Chapter 6

________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER VI

After the joy of marrying Catherine, my greatest delight was in thinking I should be a tradesman, for there was a great difference between fighting for the King of Prussia and doing business on one's own account. Mr. Goulden had told me he would take me into partnership with him, and I imagined myself taking my little wife to mass and then going for a walk to the Roche-plate or to Bonne-Fontaine. This gave me great pleasure. In the meantime I went every day to see Catherine; she would wait for me in the orchard, while Aunt Gredel prepared the little cakes and the bride's loaf for the wedding. We did nothing but look at each other for hours together; she was so fresh and joyous and grew prettier every day.

Mr. Goulden would say on seeing me come home happier every night, "Well! Joseph, matters seem to be better than when we were at Leipzig!"

Sometimes I wanted to go to work again, but he always stopped me by saying, "Oh! pshaw! happy days in life are so few. Go and see Catherine, go! If I should take a fancy to be married by and by, you can work for us both." And then he would laugh. Such men as he ought to live a hundred years, such a good heart! so true and honest! He was a real father to us. And even now, after so many years, when I think of him with his black silk cap drawn over his ears, and his gray beard eight days old, and the little wrinkles about his eyes showing so much good-humor, it seems to me that I still hear his voice and the tears will come in spite of me. But I must tell you here of something which happened before the wedding and which I shall never forget. It was the 6th of July and we were to be married on the 8th. I had dreamed of it all night. I rose between six and seven. Father Goulden was already at work, with the windows open. I was washing my face and thinking I would run over to Quatre Vents, when all at once a bugle and two taps of a drum were heard at the gate of France, just as when a regiment arrives, they try their mouthpieces, and tap their drums just to get the sticks well in hand. When I heard that my hair stood on end, and I exclaimed, "Mr. Goulden, it is the Sixth!"

"Yes, indeed, for eight days everybody has been talking about it, but you hear nothing in these days. It is the wedding bouquet, Joseph, and I wanted to surprise you."

I listened no longer, but went downstairs at a jump. Our old drummer Padoue had already lifted his stick under the dark arch, and the drummers came up behind balancing their drums on their hips; in the distance was Gemeau, the commandant, on horseback, the red plumes of the grenadiers and the bayonets came up slowly; it was the Third battalion. The march commenced, and my blood bounded. I recognized at the first glance the long gray cloaks which we had received on the 22d of October, on the glacis at Erfurth; they had become quite green from the snow and wind and rain. It was worse than after the battle of Leipzig. The old shakos were full of ball holes, only the flag was new, in its beautiful case of oil-cloth, with the fleur-de-lis at the end.

Ah! only those who have made a campaign can realize what it is to see your regiment and to hear the same roll of the drum as when it is in front of the enemy, and to say to yourself, "There are your comrades, who return beaten, humiliated, and crushed, bowing their heads under another cockade." No! I never felt anything like it. Later many of the men of the Sixth came and settled down at Pfalzbourg, they were my old officers, old sergeants, and were always welcome, there was Lafleche, Carabin, Lavergne, Monyot, Padoue, Chazi, and many others. Those who commanded me during the war sawed wood for me, put on tiles, were my carpenters and masons. After giving me orders they obeyed me, for I was independent, and had business, while they were simply laborers. But that was nothing, and I always treated my old chiefs with respect, I always thought, "at Weissenfels, at Lutzen, and at Leipzig, these men who now are forced to labor so hard to support themselves and their families, represented at the front the honor and the courage of France." These changes came after Waterloo! and our old Ensign Faizart, swept the bridge at the gate of France for fifteen years! That is not right, the country ought to be more grateful.

It was the Third battalion that returned, in so wretched a state that it made the hearts of good men bleed. Zebede told me that they left Versailles on the 31st of March, after the capitulation of Paris, and marched to Chartres, to Chateaudun, to Blois, Orleans and so on like real Bohemians, for six weeks without pay or equipments, until at last at Rouen, they received orders to cross France and return to Pfalzbourg, and everywhere the processions and funeral services for the King, Louis XVI., had excited the people against them. They were obliged to bear it all, and even were compelled to bivouac in the fields while the Russians, Austrians, and Prussians, and other beggars, lived quietly in our towns.

Zebede wept with rage as he recounted their sufferings afterward.

"Is France no longer France?" he asked. "Have we not fought for her honor?"

But it gives me pleasure now in my old age, to remember how we received the Sixth at Pfalzbourg. You know that the First battalion had already arrived from Spain, and that the remnant of this regiment and of the 24th infantry of the line formed the 6th regiment of Berry, so that all the village was rejoicing that instead of the few old veterans, we were to have two thousand men in garrison. There was great rejoicing, and everybody shouted, "Long live the Sixth;" the children ran out to St. Jean to meet them, and the battalion had nowhere been better received than here. Several old fellows wept and shouted, "Long live France." But in spite of all that, the officers were dejected and only made signs with their hands as if to thank the people for their kind reception.

I stood on our door-steps while three or four hundred men filed past, so ragged that I could not distinguish our number, but suddenly I saw Zebede, who was marching in the rear, so thin that his long crooked nose stood out from his face like a beak, his old cloak hanging like fringe down his back, but he had his sergeant's stripes, and his large bony shoulders gave him the appearance of strength. On seeing him, I cried out so loud that it could be heard above the drums, "Zebede!"

He turned round and I sprang into his arms and he put down his gun at the corner of the rue Fouquet. I cried like a child and he said, "Ah! it is you, Joseph! there are two of us left then, at least."

"Yes, it is I," said I, "and I am going to marry Catherine, and you shall be my best man."

We marched along together to the corner of the rue Houte, where old Furst was waiting with tears in his eyes. The poor old man thought, "Perhaps my son will come too." Seeing Zebede coming with me, he turned suddenly into the little dark entrance to his house. On the square, Father Klipfel and five or six others were looking at the battalion in line. It is true they had received the notices of the deaths, but still they thought there might be mistakes, and that their sons did not like to write. They looked amongst them, and then went away while the drums were beating.

They called the roll, and just at that moment the old grave-digger came up with his little yellow velvet vest and his gray cotton cap. He looked behind the ranks where I was talking with Zebede, who turned round and saw him and grew quite pale, they looked at each other for an instant, then I took his gun and the old man embraced his son. They did not say a word, but remained in each other's arms for a long while. Then when the battalion filed off to the right to go to the barracks, Zebede asked permission of Captain Vidal to go home with his father, and gave his gun to his nearest comrade. We went together to the rue de Capucins. The old man said: "You know that grandmother is so old that she can no longer get out of bed, or she would have come to meet you too."

I went to the door, and then said to them, "You will come and dine with us, both of you."

"I will with pleasure," said the father. "Yes, Joseph, we will come."

I went home to tell Father Goulden of my invitation, and he was all the more pleased as Catherine and her aunt were to be there also.

I never had been more happy than when thinking of having my beloved, my best friend, and all those whom I loved the most, together at our house.

That day at eleven o'clock our large room on the first floor was a pretty sight to see. The floor had been well scrubbed, the round table in the middle of the room was covered with a beautiful cloth with red stripes and six large silver covers upon it, the napkins folded like a boat in the shining plates, the salt-cellar and the sealed bottles, and the large cut glasses sparkling in the sun which came over the groups of lilac ranged along the windows.

Mr. Goulden wished to have everything in abundance, grand and magnificent, as he would for princes and embassadors, and he had taken his silver from the basket, a most unusual thing; I had made the soup myself. In it there were three pounds of good meat, a head of cabbage, carrots in abundance, indeed everything necessary; except that,--which you can never have so good at an hotel,--everything had been ordered by Mr. Goulden himself from the "Ville de Metz."

About noon we looked at each other, smiling and rubbing our hands, he in his beautiful nut-brown coat, well shaved, and with his great peruke a little rusty, in place of his old black silk cap, his maroon breeches neatly turned over his thick woollen stockings, and shoes with great buckles on his feet; while I had on my sky-blue coat of the latest fashion, my shirt finely plaited in front, and happiness in my heart.

All that was lacking now was our guests--Catherine, Aunt Gredel, the grave-digger, and Zebede. We walked up and down laughing and saying, "Everything is in its place and we had best get out the soup-tureen." And I looked out now and then to see if they were coming.

At last Aunt Gredel and Catherine turned the corner of the rue Foquet; they came from mass and had their prayer-books under their arms, and farther on I saw the old grave-digger in his fine coat with wide sleeves, and his old three-cornered hat, and Zebede, who had put on a clean shirt and shaved himself. They came from the side next the ramparts arm in arm, gravely, like men who are sober because they are perfectly happy.

"Here they are," I said to Father Goulden.

We just had time to pour out the soup and put the big tureen, smoking hot in the middle of the table. This was happily accomplished just as Aunt Gredel and Catherine came in. You can judge of their surprise on seeing the beautiful table. We had hardly kissed each other when aunt exclaimed:

"It is the wedding-day then, Mr. Goulden."

"Yes, Madame Gredel," the good man answered smiling,--on days of ceremony he always called her Madame instead of Mother Gredel, "yes, the wedding of good friends. You know that Zebede has just returned, and he will dine with us to-day with the old grave-digger."

"Ah!" said aunt, "that will give me great pleasure."

Catherine blushed deeply, and said to me in a low voice:

"Now everything is as it should be, that was what we wanted to make us perfectly happy."

She looked tenderly at me as she held my hand. Just then some one opened the door, and old Laurent from the "Ville de Metz," with two high baskets in which dishes were ranged in beautiful order one above the other, cried out, "Mr. Goulden, here is the dinner!"

"Very well!" said Mr. Goulden, "now arrange it on the table yourself."

And Laurent put on the radishes first, the fricasseed chicken and beautiful fat goose at the right, and on the left the beef which we had ourselves arranged with parsley in the plate. He put on also a nice plate of sauerkraut with little sausages, near the soup. Such a dinner had never been seen in our house before.

Just at that moment we heard Zebede and his father coming up the stairs, and Father Goulden and I ran to meet them. Mr. Goulden embraced Zebede and said:

"How happy I am to see you, I know you showed yourself a good comrade for Joseph in the midst of the greatest danger."

Then he shook the old grave-digger's hand, saying, "I am proud of you for having such a son."

Then Catherine, who had come behind us, said to Zebede:

"I could not please Joseph more than to embrace you, you would have carried him to Hanau only your strength failed. I look upon you as a brother."

Then Zebede, who was very pale, kissed her without saying a word, and we all went into the room in silence, Catherine, Zebede, and I first, Mr. Goulden and the old grave-digger came afterward. Aunt Gredel arranged the dishes a little and then said:

"You are welcome, you are welcome! you who met in sorrow, have rejoined each other in joy. May God send his grace on us all."

Zebede kissed Aunt Gredel and said, "Always fresh and in good health, it is a pleasure to see you."

"Come, Father Zebede, sit at the head of the table, and you there, Zebede, that I may have you on my right and my left, Joseph will sit farther down, opposite Catherine, and Madame Gredel at the other end to watch over all."

Each one was satisfied with his place, and Zebede smiled and looked at me as if he would say: "If we had had the quarter of such a dinner as this at Hanau, we should never have fallen by the roadside." Joy and a good appetite shone on every face. Father Goulden dipped the great silver ladle into the soup as we all looked on, and served first the old grave-digger, who said nothing and seemed touched by this honor, then his son, and then Catherine, Aunt Gredel, himself, and me. And the dinner was begun quietly.

Zebede winked and looked at me from time to time with great satisfaction. We uncorked the first bottle and filled the glasses. This was very good wine, but there was better coming, so we did not drink each other's health yet, we each ate a good slice of beef, and Father Goulden said:

"Here is something good, this beef is excellent." He found the fricassee very good also, and then I saw that Catherine was a woman of spirit, for she said:

"You know, Mr. Zebede, that we should have invited your grandmother Margaret, whom I go to see from time to time, only she is too old to go out, but if you wish, she shall at least eat a morsel with us, and drink her grandson's health in a glass of wine. What do you say, Father Zebede?"

"I was just thinking of that," said the old man.

Father Goulden looked at Catherine with tears in his eyes, and as she rose to select a suitable piece for the old woman, he kissed her, and I heard him call her his daughter.

She went out with a bottle and a plate; and while she was gone Zebede said to me:

"Joseph, she who is soon to be your wife deserves to be perfectly happy, for she is not only a good girl, not only a woman who ought to be loved, but she deserves respect also, for she has a good and feeling heart. She saw what my father and I thought of this excellent dinner, and she knew it would give us a thousand times more pleasure if grandmother could share it. I shall love her for it, as if she were my sister." Then he added in a low voice: "It is when we are happy that we feel the bitterness of poverty. It is not enough to give our blood to our country, but there is suffering at home in consequence, and when we return we must have misery before our eyes."

I saw that he was growing sad, so I filled his glass and we drank, and his melancholy vanished. Catherine came back and said, "the grandmother was very happy, and that she thanked Mr. Goulden, and said it had been a beautiful day for her." And this roused everybody. As the dinner continued, Aunt Gredel heard the bells for vespers, and she went out to church, but Catherine remained, and the animation which good wine inspires had come, and we began to speak of the last campaign; of the retreat from the Rhine to Paris, of the fighting of the battalion at Bibelskirchen and at Saarbruck, where Lieutenant Baubin swam the Saar when it was freezing as hard as stone, to destroy some boats which were still in the hands of the enemy; of the passage at Narbefontaine, at Courcelles, at Metz, at Enzelvin, and at Champion and Verdun, and, still retreating, the battle of Brienne. The men were nearly all destroyed, but on the 4th of February the battalion was re-formed from the remnant of the 5th light infantry, and from that moment they were every day under fire; on the 5th, 6th, and 7th at Mery-sur-Seine; on the 8th at Sezanne, where the soldiers died in the mud, not having strength enough to get out; the 9th and 10th at Muers, where Zebede was buried at night in the dung-heap of a farmhouse in order to get warm, and the terrible battle of Marche on the 11th, in which the Commandant Philippe was wounded by a bayonet-thrust; the encounter on the 12th and 13th at Montmirail, the battle of Beauchamp on the 14th, the retreat on Montmirail on the 15th and 16th, when the Prussians returned: the combats at the Ferte-Gauche, at Jouarre, at Gue-a-Train, at Neufchettes, and so on. When the Prussians were beaten, then came the Russians, after them the Austrians, the Bavarians, the Wurtemburgers, the Hessians, the Saxons, and the Badois.

I have often heard that campaign described, but never as it was done by Zebede. As he talked his great thin face quivered and his long nose turned down over the four hairs of his yellow mustache, and his eyes would flash and he would stretch out his hand from his old sleeve and you could see what he was describing. The great plains of Champagne with the smoking villages to the right and to the left, where the women, children, and old men were wandering about in groups, half naked, one carrying a miserable old mattress, another with a few pieces of furniture on his cart, while the snow was falling from the sky, and the cannon roared in the distance, and the Cossacks were flying about like the wind with kitchen utensils and even old clocks hanging to their saddles, shouting hurrah!

Furious battles were raging, singly, or one against ten, in which the desperate peasants joined also with their scythes. At night the Emperor might be seen sitting astride his chair, with his chin resting in his folded hands on the back, before a little fire with his generals around him. This was the way he slept and dreamed. He must have had terrible reflections after the days of Marengo, Austerlitz, and Wagram.

To fight the enemy, to suffer hunger and cold and fatigue, to march and countermarch, Zebede said, were nothing, but to hear the women and children weeping and groaning in French in the midst of their ruined homes, to know you could not help them, and that the more enemies you killed, the more would you have; that you must retreat, always retreat, in spite of victories, in spite of courage, in spite of everything! "that is what breaks your heart, Mr. Goulden."

In listening and looking at him we had lost all inclination to drink, and Father Goulden, with his great head bent down as if thinking, said in a low voice:

"Yes, that is what glory costs, it is not enough to lose our liberty, not enough to lose the rights gained at such a cost, we must be pillaged, sacked, burned, cut to pieces by Cossacks, we must see what has not been seen for centuries, a horde of brigands making law for us--but go on, we are listening, tell us all."

Catherine, seeing how sad we were, filled the glasses.

"Come," said she, "to the health of Mr. Goulden and Father Zebede. All these misfortunes are past and will never return."

We drank, and Zebede related how it had been necessary to fill up the battalion again, on the route to Soissons, with the soldiers of the 16th light infantry, and how they arrived at Meaux where the plague was raging, although it was winter, in the hospital of Piete, in consequence of the great numbers of wounded who could not be cared for.

That was horrible, but the worst of all was when he described their arrival at Paris, at the Barriere de Charenton: the Empress, King Joseph, the King of Rome, the ministers, the new princes and dukes, and all the great world, were running away toward Blois, and abandoning the capital to the enemy, while the workingmen in blouses, who gained nothing from the Empire, but to be forced to give their children to defend it, were gathered around the town-house by thousands, begging for arms to defend the honor of France; and the Old Guard repulsed them with the bayonet!

At this Father Goulden exclaimed:

"That is enough, Zebede, hold! stop there, and let us talk of something else."

He had suddenly grown very pale; at this moment Mother Gredel returned from vespers, and seeing us all so quiet, and Mr. Goulden so disturbed, asked:

"What has happened?"

"We were speaking of the Empress and of the ministers of the Emperor," replied Father Goulden, forcing a laugh.

Said she, "I am not astonished that the wine turns against you. Every time I think of them, if by accident I look in the glass, I see that it turns me quite livid. The beggars! fortunately, they are gone."

Zebede did not like this. Mr. Goulden observed it and said, "Well! France is a great and glorious country all the same. If the new nobles are worth no more than the old ones, the people are firm. They work in vain against them. The bourgeois, the artisan, and the peasant are united, they have the same interests and will not give up what they have gained, nor let them again put their feet on their necks. Now, friends, let us go and take the air, it is late, and Madame Gredel and Catherine have a long way to go to Quatre Vents. Joseph will go with them."

"No," said Catherine, "Joseph must stay with his friend to-day, and we will go home alone."

"Very well! so be it! on a day like this friends should be together," said Mr. Goulden.

We went out arm in arm, it was dark, and after embracing Catherine again at the Place d'Armes she and her aunt took their way home, and after having taken a few turns under the great lindens we went to the "Wild Man" and refreshed ourselves with some glasses of foaming beer. Mr. Goulden described the siege, the attack at Pernette, the sorties at Bigelberg, at the barracks above, and the bombardment. It was then that I learned for the first time that he had been captain of a gun, and that it was he who had first thought of breaking up the melting-pots in the foundry to make shot. These stories occupied us till after ten o'clock. At last Zebede left us to go to the barracks, the old grave-digger went to the rue Capucin, and we to our beds, where we slept till eight o'clock the next morning. _

Read next: Chapter 7

Read previous: Chapter 5

Table of content of Waterloo: A sequel to The Conscript of 1813


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book