Brigadier Frederick, The Dean's Watch

Only the letters announcing the death of one's relatives, or some new disaster to our country, arrived; or else lies – news of victories invented by the enemy, and that was followed the next day by the announcement of a defeat.

From that day, not daring to write what I knew, and receiving no news from home, I lived a melancholy life.

Imagine, George, a man of my age, alone among strangers, in a little room at an inn, looking for hours together at the snow whirling against the window-panes, listening to the noises outside, a passing cart, a company of Prussians who were going their rounds, the barking of a dog, people quarrelling; without any amusement but his meditations and his recollections.

"What are they about yonder? Does the grandmother still live? And, Marie-Rose – what has become of her? And Jean, and all the others?" Always this weight on my heart!

"No letters have come; so much the better. If anything had happened, Marie-Rose would have written. She does not write; so much the worse. Perhaps she, too, is ill!"

And so it went on from morning till night. Sometimes, when I heard the hum of voices down stairs in the parlour, I would go down, to hear the news of the war. Hope, that great lie which lasts all one's life, is so rooted in our souls that we cling to it till the end.

So I went down stairs, and there, around the tables, by the stove, were all kinds of people – merchants, peasants, wagoners – talking of fights in the north, the east; of pillages, of military executions, of fires, of forced contributions, of hostages, and I know not what all!

Paris was still defending herself; but near the Loire our young troops had been forced to fall back; the Germans were too many for them! They were arriving by all the railroads; and then our arms and ammunition were giving out. This young army, assembled in haste, without a head, without discipline, without arms, without provisions, was forced to keep up against this terrible war, and the fearful weight of numbers could not fail to crush it after a while.

That is what the Swiss and Belgian newspapers said, that the travellers sometimes left behind them.

The bombardment of Belfort continued. The weather was fearful; snow and hard frosts followed each other in quick succession. One could almost say that the Almighty was against us.

For my part, George, I must confess that, after so many misfortunes, I was discouraged; the least rumour made me uneasy; I was always afraid of hearing of fresh disasters; and sometimes, too, my indignation made me wish to go, in spite of my old legs, and get myself killed, no matter where, so as to be done with it.

Ennui and discouragement had got the upper hand of me, when I received a letter from my daughter.

The grandmother was dead! Marie-Rose was coming to join me at St. Dié. She told me to hire a small apartment, as she was going to bring a little furniture, some linen, and some bedding, and that she was going to sell the rest at Graufthal before her departure.

She said also that Starck had offered to bring her on his cart, through Sarrebourg, Lorquin, Raon l'Étape; that the journey would probably last fully three days, but that we would meet again at the end of the week.

So the poor grandmother had ceased to suffer; she lay beside her daughter, Catherine, and Father Burat, whom I had loved so much! I said to myself that they were all luckier than I; that they slept among their ancestors, in the shadow of our mountains.

The thought of seeing my daughter once more did me good. I said to myself that we would be no longer alone; that we could live without much expense till the end of the invasion; and then, when Jean returned, when he had found a situation, we would build up our nest again in some forest; that I would have my pension, and that, in spite of all our misfortunes, I would end my days in peace and quietness, among my grandchildren.

That appeared very natural to me. I repeated to myself that God is good, and that all would soon be in order again.

Marie-Rose arrived on the fifth of January, 1871.

XXXVI

I had rented, for twelve francs a month, two small rooms and a kitchen on the second floor of the house next door to the Golden Lion; it belonged to M. Michel, a gardener, a very good man, who afterward rendered us great services.

It was very cold that day. Marie-Rose had written that she was coming, but without saying whether in the morning or the evening; so I was obliged to wait.

About noon Starck's cart appeared at the end of the street, covered with furniture and bedding.

Marie-Rose was on the vehicle, wrapped in a large cape of her mother's; the tall coalman was walking in front, holding his horses by the bridle.

I went down stairs and ran to meet them. I embraced Starck, who had stopped, then my daughter, saying to her, in a whisper:

"I have heard news of Jean. He passed through St. Dié. M. d'Arence gave him the means to cross the Prussian lines and join the Army of the Loire."

She did not answer, but as I spoke, I felt her bosom heave and her arms tighten round me with extraordinary strength.

They went on again; a hundred yards farther we were before our lodgings. Starck took his horses to the stable of the Golden Lion. Marie-Rose went into the large parlour of the inn, and good Mother Ory made her take at once a cup of broth, to warm her, for she was very cold.

That same day Starck and I took up the furniture. At four o'clock all was ready. We made a fire in the stove. Marie-Rose was so worn out that we had almost to carry her up stairs.

I had noticed when I first saw her her extreme pallor and sparkling eyes; it astonished me; but I attributed the change to the long watches, the grief, the anxiety, and, above all, to the fatigue of a three days' journey in an open wagon, and in such terribly cold weather. Was it not natural after such suffering? I knew her to be strong; since her childhood she had never been ill; I said to myself that she would get over that in time, and that with a little care and perfect rest she would soon regain her rosy cheeks.

Once up stairs, in front of the sparkling little fire, seeing the neat room, the old wardrobe at the back, the old pictures from the forest house hung on the wall, and our old clock ticking away in the right-hand corner behind the door, Marie-Rose seemed satisfied, and said to me:

"We will be very comfortable here, father; we will keep quiet, and the Germans will not drive us farther away. If only Jean comes back soon, we will live in peace."

Her voice was hoarse. She also wanted to see the kitchen, which opened on the court; the daylight coming from over the roofs made this place rather dark; but she thought everything was very nice.

As we had not any provisions yet, I sent to the inn for our dinner and two bottles of wine.

Starck would take nothing but the expenses on the road. He said that at this season there was nothing to do in the forest, and that he might as well have come as to have left his horses in the stable; but he could not refuse a good dinner, and then, too, he liked a good glass of wine.

Then, at table, Marie-Rose told me all the details of the grandmother's death; how she had expired, after having cried for three days and three nights, murmuring in her dreams: "Burat! Frederick! The Germans! Frederick, do not desert me! Take me with you!" At last the good God took her to Himself, and half Graufthal followed her bier through the snow to Dôsenheim, to bury her with her own people.

In telling her sad tale, Marie-Rose could not restrain her tears, and from time to time she stopped to cough; so I told her that I had heard enough, and that I did not care to know any more.

And when dinner was over, I thanked Starck for the services he had rendered us. I told him that in misfortune we learn to know our true friends, and other just things, which pleased him, because he deserved them. About six o'clock he went away again, in spite of all that I could say to persuade him to remain. I went with him to the end of the street, asking him to thank Father Ykel and his daughter for all that they had done for us, and if he went to Felsberg to tell Mother Margredel how we were getting along, and, above all, to ask her to send us all news of Jean that she might receive. He promised, and we separated.

I went back, feeling very thoughtful; glad to see my child once more, but uneasy about the terrible cold that kept her from speaking. However, I had no serious fears, as I told you, George. When one has always seen people in good health one knows very well that such little ailments do not signify anything.

There was still seven or eight weeks of winter to pass through. In the month of March the sun is already warm, the spring is coming; in April, sheltered as we were by the great hill of Saint Martin, we would soon see the gardens and the fields grow green again in the shelter of the forest. We had also two large boxes of climbing plants to place on our window-sills, which I pictured to myself beforehand extending over our window-panes, and that would remind us a little of the forest house.

All these things seemed good to me, and, in my emotion at seeing Marie-Rose again, I looked on the bright side of the future; I wanted to live as much to ourselves as we could while waiting for Jean's return, and to worry ourselves about the war as little as possible, although that is very hard to do when the fate of one's fatherland is in question; yes, very hard. I promised myself to tell my daughter nothing but pleasant things, such as tidings of our victories, if we were so fortunate as to gain any, and, above all, to hide from her my uneasiness about Jean, whose long silence often gave me gloomy thoughts.

In the midst of these meditations I returned home. Night had come. Marie-Rose was waiting for me beside the lamp; she threw herself into my arms, murmuring:

"Ah! father, what happiness it is for us to be together once more!"

"Yes, yes, my child," I answered, "and others who are now far away will return also. We must have a little patience still. We have suffered too much and too unjustly for that to last forever. You are not very well now; the journey has fatigued you; but it will be nothing. Go sleep, dear child, and rest yourself."

She went to her room, and I retired to bed, thanking God for having given me back my daughter.

XXXVII

Thus, George, after the loss of my situation and my property, earned by thirty years of labour, economy and faithful services; after the loss of our dear country, of our old parents and our friends, I had still one consolation: my daughter still remained to me, my good, courageous child, who smiled at me in spite of her anxiety, her grief, and her sufferings when she saw me too much cast down.

That is what overwhelms me when I think of it; I always reproach myself for having allowed her to see my grief, and for not having been able to keep down my anger against those who had reduced us to such a condition. It is easy to put a good face on the matter when you have everything you want; in need and in a strange country it is a different thing.

We lived as economically as possible. Marie-Rose looked after our little household, and I often sat for hours before the window, thinking of all that had occurred during the last few months, of the abominable order that had driven me from my country; I suddenly grew indignant, and raised my arms to heaven, uttering a wild cry.

Marie-Rose was more calm; our humiliation, our misery, and the national disasters hurt her as much and perhaps more than me, but she hid it from me. Only what she could not hide from me was that wretched cold, which gave me much anxiety. Far from improving as I had hoped, it grew worse – it seemed to me to get worse every day. At night, above all, when I heard through the deep silence that dry, hacking cough, that seemed to tear her chest asunder, I sat up in bed and listened, filled with terror.

Sometimes, however, this horrible cold seemed to get better, Marie-Rose would sleep soundly, and then I regained my courage; and thinking of the innumerable misfortunes that were extended over France, the great famine at Paris, the battlefields covered with corpses, the ambulances crowded with wounded, the conflagrations, the requisitions, the pillages, I said to myself that we had still a little fire to warm us, a little bread to nourish us. And then, so many strange things happened during the wars! Had we not formerly conquered all Europe, which did not prevent us from being vanquished in our turn? Might not the Germans have the same fate? All gamblers end by losing! Those ideas and many others I turned over in my mind; and Marie-Rose said, too:

"All is not over, father; all is not over! I had a dream last night. I saw Jean in a brigadier-forester's costume; we will soon have some good news!"

Alas! good news. Poor child! Yes, yes, you can dream happy dreams; you may see Jean wearing a brigadier's stripes, and smiling at you and giving you his arm to lead you, with a white wreath on your head, to the little chapel at Graufthal, where the priest waits to marry you. All would have happened thus, but there should be fewer rascals on earth, to turn aside the just things established by the Almighty. Whenever I think of that time, George, I seem to feel a hand tearing out my heart. I would like to stop, but as I promised you, I will go on to the end.

One day, when the fire was sparkling in the little stove, when Marie-Rose, very thin and thoughtful, was spinning, and when the old recollections of the forest house, with the beautiful spring, the calm, melancholy autumn, the songs of the blackbirds and thrushes, the murmur of the little river through the reeds, the voice of the old grandmother, that of poor Calas, the joyous barking of Ragot, and the lowing of our two handsome cows under the old willows, came stealing back to my memory; while I was forgetting myself in these things, and while the monotonous hum of the spinning wheel and the ticking of our old clock were filling our little room, all at once cries and songs broke out in the distance.

Marie-Rose listened with amazement; and I, abruptly torn from my pleasant dreams, started like a man who has been roused from sleep. The Germans were rejoicing so, some new calamity had befallen us. That was my first idea, and I was not mistaken.

Soon bands of soldiers crossed the street, arm in arm, crying with all their might:

"Paris has fallen! Long live the German fatherland!"

I looked at Marie-Rose; she was as pale as death, and was looking at me also with her great brilliant eyes. We turned our eyes away from each other, so as not to betray the terrible emotion that we felt. She went out into the kitchen, where I heard her crying.

Until dark we heard nothing but new bands, singing and shouting as they passed; I, with bowed head, heard from time to time my daughter coughing behind the partition of the kitchen, and I gave myself up to despair. About seven o'clock Marie-Rose came in with the lamp. She wanted to set the table.

"It is no use," I said; "do not put down my plate. I am not hungry."

"Neither am I," said she.

"Well, let us go to bed; let us try to forget our misery; let us endeavour to sleep!"

I rose; we kissed each other, weeping. That night, George, was horrible. In spite of her efforts to stifle the cough I heard Marie-Rose coughing without intermission until morning, so that I could not close my eyes. I made up my mind to go for a doctor; but I did not want to frighten my daughter, and thinking of a means to speak of that to her, towards dawn I fell asleep.

It was eight o'clock when I woke up, and after dressing myself I called Marie-Rose. She did not answer. Then I went into her room, and I saw spots of blood on her pillow; her handkerchief, too, which she had left on the night-table, was all red.

It made me shudder! I returned and sat down in my corner, thinking of what I had just seen.

XXXVIII

It was market day. Marie-Rose had gone to lay in our small stock of provisions; she returned about nine o'clock, so much out of breath that she could scarcely hold her basket. When I saw her come in I recollected the pale faces of those young girls, of whom the poor people of our valley used to say that God was calling them, and who fell asleep quietly at the first snow. This idea struck me, and I was frightened; but then, steadying my voice, I said quite calmly:

"See here, Marie-Rose, all last night I heard you coughing; it makes me uneasy."

"Oh! it is nothing, father," she answered, colouring slightly; "it is nothing, the fine weather is coming and this cold will pass off."

"Anyhow," I replied, "I will not be easy, as long as a doctor has not told me what it is. I must go at once and get a doctor."

She looked at me, with her hands crossed over the basket, on the edge of the table; and, guessing perhaps by my anxiety that I had discovered the spots of blood, she murmured:

"Very well, father, to ease your mind."

"Yes," I said, "it is better to do things beforehand; what is nothing in the beginning may become very dangerous if neglected."

And I went out. Down stairs M. Michel gave me the address of Dr. Carrière, who lived in the Rue de la Mairie. I went to see him. He was a man of about sixty, lean, with black sparkling eyes and a grizzled head, who listened to me very attentively and asked me if I was not the brigadier forester that his friend M. d'Arence had spoken to him about. I answered that I was he, and he accompanied me at once.

Twenty minutes afterward we reached our room. When Marie-Rose came the doctor questioned her for a long time about the beginning of this cold, about her present symptoms, if she had not fever at night with shivering fits and attacks of suffocation.

By his manner of questioning her she was, so to speak, forced to answer him, and the old doctor soon knew that she had been spitting blood for over a month; she confessed it, turning very pale and looking at me as if to ask pardon for having hidden this misfortune from me. Ah! I forgave her heartily, but I was in despair. After that Dr. Carrière wished to examine her; he listened to her breathing and finally said that it was all right, that he would give her a prescription.

But in the next room, when we were alone, he asked me if any of our family had been consumptive; and when I assured him that never, neither in my wife's family nor my own, had we ever had the disease, he said:

"I believe you; your daughter is very beautifully formed; she is a strong and handsome creature; but then she must have had an accident; a fall, or something like that must have put her in this condition. She is probably hiding it from us; I must know it."

So I called Marie-Rose, and the doctor asked her if some weeks before she did not remember having fallen, or else run against something violently, telling her that he was going to write his prescription according to what she would reply, and that her life probably depended upon it.

Then Marie-Rose confessed that the day the Germans came to take away our cows she had tried to hold them back by the rope, and that one of the Prussians had struck her between the shoulders with the hilt of his sword, which had thrown her forward on her hands, and that her mouth had suddenly filled with blood; but that the fear of my anger at hearing of such an outrage had kept her from saying anything to me about it.

All was then clear to me. I could not restrain my tears, looking at my poor child, the victim of so great a misfortune. She withdrew. The doctor wrote his prescription. As we were descending the stairs he said:

"It is very serious. You have only one daughter?"

"She is my only one," I answered.

He was sad and thoughtful.

"We will do our best," he said; "youth has many resources! But do not let her be excited in any way."

As he walked down the street he repeated to me the advice that M. Simperlin had given me about the grandmother; I made no answer. It seemed to me that the earth was opening under my feet and was crying to me:

"The dead – the dead! Give me my dead!"

How glad I should have been to be the first to go to rest, to close my eyes and to answer:

"Well, here I am. Take me and leave the young! Let them breathe a few days longer. They do not know that life is a terrible misfortune; they will soon learn it, and will go with less regret. You will have them all the same!"

And, continuing to muse in this way, I entered an apothecary's shop near the large bridge and had the prescription made up. I returned to the house. Marie-Rose took two spoonfuls of the medicine morning and evening, as it had been directed. It did her good, I saw it from the first few days; her voice was clearer, her hands less burning; she smiled at me, as if to say:

"You see, father, it was only a cold. Don't worry about it any more."

An infinite sweetness shone in her eyes; she was glad to get well. The hope of seeing Jean once more added to her happiness. Naturally, I encouraged her in her joyous thoughts. I said:

"We will receive news one of these days. Neighbour such a one also expects to hear from her son; it cannot be long now. The mails were stopped during the war, the letters are lying at the offices. The Germans wanted to discourage us. Now that the armistice is signed we will get our letters."

The satisfaction of learning such good news brightened her countenance.

I did not let her go to the city; I took the basket myself and went to get our provisions; the market women knew me.

"It is the old brigadier," they would say; "whose pretty daughter is sick. They are alone. It is he who comes now."

None of them ever sold me their vegetables at too high a price.

XXXIX

I thought no longer of the affairs of the country. I only wanted to save my daughter; the rumours of elections, of the National Assembly at Bordeaux, no longer interested me; my only thought was:

"If Marie-Rose only lives!"

So passed the end of January, then came the treaty of peace: we were deserted! And from day to day the neighbours received news from their sons, from their brothers, from their friends, some prisoners in Germany, others in cantonments in the interior; but for us not a word!

I went to the post-office every morning to see if anything had come for us. One day the postmaster said to me:

"Ah! it is you. The postman has just gone. He has a letter for you."

Then I hastened hopefully home. As I reached the door the postman left the alley and called to me, laughing:

"Hurry up, Father Frederick, you have got what you wanted this time: a letter that comes from the Army of the Loire!"

I went up stairs four steps at a time, with beating heart. What were we about to hear? What had happened during so many weeks? Was Jean on the road to come and see us? Would he arrive the next day – in two, three, or four days?

Agitated by these thoughts, when I got up stairs my hand sought for the latch without finding it. At last I pushed open the door; my little room was empty. I called:

"Marie-Rose! Marie-Rose!"

No answer. I went into the other room; and my child, my poor child was lying there on the floor, near her bed, white as wax, her great eyes half open, the letter clutched in her hand, a little blood on her lips. I thought her dead, and with a terrible cry I caught her up and laid her on the bed. Then, half wild, calling, crying, I took the letter and read it with one glance.

See, here it is! Read it, George, read it aloud; I know it by heart, but it does not matter, I like to turn the knife in the wound; when it bleeds it hurts less.

"MY DEAR MARIE-ROSE: Adieu! I shall never see you more. A bursting shell has shattered my right leg; the surgeons have had to amputate it. I will not survive the operation long. I had lain too long on the ground. I had lost too much blood. It is all over. I must die! Oh! Marie-Rose, dear Marie-Rose, how I would like to see you again for one instant, one minute; how much good it would do me! All the time I lay wounded in the snow I thought only of you. Do not forget me either; think sometimes of Jean Merlin. Poor Mother Margredel, poor Father Frederick, poor Uncle Daniel! You will tell them. Ah! how happy we would have been without this war!"