Waterloo: A sequel to The Conscript of 1813

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 Zébédé:

"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 Zébédé, who was very pale, kissed her without saying a word, and we all went into the room in silence, Catherine, Zébédé, and I first, Mr. Goulden and the old grave-digger came afterward. Aunt Grédel 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."

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

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

Each one was satisfied with his place, and Zébédé 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 Grédel, himself, and me. And the dinner was begun quietly.

Zébédé 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. Zébédé, 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 Zébédé?"

"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 Zébédé 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 Grédel 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 Méry-sur-Seine; on the 8th at Sézanne, where the soldiers died in the mud, not having strength enough to get out; the 9th and 10th at Mürs, where Zébédé was buried at night in the dung-heap of a farmhouse in order to get warm, and the terrible battle of Marché 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 Ferté-Gauché, at Jouarre, at Gué-à-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 Zébédé. 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, Zébédé 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 Zébédé. All these misfortunes are past and will never return."

We drank, and Zébédé 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 Piété, 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 Barrière 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, Zébédé, hold! stop there, and let us talk of something else."

He had suddenly grown very pale; at this moment Mother Grédel 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."

Zébédé 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 Grédel 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 Zébédé 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.

VII

Two days afterward I was married to Catherine at Aunt Grédel's at Quatre Vents. Mr. Goulden represented my father. Zébédé was my best man, and some old comrades remaining from the battalion were also at the wedding. The next day we were installed in our two little rooms over the workshop at Father Goulden's, Catherine and I. Many years have rolled away since then! Mr. Goulden, Aunt Grédel, and the old comrades have all passed away, and Catherine's hair is as white as snow! Yet often, even now, when I look at her, those times come back again, and I see her as she was at twenty, fresh and rosy, I see her arrange the flower-pots in the chamber-window, I hear her singing to herself, I see the sun opposite, and then we descend the steep little staircase and say together, as we go into the workshop: "Good-morning, Mr. Goulden;" he turns, smiles, and answers, "Good-morning, my children, good-morning!" Then he kisses Catherine and she commences to sweep and rub the furniture and prepare the soup, while we examine the work we have to do during the day.

Ah, those beautiful days, that charming life. What joy in being young and in having a simple, good, and industrious wife! How our hearts rejoice, and the future spreads out so far – so far – before us! We shall never be old; we shall always love each other, and always keep those we love! We shall always be of good heart; we shall always take our Sunday walk arm in arm to Bonne-Fontaine; we shall always sit on the moss in the woods, and hear the bees and May bugs buzzing in the great trees filled with light; we shall always smile! What a life! what a life!

And at night we shall go softly home to the nest, as we silently look at the golden trains which spread over the sky from Wecham to the forests of Mittelbronn, we shall press each other's hand when we hear the little clock at Pfalzbourg ring out the "Angelus," and those of all the villages will respond through the twilight. Oh, youth! oh, life!

All is before me just as it was fifty years ago; but other sparrows and larks sing and build in the spring, other blossoms whiten the great apple-trees. And have we changed too, and grown old like the old people of those days? That alone makes me believe that we shall become young again, that we shall renew our loves and rejoin Father Goulden and Aunt Grédel and all our dear friends. Otherwise we should be too unhappy in growing old. God would not send us pain without hope. And Catherine believes it too. Well! at that time we were perfectly happy, everything was beautiful to us, nothing troubled our joy.

It was when the allies were passing through our city by hundreds of thousands on their way home. Cavalry, artillery, infantry, foot and horse, with oak leaves in their shakos, on their caps, and on the ends of their muskets and lances. They shouted so that you could hear them a league away. Just as you hear the chaffinches, thrushes, and blackbirds, and thousands of other birds in the autumn. At any other time this would have made me sad, because it was the sign of our defeat, but I consoled myself by thinking that they were going away, never to return. And when Zébédé came to tell me that every day the Russian, Austrian, Prussian, and Bavarian officers crossed the city to visit our new commandant, Mons. de la Faisanderie, who was an old émigré, and who covered them with honors – that such an officer of the battalion had provoked one of these strangers, and that such another half-pay officer had killed two or three in duels at the "Roulette," or the "Green Tree," or the "Flower Basket," for they were everywhere – our soldiers could not bear the sight of the foreigners, there were fights everywhere, and the litters of the hospital were constantly going and coming – when Zébédé told me all these things, and when he said that so many officers had been put upon half-pay in order to replace them by officers from Coblentz, and that the soldiers were to be compelled to go to mass in full uniform, that the priests were everything and epaulettes nothing any more; instead of being vexed, I only said, "Bah! all these things will get settled by and by. So long as we can have quiet, and can live and labor in peace, we will be satisfied."

I did not think that it is not enough that one is satisfied; to preserve peace and tranquillity, all must be so likewise. I was like Aunt Grédel, who found everything right now that we were married. She came very often to see us, with her basket full of fresh eggs, fruits, vegetables, and cakes for our housekeeping, and she would say:

"Oh! Mr. Goulden, there is no need to ask if the children are well, you have only to look at their faces."

And to me she would say: "There is some difference, Joseph, between being married, and trudging along under a knapsack and musket at Lutzen!"

"I believe you, Mamma Grédel," I would answer.

Then she would sit down, with her hands on her knees, and say: "All this comes from peace; peace makes everybody happy, and to think of that mob of barefoot beggars who shout against the King!"

At first Mr. Goulden, who was at work, would say nothing, but when she kept on he would say, "Come, Mother Grédel, a little moderation, you know that opinion is free now, we have two chambers and constitution, and each one has a voice."

"But it is also true," said aunt looking at me maliciously, "that one must hold his tongue from time to time, and that shows a difference too."

Mr. Goulden never went farther than this, for he looked upon aunt as a good woman, but who was not worth the trouble of converting. He would only laugh when she went too far, and matters went on without jarring until something new happened. At first there was an order from Nancy to compel the people to close all their shutters during service on Sunday – Jews, Lutherans, and all. There was no more noise in the inns and wine-shops, it was still as death in the city during mass and vespers. The people said nothing, but looked at each other as if they were afraid.

The first Sunday that our shutters were closed, Mr. Goulden seemed very sad, and said, as we were dining in the dark, "I had hoped, my children, that all this was over, and that people would have common-sense, and that we should be tranquil for years, but unhappily I see that these Bourbons are of the same race as Dagobert. Affairs are growing serious."