Part 35 (2/2)

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 carca.s.s to them.

Frantz's large dogs were seen no longer prowling about the market, licking up the b.l.o.o.d.y sc.r.a.ps. The dried hands of old women were stretched out at the end of their fleshless arms, to s.n.a.t.c.h 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 sh.e.l.ls. 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 sh.e.l.ls, 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 pa.s.sed 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 carca.s.ses! Oh, what times of trial!”

I went home, completely upset.

We had not many provisions left; but, still, the next morning, as Safel 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 n.o.body 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 b.a.l.l.s and fetes 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!”

n.o.body 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 pa.s.sed for grave-diggers, with Father Zebede.

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 b.a.l.l.s given in their honor, something of our misfortunes became known either through the family or the servants.

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