The Blockade of Phalsburg: An Episode of the End of the Empire Page 17

  XVII

  FAMINE AND FEVER

  After this story of the landwehr, we were afraid of the sergeant,though he did not know it, and came regularly to take his glass ofcherry-brandy. Sometimes in the evening he would hold the bottlebefore our lamp, and exclaim:

  "It is getting low, Father Moses, it is getting low! We shall soon beput upon half-rations, and then quarter, and so on. It is all thesame; if a drop is left, anything more than the smell, in six months,Trubert will be very glad."

  He laughed, and I thought with indignation:

  "You will be satisfied with a drop! What are you in want of? The citystorehouses are bomb-proof, the fires at the guard-house are burningevery day, the market furnishes every soldier with his ration of freshmeat, while respectable citizens are glad if they can get potatoes andsalt meat!"

  This is the way I felt in my ill-humor, while I treated him pleasantly,all the same, on account of his terrible wickedness.

  And it was the truth, Fritz, even our children had nothing morenourishing to eat than soup made of potatoes and salt beef, which causemany dangerous maladies.

  The garrison had no lack of anything; but, notwithstanding, thegovernor was all the time proclaiming that the visits were to berecommenced, and that those who should be found delinquent should bepunished with the rigor of military law. Those people wanted to haveeverything for themselves; but nobody minded them, everybody hid whathe could.

  Fortunate in those times was he who kept a cow in his cellar, with somehay and straw for fodder; milk and butter were beyond all price.Fortunate was he who owned a few hens; a fresh egg, at the end ofFebruary, was valued at fifteen sous, and they were not to be had evenat that price. The price of fresh meat went up, so to speak, from hourto hour, and we did not ask if it was beef or horse-flesh.

  The council of defence had sent away the paupers of the city before theblockade, but a large number of poor people remained. A good manyslipped out at night into the trenches by one of the posterns; theywould go and dig up roots from under the snow, and cut the nettles inthe bastions to boil for spinach. The sentries fired from above, butwhat will not a man risk for food? It is better to feel a ball than tosuffer with hunger.

  We needed only to meet these emaciated creatures, these women draggingthemselves along the walls, these pitiful children, to feel that faminehad come, and we often said to ourselves:

  "If the Emperor does not come and help us, in a month we shall be likethese wretched creatures! What good will our money do us, when aradish will cost a hundred francs?"

  Then, Fritz, we smiled no more as we saw the little ones eating aroundthe table; we looked at each other, and this glance was enough to makeus understand each other.

  The good sense and good feeling of a brave woman are seen at times likethis. Sorle had never spoken to me about our provisions; I knew howprudent she was, and supposed that we must have provisions hiddensomewhere, without being entirely sure of it. So, at evening, as wesat at our meagre supper, the fear that our children might want thenecessary food sometimes led me to say:

  "Eat! feast away! I am not hungry. I want an omelet or a chicken.Potatoes do not agree with me."

  I would laugh, but Sorle knew very well what I was thinking.

  "Come, Moses," she said to me one day; "we are not as badly off as youthink; and if we should come to it, ah, well! do not be troubled, weshall find some way of getting along! So long as others have somethingto live upon, we shall not perish, more than they."

  She gave me courage, and I ate cheerfully, I had so much confidence inher.

  That same evening, after Zeffen and the children had gone to bed, Sorletook the lamp, and led me to her hiding-place.

  Under the house we had three cellars, very small and very low,separated by lattices. Against the last of these lattices, Sorle hadthrown bundles of straw up to the very top; but after removing thestraw, we went in, and I saw at the farther end, two bags of potatoes,a bag of flour, and on the little oil-cask a large piece of salt beef.

  We stayed there more than an hour, to look, and calculate, and think.These provisions might serve us for a month, and those in the largecellar under the street, which we had declared to the commissary ofprovisions, a fortnight. So that Sorle said to me as we went up:

  "You see that, with economy, we have what will do for six weeks. Atime of great want is now beginning, and if the Emperor does not comebefore the end of six weeks, the city will surrender. Meanwhile, wemust get along with potatoes and salt meat."

  She was right, but every day I saw how the children were suffering fromthis diet. We could see that they grew thin, especially little David;his large bright eyes, his hollow cheeks, his increasing dejected look,made my heart ache.

  I held him, I caressed him; I whispered to him that, when the winterwas over, we would go to Saverne, and his father would take him todrive in his carriage. He would look at me dreamily, and then lay hishead upon my shoulder, with his arm around my neck, without answering.At last he refused to eat.

  Zeffen, too, became disheartened; she would often sob, and take herbabe from me, and say that she wanted to go, that she wanted to seeBaruch! You do not know what these troubles are, Fritz; a father'stroubles for his children; they are the cruelest of all! No child canimagine how his parents love him, and what they suffer when he isunhappy.

  But what was to be done in the midst of such calamities? Many otherfamilies in France were still more to be pitied than we.

  During all this time, you must remember that we had the patrols, theshells in the evening, requisition and notices, the call to arms at thetwo barracks and in front of the mayoralty, the cries of "Fire!" in thenight, the noise of the fire-engines, the arrival of the envoys, therumors spread through the city that our armies were retreating, andthat the city was to be burned to the ground!

  The less people know the more they invent.

  It is best to tell the simple truth. Then every one would takecourage, for, during all such times, I have always seen that the truth,even in the greatest calamities, is never so terrible as theseinventions. The republicans defended themselves so well, because theyknew everything, nothing was concealed from them, and every oneconsidered the affairs of his nation as his own.

  But when men's own affairs are hidden from them, how can they haveconfidence? An honest man has nothing to conceal, and I say it is thesame with an honest government.

  In short, bad weather, cold, want, rumors of all kinds, increased ourmiseries. Men like Burguet, whom we had always seen firm, became sad;all that they could say to us was:

  "We shall see!--we must wait!" The soldiers again began to desert, andwere shot!

  Our brandy-selling always kept on: I had already emptied seven pipes ofspirit, all my debts were paid, my storehouse at the market was full ofgoods, and I had eighteen thousand francs in the cellar; but what ismoney, when we are trembling for the life of those we love?

  On the sixth of March, about nine o'clock in the evening, we had justfinished supper as usual, and the sergeant was smoking his pipe, withhis legs crossed, near the window, and looking at us without speaking.

  It was the hour when the bombarding began; we heard the firstcannon-shots, behind the Fiquet bottom-land; a cannon-shot from theoutposts had answered them; that had somewhat roused us, for we wereall thoughtful.

  "Father Moses," said the sergeant, "the children are pale!"

  "I know it very well," I replied, sorrowfully.

  He said no more, and as Zeffen had just gone out to weep, he tooklittle David on his knee, and looked at him for a long time. Sorleheld little Esdras asleep in her arms. Safel took off the table-clothand rolled up the napkins, to put them back in the closet.

  "Yes," said the sergeant. "We must take care, Father Moses; we willtalk about it another time."

  I looked at him with surprise; he emptied his pipe at the edge of thestove, and went out, making a sign for me to follow him. Zeffen camein, and I took a candle from her hand. The
sergeant led me to hislittle room at the end of the passage, shut the door, sat down on thefoot of the bed, and said:

  "Father Moses, do not be frightened--but the typhus has just broken outagain in the city; five soldiers were taken to the hospital thismorning; the commandant of the place, Moulin, is taken. I hear, too,of a woman and three children!"

  He looked at me, and I felt cold all over.

  "Yes," said he, "I have known this disease for a long time; we had itin Poland, in Russia, after the retreat, and in Germany. It alwayscomes from poor nourishment."

  Then I could not help sobbing and exclaiming:

  "Ah, tell me! What can I do? If I could give my life for my children,it would all be well! But what can I do?"

  "To-morrow, Father Moses, I will bring you my portion of meat, and youshall have soup made of it for your children. Madame Sorle may takethe piece at the market, or, if you prefer, I will bring it myself.You shall have all my portions of fresh meat till the blockade is over,Father Moses."

  I was so moved by this, that I went to him and took his hand, saying:

  "Sergeant, you are a noble man! Forgive me, I have thought evil ofyou."

  "What about?" said he, scowling.

  "About the landwehr at the tile-kiln!"

  "Ah, good! That is a different thing! I do not care about that," saidhe. "If you knew all the kaiserlichs that I have despatched these tenyears, you would have thought more evil of me. But that is not what weare talking about; you accept, Father Moses?"

  "And you, sergeant," said I, "what will you have to eat?"

  "Do not be troubled about that; Sergeant Trubert has never been inwant!"

  I wanted to thank him. "Good!" said he, "that is all understood. Icannot give you a pike, or a fat goose, but a good soup in blockadetimes is worth something, too."

  He laughed and shook hands with me. As for myself I was quiteovercome, and my eyes were full of tears.

  "Let us go; good-night!" said he, as he led me to the door. "It willall come out right! Tell Madame Sorle that it will all come out right!"

  I blessed that man as I went out, and I told it all to Sorle, who wasstill more affected by it than myself. We could not refuse; it was forthe children! and during the last week there had been nothing buthorse-meat in the market.

  So the next morning we had fresh meat to make soup for those poorlittle ones. But the dreadful malady was already upon us, Fritz! Now,when I think of it, after all these years, I am quite overcome.However, I cannot complain; before going to take the bit of meat, I hadconsulted our old rabbi about the quality of this meat according to thelaw, and he had replied:

  "The first law is to save Israel; but how can Israel be saved if thechildren perish?"

  But after a while I remembered that other law:

  "The life of the flesh is in the blood, therefore I said unto thechildren of Israel: Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh, forthe life of all flesh is the blood thereof; whosoever eateth it shallbe cut off; and whosoever eateth of any sick beast shall be unclean."

  In my great misery the words of the Lord came to me, and I wept.

  All these animals had been sick for six weeks; they lived in the mire,exposed to the snow and wind, between the arsenal and guard bastions.

  The soldiers, almost all of whom were sons of peasants, ought to haveknown that they could not live in the open air, in such cold weather; ashelter could easily have been made. But when officers take the wholecharge, nobody else thinks of anything; they even forget their ownvillage trades. And if, unfortunately, their commanders do not givethe order, nothing is done.

  This is the reason that the animals had neither flesh nor fat; this isthe reason that they were nothing but miserable, trembling carcasses,and their suffering, unhealthy flesh had become unclean, according tothe law of God.

  Many of the soldiers died. The wind brought to the city the bad airfrom the bodies, scattered by hundreds around the tile-kiln, the Ozillofarm, and in the gardens, and this also caused much sickness.

  The justice of the Lord is shown in all things; when the living neglecttheir duties toward the dead, they perish.

  I have often remembered these things when it was too late, so that Ithink of them only with grief.