The Whites and the Blues. Alexandre Dumas
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cried Eugene, waving his rifle, joyously, "I knew a battle would be a fine sight!"
Just as he said this a ball passed between Charles and himself, cutting off one of his curls and making a hole in his hat; then it stretched in death a patriot who had stood just behind them. The wind of its passage blew upon the face of each.
"Oh! I know who it was. I saw him! I saw him!" cried Charles.
"Who, who?" asked Eugene.
"There, that one there, the one who is tearing his cartridge in order to reload his gun."
"Wait! wait! Are you perfectly sure?"
"I should think so!"
"Well, then, look!"
The youth fired. The dragoon's horse leaped forward; he had no doubt involuntarily put spurs to it.
"Hit! hit!" cried Eugene.
And, indeed, the dragoon tried to sling his musket into place, but in vain; the weapon soon slipped from his grasp. He put one hand to his side, and trying to guide his horse with the other endeavored to escape from the combat; but after a few steps he swayed backward and forward and then fell headlong to the ground. One of his feet caught in the stirrup, and the frightened horse set off at a gallop, dragging him along. The two boys followed him with their eyes for a moment, but both horse and rider soon disappeared in the smoke.
Just then the gates opened and the garrison marched forth with drums beating and bayonets levelled. It was the final effort of the patriots and the enemy had not expected it. The trumpets sounded the retreat, and the cavalry, scattered over the plain, formed together at the road, and galloped off toward Kilstett and Gambelheim. The cannon were fired awhile longer at the fugitives, but the rapidity of their retreat soon put them out of range.
The two boys returned to the city exultant, Charles at having seen a battle, Eugene at having taken part in one. Charles made Eugene promise that he would teach him to use the rifle which he handled so skilfully. And then, for the first time, did they learn the cause of this alarm.
General Eisemberg, an old German campaigner of the school of Luckner, who had waged a war of partisans with a certain success, had been charged by Pichegru with the defence of the advance-post of Bischwiller. Either through carelessness, or a desire to oppose Saint-Just, instead of taking the precautions directed by the representatives of the people, he had allowed his troops and himself to be surprised, and he and his staff had barely saved themselves by flight. At the foot of the walls, finding himself supported, he had turned, but too late; the alarm had been given in the city, and every one knew that the unfortunate officer might just as well die or let himself be taken prisoner, as to seek safety in a city where Saint-Just commanded. And in fact he had scarcely entered the gates before he, and all his staff, were arrested by order of the Representative of the People.
When they returned to the Hôtel de la Lanterne, the two young friends found poor Madame Teutch in a state of the greatest anxiety. Eugene was beginning to be known in the town where he had spent a month, and some one had told her that the young fellow had been seen near the Haguenau gate with a rifle in his hand. At first she had not believed it, but when she saw him return with the rifle, she was seized with a retrospective terror that doubled the interest of Charles' story. The boy was as enthusiastic as a conscript who has just seen his first battle.
But all this enthusiasm did not make Charles forget that he was to dine with citizen Euloge Schneider at two o'clock. At five minutes of two, having ascended the steps more slowly than he had descended them in the morning, he knocked at the little door to which they led.
CHAPTER V
MADEMOISELLE DE BRUMPT
At the first sound of the cannon the Society of the Propaganda had assembled and declared its session to be permanent as long as Strasbourg was in danger.
Although Euloge Schneider was a fanatical Jacobin, being in relation to Marat what Marat was to Robespierre, he was excelled in patriotism by the Society of the Propaganda As a result the public prosecutor, powerful as he was, had to reckon with two powers, between which he was obliged to steer his course. That is to say, with Saint-Just, who, strange as it must seem to our readers of the present day, represented the moderate Republican party, and with the Propagande, which represented the ultra-Jacobins. Saint-Just held the material power, but citizen Tétrell possessed the moral power.
Euloge Schneider therefore did not dare to absent himself from the assemblage of the Propagande, which met to discuss the best means of saving the country; while Saint-Just and Lebas, the first to gallop out of Strasbourg into the midst of the firing—where they were easily recognized as the people's representatives by their uniforms and their tri-color plumes—had ordered the gates to be shut behind them, and had taken their places in the first ranks of the Republicans.
When the enemy had been routed, they had immediately returned to Strasbourg and gone to their hotel, while the Propagande continued their debate, although the peril had ceased. This was the reason why Euloge Schneider, who was so particular to admonish others to punctuality, was half an hour late himself.
Charles had profited by this delay to become acquainted with the other three guests who were to be at table with him. They, on their side, having been notified by Schneider, welcomed kindly the boy who had been sent to him to be made into a scholar, and to whom they had each resolved to give an education according to their individual knowledge and principles.
These men were three in number, as we have said; their names were Edelmann, Young, and Monnet.
Edelmann was a remarkable musician, the equal of Gossec in church music. He had also set the poem of "Ariadne in the Isle of Naxos" to music for the stage, and the piece was played in France, in 1818 or 1820. He was small, with a melancholy countenance. He always wore spectacles, which seemed to have grown to his nose; he dressed in a brown coat, which was always buttoned from top to bottom with copper buttons. He had cast in his lot with the Revolutionary party with the violence and fanaticism of an imaginative man. When his friend Diedrich, mayor of Strasbourg, was accused of moderation by Schneider and succumbed in the struggle, he bore witness against him, saying: "I shall mourn for you because you are my friend, but you are a traitor, therefore you must die."
As for the second of the trio, Young, he was a poor shoemaker, within whose coarse exterior Nature, as sometimes happens by caprice, had concealed the soul of a poet. He knew Latin and Greek, but composed his odes and satires only in German. His well-known Republicanism had made his poetry popular, and the common people would often stop him on the street, crying, "Verses! Verses!" Then he would stop, and mounting upon some stone, or the edge of a well, or some adjacent balcony, would fling his odes and satires to the skies like burning, flaming rockets. He was one of those rarely honest men, one of those revolutionists who acted in all good faith, and who, blindly devoted to the majesty of the popular principle, thought of the Revolution only as the means of emancipation for all the human race, and who died like the ancient martyrs, without complaint, and without regret, convinced of the future triumph of their religion.
Monnet, the third, was not a stranger to Charles, and the boy welcomed him with a cry of joy. He had been a soldier, a grenadier, in his youth, and when he left the service had become a priest and prefect of the college in Besançon, where Charles had known him. When he was twenty-eight years of age, and had begun to regret the vows he had taken, the Revolution came to break them. He was tall and stooped a little, was full of kindness and courtesy, and possessed a melancholy grace which attracted strangers to him at first sight. His smile was sad and sometimes bitter; one would have thought that he concealed in the depths of his heart some mournful mystery, and that he besought of men,