Adventure Tales 6. H. Bedford-Jones
he said. “The thing shall be done, that my poor people may know that our thought was for them and their firesides, even if that thought be impious, which the good God forbid!”
Pelletier said no more, but, accompanied by Pierre hearing his adz, followed the priest through a little door, down a narrow stone stair, into the crypt of the old church beneath the altar.
Here slept the few notables of Breaux: a long line of De Voulxs, the departed incumbents of the parish of St. Leu, a locally famous avocat, half a dozen others deemed worthy of internment here. Conspicuous among them, the great casket of Colonel Eugen Etienne Ste. Marie de Voulx, the soft lead deep bitten by a die of the Napoleonic bee, many times repeated, and one terse line beneath his name: “Of the Young Guard.”
The place was cool and dry, and the home of many shadows, pursued hither and thither as the great candle held by Père Jean moved in his nervous grasp.
Wasting no time, for there was none to be wasted, old Pierre swung his keen adz surely, and it sank into the lead casing. Matching each succeeding cut with the skill of a forester, he proceeded entirely around the casket, and in a surprisingly short time motioned to the others that he had finished the first part of his task—whereupon they jointly and with difficulty eased the heavy lid to the floor. Underneath was discovered a perfectly sound oak coffin.
From this, too, but without removing it from the outer casing, Pierre pried off the top—and behold! Before them lay the late colonel of the Young Guard in a surprisingly good state of preservation, although his face was swollen and nearly black. Still, one might trace a hint of the likeness to the great Napoleon, so sedulously cultivated by the old soldier.
He was dressed in full uniform: blue, swallow-tailed coat with broad revers and tarnished brass buttons and epaulets, gloved hands crossed over his sheathed sword, cocked hat by his side, long-spurred cavalry boots upon his bandy legs. A row of medals was strung across his breast.
The three men stared at him in breathless silence. The curé and Pierre crossed themselves; Pelletier gravely touched his forehead in respectful salute. Whatever their various ideas, in one particular they felt alike. Here before them, visible to the naked eye, lay one of the officers of a famous and unbeaten regiment of the great military genius of their beloved country.
So absorbed were they, Pierre with his hopes, Father Jean with his apprehensions, the mayor with his respectful interest, that they failed to hear upon the cobbled street above the faint clatter of the advance force of Uhlans, riding cautiously into Breaux; failed to hear them as, having dismounted, they followed the tiny candle gleam down into the crypt, and were shocked into a numb terror only when the captain of Uhlans, in excellent French, addressed them mockingly as he advanced through the stairway door.
“So! It is that Frenchmen rifle the graves of their own dead, that they may afterward cry out upon the German ghouls! The good pastor, too!”
His teeth showing in a wolfish smile, his monocle fixed, one hand at the automatic in his belt, the officer advanced within the circle of light, followed by several of his staff, and, craning forward, gazed upon that which had so riveted the attention of the three Frenchmen.
“You are wrong, my son,” Père Jean replied with dignity. “There are no valuables in these, our poor tombs, save the honored dead they hold!”
The Uhlan stared insolently upon him.
“Perhaps you will then explain the trouble to which you put yourself in opening this casket?”
“I will do so,” Père Jean responded with quiet nobility of demeanor. “Tradition in our little town has it that this son of the Church and of France, and one-time officer of the great Napoleon, would, if brought from his sepulcher, save Breaux in its day of need from impious hands, even, as his ancestors did in ancient times.”
The officer laughed harshly.
“And your theology swallows these children’s’ fairy tales, worthy pastor?”
The mayor, Pelletier, answered him.
“Neither he nor I, but this descendant of De Voulx’s orderly. To humor a good and faithful citizen we assented. That is all.”
The German rubbed his hands gleefully.
“Well, well! And why not? Let us see if there be any truth in it. Come forth, my Gallic Lazarus! Save thy ugly hamlet of Breaux! Many prettier towns have gone up in smoke this past week.”
Then began a scene such as no other war but this could match. The Uhlan’s Teutonic sense of humor rose to the surface. After an orgy of blood and rapine the surfeited beast chose to be good-naturedly facetious for the moment.
Obeying a curt command, two big cavalrymen laid hold upon Dc Voulx, and twitched him from the wooden bed where he had slept so long. They held him erect, clapped his cocked hat upon his head; then, their captain catching the travesty of the emperor in the bloated features, he bent one arm—the brittle bone cracking sharply—and thrust the hand within his breast. His sword was buckled on; the officer saluted him mockingly, hailed him as “kamerad!” and, entering into the spirit of the occasion, the gruesome figure was pushed and pulled about, complimented upon his winning so many medals as colonel of so distinguished a regiment, and then kicked and buffeted for failing to reply to the queries or to return the salutes.
It was to be noted that throughout the incredible buffoonery the little figure of De Voulx seemed to maintain an unshaken dignity which no insult could degrade. Dead this century and more, the deathless panoply of birth and character never for an instant failed to make cheap and bestial his living mockers!
Meanwhile Père Jean had been twitching at the sleeves of his two companions, and step by stealthy step, moving backward toward the little door, they slipped up the crooked stairs, and through the sacristy, and out into the black night, sick at heart, and with the uncouth shouts of the Uhlans sounding fainter and fainter in their horrified ears.
This was the story that Lieutenant Paradis told me as we rode away from Breaux; and at this point we reined up for a final back-flung look at it.
The moon was riding high in the heavens now; and beneath its rays the little town seemed a fragile toy, fabricated of beaten silver.
“Yet you have not told me,” I complained, “what really saved Breaux?”
“Colonel Eugen Etienne Ste. Marie de Voulx saved it!” replied my guide.
“But—but how—”
He turned and looked me in the eye.
“A miracle, so they are already saying. So say I—for of such stuff are dreams and miracles made! De Voulx, as has been learned by painstaking investigation of contemporary records, died of the black death, the germs of which he brought home with him from Asia. His orderly, who had served long in the East, recognized the symptoms, and warned the physician who attended De Voulx and the priest who shrived him.
“He was able to prevent them from contracting the plague, and it was by his advice that the body was hermetically sealed in lead and the secret kept from the village.
“When the casket was opened the germs were still virulent, still lying in wait. None of the three Frenchmen touched the body; but the Uhlans, who did, contracted the black death by contagion; and when the German Medical Staff learned the truth, and had cremated their numerous victims, they drew a circle about Breaux, forbidding, under severest penalties, any crossing of the dead line. And as this order was not countermanded, De Voulx kept his promise, and Breaux stands inviolate today!”
WEARINESS OF WAR, translated by Poul Anderson
In 1064 A.D., King Harald Hardrede of Norway and King Svein Ulfsson of Denmark met to see if their long struggle for the Danish crown could be settled. Both brought great armies. None knew if the truce would end in peace being made, or in a battle which would resume the destructive war. It was the former which happened. Harald abdicated his claims—perhaps, in part, because of this verse, whose composer is unknown but which was heard in both camps.
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