"
"Then he lives? he is well?"
"Yes, citizen. Eight days ago I left the regiment at Fredericsthal to escort this convoy of wounded. You understand, it is hot there--one cannot answer for anything. From one moment to the other, each of us may have his business settled for him. But eight days ago, at Fredericsthal--the 15th December--Gaspard Lefevre still answered to the roll-call."
Jean-Claude breathed. "But then, sergeant, have the goodness to tell me why Gaspard has not written to his village for two months?"
The old soldier smiled, and blinked his little eyes. "Ah! now, citizen, do you then believe that one has nothing else to do on the march but to write?"
"No. I have served; I was in the campaigns of Sambre-et-Meuse, of Egypt and Italy, but that did not prevent me from giving some news of myself."
"One instant, comrade," interrupted the sergeant. "I have pa.s.sed through Egypt and Italy also; the campaign we are finishing is altogether different."
"It has then been very severe?"
"Severe! one must have one"s soul driven into every part of one"s members, so as not to leave one"s bones there. All was against us: sickness, traitors, peasants, townsfolk, our allies--in fact all! From our company, which was complete when we quitted Phalsbourg, the 21st of last January, only thirty-four men remain. I believe Gaspard Lefevre is the only conscript left. Those poor conscripts! they fought well; but they were not accustomed to endure hardships: they melted like b.u.t.ter in an oven." So saying, the old sergeant approached the counter and drank his gla.s.s off at one draught. "To your health, my citizen.
Are you perchance the father of Gaspard?"
"No, I am a relation."
"Well, you can pride yourselves on being stoutly built in your family.
What a man at twenty! He has gone through everything--he has, while the others fell away in dozens."
"But," rejoined Hullin, after an instant"s silence, "I cannot see anything so very different in this last campaign; for we also had sickness and traitors."
"Anything different!" exclaimed the sergeant. "Everything was different! Formerly, if you have gone through the war in Germany, you ought to remember that, after one or two victories, it was over: the people received you well; one drank the little white wines, and ate sauerkraut and ham with the townsfolk; one danced with the buxom wives.
The husbands and grandpapas laughed heartily, and when the regiment left, everybody cried. But this time, after Lutzen and Bautzen, instead of feeling kindly, the people regarded us with diabolical faces; we could get nothing out of them but by force; one could have fancied one"s self in Spain or Vendee. I do not know what stuff they had in their heads against us. Better had we only been French, had we not had Saxons and other allies, who only awaited the moment to spring at our throats: we should then have pulled through all the same, one against five! But the allies--don"t talk to me of the allies! Why, at Leipzig, the 18th of October last, in the hottest part of the battle, our allies turned against us and shot at us from behind; those were our good friends the Saxons. A week later, our former friends the Bavarians came and threw themselves across our retreat: we had to pa.s.s over them at Hanau. The day after, near Frankfort, another column of good friends presented themselves, and we had to crush them. The more one kills, the more they come! Here we are now this side of the Rhine.
Well, there are decidedly more of these good friends marching from Moscow. Ah! if we could have foreseen it after Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, Wagram!"