The Conscript. Erckmann-Chatrian
them "refractories," but they had not gendarmes enough to capture them.
The mothers of families took courage to revolt after a manner, and to encourage their sons not to obey the gendarmes. They aided them in every way; they cried out against the Emperor, and the clergy of all denominations sustained them in so doing. The cup was at last full!
The very day of the proclamation I went to Quatre-Vents; but it was not now in the joy of my heart; it was as the most miserable of unhappy wretches, about to be bereft of love and life. I could scarcely walk, and when I reached there I did not know how to announce the evil tidings; but I saw at a glance that they knew all, for Catharine was weeping bitterly, and Aunt Grédel was pale with indignation.
We embraced in silence, and the first words Aunt Grédel said to me, as in her anger she pushed her gray hair behind her ears, were:
"You shall not go! What have we to do with wars? The priest himself told us it was at last too much, and that we ought to have peace! You shall not go! Do not cry, Catharine; I say he shall not go!"
She was fairly green with anger, and rattled her kettles noisily together, saying:
"This carnage has lasted long enough. Our two poor cousins, Kasper and Yokel, are already going to lose their lives in Spain for this Emperor, and now he comes to ask us for the younger ones. He is not satisfied to have slain three hundred thousand in Russia. Instead of thinking of peace, like a man of sense, he thinks only of massacring the few who remain. We will see! We will see!"
"In the name of Heaven! Aunt Grédel, be quiet; speak lower," said I, looking at the window. "If they hear you, we are lost."
"I speak for them to hear me," she replied. "Your Napoleon does not frighten me. He commenced by closing our mouths, so that he might do as he pleased; but the end approaches. Four young women are losing their husbands in our village alone, and ten poor young men are forced to abandon everything, despite father, mother, religion, justice, God! Is not this horrible?"
I tried to answer, but she kept on:
"Hold, Joseph," said she; "be silent; your Emperor has no heart—he will end miserably yet. God showed his finger this winter; He saw that we feared a man more than we feared Him; that mothers—like those whose babes Herod slew—dared no longer cling to their own flesh when that man demanded them for massacre; and so the cold came and our army perished; and now those who are leaving us are the same as already dead. God is weary of all this! You shall not go!" cried she obstinately; "I shall not let you go; you shall fly to the woods with Jean Kraft, Louis Bême, and all our bravest fellows; you shall go to the mountains—to Switzerland, and Catharine and I will go with you and remain until this destruction of men is ended."
Then Aunt Grédel became silent. Instead of giving us an ordinary dinner, she gave us a better one than on Catharine's birthday, and said, with the air of one who has taken a resolution:
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