iiililltmsilftiiMlfHitlttlli GIFT OF SEELEY W. MUDD and GEORGE I. COCHRAN MEYER ELSASSER DR. JOHN R. HAYNES WILLIAM L. HONNOLD JAMES R. MARTIN MRS. JOSEPH F. SARTORI to the UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SOUTHERN BRANCH JOHN FISKE OF THE STOEY OF A CAMPAIGN KABYLIA, AND OTHER TAT/RS. ' I pulled up to look at this charming residence." Campaign in Kabytia.} [Page 31. THE STOEY OF A CAMPAIGN IN KABYLIA, ftolb hg a (fffcassntr b'^frupu. AND OTHEE TALES. BY MM. ERCKMANN-CHATRIAlSr, .Authors o/ " Waterloo," "TheAlsacian Schoolmaster," " Citizen Bonaparte, "Confessions of a Clarionet Player," &o, t Ac, WARD, LOCK AND CO. LONDON: WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.Q NEW YORK: BOND STREET. 86045 c\ CO 07 THE STORY OF A CAMPAIGN IN KABYL1A, I. 'ISTEN to me (said iny friend Goguel to me) ; you are a peaceable man ; you are fond of cattle, bees, and everything be- longing to country life. Nothing can be more natural ; from father to son your family have always been ploughing, and sowing, and reaping. But you must not suppose that all men are just like you, and that you alone are fulfilling the decrees of Heaven. If there wajS to be nothing but peace in the world, God would never have made hawks to pounce down upon your poultry, wolves to devour your flocks, and pikes to swallow carp. P-ott my part, I confess to feeling a far greater satis- faction when I am bestriding a good horse, with a sword hanging at my belt and a carbine slung to my 10 The Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, side, than when I used to be seated on a cart carrying vegetables to market. Well, so it is ; every man to his trade. The happiest day of my life was on the 30th of March, 1871, when Grosse, an old trumpeter in the First Chasseurs d'Afrique at Blidah, sounded a call to the quartermasters* of all the squadrons ; and, entering the ward- room, I saw Adjutant Pigace smiling and twisting his moustaches. I felt in a moment that something pleasant was going to happen, and I was not mistaken, for the moment our comrades were assembled, the adjutant cried " The order of the day ! What number ? What ! no one knows ? Oh, come ! we'll settle that by-and-by. Promotions : the colonel in command of the First Regi- ment of Chasseurs d'Afrique appoints Alban Montezunia Goguel quartermaster." He had scarcely ceased speaking when I felt myself quite another man. I, Goguel, appointed, during the rest of the war with Prussia, quartermaster in the Chasseurs d'Afrique, at the end of only eight months' service ! You would never be able to understand the extent of my gladness. I drew myself up, with my shoulders back, and ray two thumbs in my trousers' pockets, spreading them, out wide, and shouting, " Vive la France !" The other fellows laughed ; and the adjutant, closing his book, said to me with a smile "Aha, Goguel! there you are now with your foot in the stirrup ; the path of honour lies before you." "You may be sure I invited my comrades te tako * MarecJiaux des logis. An exact equivalent docs not exist iu the English army. Tr. 'Every man to his trade." A Campaign in KabyHn.} [f'agt 10. Told by a Chasseur tfAfrique. 11 absinthe with me ; and so we marched off to the canteen arm-in-arm. Till five o'clock we did nothing but drink and laugh, and see the best side of everything. But at five G-rosse sounded the call again. We went out, and in front of the quarters, Quartermaster Goguel is named to join the detachment at Tizi-Ouzou with foui chasseurs on foot. Tizi-Ouzou is in the Kabyle country, about thirty- five leagues from Blidah. We have a fort in that place foi the protection of the European villages. A few of oui men had died down there, from sickness or other causes, and four of our chasseurs were ordered there to replace those men and to mount their horses. That was right enough, of course, but it seemed to me very hard to make my men carry their cloaks and their baggage for thirty-five leagues under the burning sun of Africa. I have always been of opinion that the soldier ought to be taken care of as much as possible and I spent the rest of the day plaguing the commis saries to let us have old Lubin's one-horse car to carrj my chasseurs a business this old fellow had carried on for fifteen years past. At last my request wan acceded to. Next morning, before daybreak, having saddled mj horse and seen that my men were fully equipped, I gavt the word to march. But first I went to shake hands with my friend Jaquet, an attorney at Blidah. My horse was pawing the ground at the door. We drank a glass of kirsch. wasser that he had had from home ; then, after a hearty shake, I vaulted into my saddle, and rejoined my little detachment at a gallop. The old Jews' street was still silent and empty ; a 12 The Story of a Campaign in Kafylia, few women were sweeping the pavement, and were turning round to see the quartermaster darting past at full speed, with his sword jingling against his boot, and his white cap-cover floating over his shoulders. Very soon after leaving the Algiers Gate I overtook the cart, which was moving slowly along with my four chasseurs smoking their pipes in the early morning, and talking of anything that came into their heads. A little further on we fell into the Dalmatie road, a military road along the foot of the Atlas mountains, which was to lead us direct to Arba, the end of our first day's march. Never shall I forget the calm pleasure of our start, at that early hour when the air is still cool under the shadow of the mighty Atlas. The quails were calling and answering one another in the midst of the corn : these birds are innumerable in Algeria. At our right rose the Atlas mountains, with copses of mastic-trees covering their feet, with golden furze-bushes and oleander-trees ; from our left spread out the plain of Metidja, covered with rich crops, and traversed by a thousand little rills flowing from the neighbouringpasses. As the sun rose in the sky, the turtle-doves, the- nightingales, and other native birds raised their voices in the sycamores, and we were better able to distinguish through the shadow at the foot of the Nador the barracks of the Zouaves, whither I had so frequently accompanied my comrades, Rimbaud and Lauriston ; farther on, the great pyramidal mound of stones called the Queen's Tomb, and at the furthest horizon the high mountain of the Zachar. The prospect was of immense extent ; no one without leeingit could form any idea of the wealth of this country. Told ly a Chasseur d'Afnque. 13 If railroads liad been made in Algeria thirty yeara ago, villages would have been built by thousands along their lines, as they tell us they are in America ; and then we should have a richer France, and more beautiful than the old. But we want to see the villages first, before we lay down the rails, or make even common roads ; we bestow whole regions upon people who grow nothing, and who are opposed to the settlement of real colonists upon this promised land ; and, to crown all, we have set up those Arab bureaux. Perhaps you don't know what an Arab bureau is ; I will tell you ; it will not take me long. In the first place, Algeria is divided into three great provinces: Algiers in the centre; Oran, west; and Constantine, east. Each of these provinces is subdivided ; and these smaller divisions are administered, some by a civil government, by prefects, as in France, others are under military government by Arab bureaux. In these provinces the Arab bureaux possess full powers. They impose taxes ; they administer justice ; they superintend public education ; they even claim, authority in matters of religion. So it happens that the post of head of an Arab bureau, no matter how small it may be, is a capital berth, especially as regards the collection of taxes. A mere sub-lieutenant, over head and ears in debt, and ruined by gambling, luxury, and evil habits, when he has the good fortune to be set over some Arab bureau, pays off his debts in a very short time, buys an estate, rides blood horses, walks upon lion-skins and panther- skins ; in fact, lives in the style of a pacha and all upon a sub-lieutenant's pay, 14 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, Of course I shall not attempt to account for this phenomenon, or explain the mode of procedure of these gentlemen. That is their business ; and it is not the business of the army of Africa. A good soldier's duty is to fight when his country requires his services, and not to thrust his nose into doubtful matters. But you will understand that those fellows stick fast to their posts in proportion to their profits, and that the Arab bureaux look upon the civil administration as their most dangerous enemy. So we went on, thinking ; I upon my horse Negro, which seemed to me to be moving on thoughtfully like ourselves, raising his head, and looking around, with a low neigh ; and my men upon their low car, with old Lubin in front, in his weather-stained blouse, his frag- ment of an old hat hanging over his ear, crying at every step, " Hue, Grisette, hue !" which had not the least effect in inducing her to move faster. Now and then we met an Arab on the road, perched upon his horse with his knees up, as if he were sitting in an arm-chair, his long, full white burnouse covering him down to the stirrups, his long rifle slung over his shoulder ; further on, perhaps, a young woman return- ing from the neighbouring well, with her stone jug resting on her shoulder. Not a word passed between us. Those people always seemed to treat us with contempt, passing us without so muck as a sidelong glance. In the little village of Dalmatie, where we arrived about six in the morning, my men insisted on my taking a glass of wine, which I could not refuse. That thin Dalmatian wine is excellent ; but for all that I told them plainly, after wiping my moustache, that we would Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 15 have no more stoppages on the way, because an officer has his own duties to perform ; that if they behaved well they should have their share of fifty francs which my friend Jaquet had lent me, to lighten the fatigue of the journey ; but that if they played any tricks upon me, they should get nothing but their pay. They pro- mised that all should be well, and we started, having only about thirty kilometres further to go.* On my way I could not help smiling at the thought of the sportsmen in our country, wearying themselves from morning to night running after a hare, while from every clump of dwarf oaks, mastics, or aloes, interwoven with a long grass called alfa, flights of partridges and Carthage hens swarmed out in all directions. It is most assuredly a country well stocked with game ! As for agriculture, there is a profusion of every product. That is the country for our poor labourers to live in with their wives and children, who have to toil so hard to get a little barley and a few potatoes to grow out of the red sand of our mountains. But we should be far better without those Arab bureaux, which are the cause of perpetual wars in Africa ; and what farmers want in the very first place is peace. Sometimes, on raising our eyes, we would notice far over the mulberry, olive, and other trees, far up the hillside, an Arab shepherd leaning upon his long crook, and silently gazing upon us, with his lean, short-haired dog behind him, amongst the little flock of sheep. To complete the picture, we met from time to time a Kabyle, a native of another kind, darker, more spare, * A kilometre is 1,093 yards, therefore thirty kilometres aro about eighteen miles. Tr. 16 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, and yet more muscular than the Arab, and mostly em- ployed in trade. These men are seldom seen on horse- back, being genuine mountaineers. They passed by us wrapped in greasy burnouses, and driving their mules loaded with skins of oil. Oil is the chief article of the Kabyle trade. In every village is a press to which the natives bring their crops of olives. The Kabyles supply our. markets with oranges, citrons, peaches, pomegra- nates, melons, cucumbers 1 , peppercorns, the fruit of the egg-plant in a word, with all the fruits and vegetables which they grow around their villages. Corn is grown only by the Europeans. They make that their business. My chasseurs began with singing comic songs and laughing over them, and then they turned to some of the old songs they had sung in the Crimea, in Italy, in Mexico, and even at Luneville in Lorraine, before the retreat upon Metz and Sedan, when three out of four of our old comrades had fallen in arms. Thinking of those brave fellows, the little party looked grave. They had all done their duty, and now were lying in the mists of the Meuse and the Moselle. But is it not better to be dead, than to live and to remember that you have given up your sword to save your life and your munitions of war? At any rate, the dead feel no shame, and their memory animates the patriot's breast. At last, at the distance of four kilometres from the end of our first day's march, I went ahead, knowing that at Arba I should find my old comrade Eellin, who had been detached a fortnight before, along with twenty men, to guard a powder-train. On approaching Arba, I observed outside the walls the bivouac, the ammunition waggons, the tents, the. Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 17 picketed horses. I galloped there at once, and I can fancy I still see old Rellin, with his pointed beard, his kepi over one ear, busy mending his boots. I can still hear him calling to me, thrusting his head through his tattered tent " Hallo, Goguel ! is that you ? Come on, old fello\v Of course you have got the pay for my detachment ?" " No, that I have not. I have nothing for you but a good appetite, which I recommend to your care." He laughed, and answered, " Well, then, come off your horse." And turning to one of his chasseurs, who was rubbing down the horses a little further off, he cried " Mathis, picket the quartermaster's horse, and see that he is properly attended to." " Yes, quartermaster." " And inform the cook that there's work for another knife and fork." Then he came out, and taking me by the arm, he said " Now we'll have a glass of vermouth, till the cook has made all ready." We were passing the low wall of the bivouac, when, turning round again, with his hands hollowed on each side of his mouth, he shouted " Mathis, you will find us at the ' Colon Econome.' " The chasseur beckoned that he heard, and we threaded our way down a narrow passage in front of the bivouac. Arba is a large, fine European village, situated at the junction of the military road along the foot of the Atlas, with that from Algiers to Aumale ; its houses are in straight lines and substantially built, roofed with tiles, and well whitewashed. The village has a church, a guard-house, a large mill 18 The Story of a Campaign in Kalylia, upon the El-Arach, a noble square planted with trees, a fine fountain built in the form of a cross, and outside, just where we were encamped, a corn and cattle market, to which the neighbouring dealers resort twice in the week. A little further on, we entered the handsome inn called " Le Colon Econome," a corner house ; but we had scarcely had time to take our seats, when Mathis came to call us at twelve exactly, and we returned to the bivouac, where my men, who had just arrived, were sharing their comrades' mess. Eellin and I, seated upon our saddles in the shadow of his tent, dined off a boiled chicken and rice, and as I had remembered to bring a bottle of wine from the inn, we made ourselves very comfortable ; and then we had coffee. Whilst eating and drinking, Eellin informed me that a Ca'id in the neighbourhood of Aumale had thrown up his office and his pay, and declared war against us ; that the third and fourth squadrons of the regiment had started for Aumale by forced marches, leaving twenty baggage carts standing close by ours, under the guard of a few chasseurs ; and that he was expecting every minute the arrival of a battalion of the First Zouaves to escort the train. He informed me besides that the diligence from Algiers had ceased running, and that the Arabs had begun hostilities by cutting the telegraph wires. This news surprised me, for at Blidah that very morning there had been no mention of all this. Eellin assured me that the Arabs had been tempting our men to sell them chassepot cartridges, which made them suspect that something wrong was going on. Told by a Chasseur tfAfrique. 19 I was indeed surprised at first ; the notion of crossing swords with the Arabs then came over me, and filled me with excitement ; and thinking of these matters, I went to take an afternoon nap in Bellin's tent. About four o'clock he awoke me; we found all right, the chasseurs at their post, and we returned to the " Colon Econome." A crowd of Algerine corn and cattle dealers, who had no doubt come for next day's market, filled the public room, and were drinking beer. The innkeeper's two daughters found their hands full. These men, with their straw hats and dark faces, seemed to be very good fellows. The sight of our uniforms was some satisfaction to them; they invited us to a glass of beer with them ; Eellin accepted, and we were very soon deep in their politics. A little old white-headed man, with animated eyes and a sharp nose, argued that the Empire was the cause of all our misfortunes. He knew everything that had happened in the colony for forty years, and energetically thumped the table with his small fist. He told us of numberless abominable deeds done by the Arab bureaux, the congregations of Jesuits, the commercial companies, and many others besides. I don't know where the little man had picked up all this ; and all I can remember just now was his winding- up, when he cried " Yes, gentlemen, that's just how we stand. It's melancholy it is dreadful to think of! But wait a few days, and you will see worse coming. I am told that out at Aumale things are looking bad; that Mahomet-el-Mokrani is in open revolt. Well, I should not be surprised if Arab bureaux were at the bottom of that. It is said that the new governor .general, 20 The Stoiy of a Campaign in Kabylia, Monsieur de Grueydon, has arrived with full powers from the Republic, and that his first act will be the suppression of the Arab bureaux. I doubt it; for Monsieur de Gueydon is a Royalist, and under the influence of the priests ; but still the Arab bureaux, believing themselves in danger, may very likely get up a little insurrection, just as they have done so many times before, to prove oce more that they are indis- pensable." Not one of those dealers found fault with his speech ; on the contrary, they all seemed to be of his opinion, and as for us it was not our business, and we listened without making remarks of our own. Towards evening all those people went away, and we two remained at the inn alone, watching the movements of the innkeeper's daughters, Marguerite and Marie ; the first a dark-eyed, lively brunette ; the second a fair- haired girl. They were putting the house to-rights after the confusion left by the visitors. The younger ended her work by laying the cloth for supper ; and the landlord, Monsieur Pouchet a tall, thin man, of very respectable appearance pleased, no doubt, with our quiet behaviour, invited us to take our soup with his family, an invitation we accepted with great pleasure. I took good care to let everybody be seated first, and then managed to sit by the side of Mademoiselle Marie, whose blue eyes and fair hair reminded me of the young lasses of the Vosges. I should be very much puzzled to tell you what we had for supper ; but I think it was a haricot soup, fol- lowed by a leg of mutton, flavoured with garlic, and a salad; but this I can positively affirm, that when I returned to the bivouac about ten, I would willingly Told by a Chasseur d'Afrigue. 21 Lave given my quartermaster's stripes to be always seated at the side of Mademoiselle Marie ; and that that night, not having unpacked my tent, and sharing Eellin's with him, I prevented him from even closing his eyes by boring him with my enthusiastic admiration of that young lady. It was a magnificent, bright, and starlight night. The nightingales were chanting out of every orange grove with all the powers of their tuneful voices, and the sweet perfume of the flowers drove me crazy. " You are asleep, Bellin ? Are you not ashamed of yourself to sleep such a night as this ?" said I, nudging him with my elbow. " No, no I can hear you go on, go on !" said he, beginning to snore softly, " I am listening." II. AT daybreak I rose up ; I fed Negro, and woke up old Lubin, who made haste to give his nag his proven- der. The chasseurs were already preparing their coffee ; Mathis brought us ours ; then having saddled my horse, and my men having mounted their cart, I shook hands with Eellin, and we were at once on our way to Alma our second day's march. Passing the village, I stopped a couple of minutes at the " Colon Econome," in hopes of getting one more look at Mademoiselle Marie, and bidding her adieu ; but all was silent and motionless in the house, and it was only when we had gone a little further that, turn- ing my head round for a last parting glance at the inn, I saw Monsieur Pouchet opening his blind, and wavirg B 22 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, his farewell with his outstretched hand. Such is a soldier's life. You arrive with your heart perfectly sound. A pair of beautiful large eyes pierces you through and through. You would give anything to stay, but the bugle sounds, and " March !" For an hour I could think of nothing else ; then niy reflections took another turn. The appearance of the country was changing ; brush- wood was taking the place of cultivated land along both sides of our way. At one spot, looking round, we dis- tinguished at our left, over the plain, the distant sea and the city of Algiers, with its white houses seen against the blue sky all around the bay. The cart stopped, and my chasseurs and Lubin, gazing on the prospect, sniffed with satisfaction the smell of the sea, borne upon the breezes which came to us in gentle whiffs over the wide expanse. Then, resuming our way, we arrived at Fondouck, a small village, but girt round with fortifications. A pretty lively business is carried on here in wine and cattle ; and we were able to lay in a small stock of potatoes and bacon. But there was no wood, and we therefore left this place, fording the stream which comes down from the Atlas. But then began our miseries ; at every step the way became worse, rocks and rocks followed each other in endless succession ; from one rut you tumbled into another. The old horse was soon spent. Lubin swore, the chasseurs hallooed, but this did not help us. To complete our tale of misery, at two kilometres from the village the axle-tree of our poor cart snaps in two ; I must return at the gallop to look for a black- smith, while my chasseurs stand waiting. I am told Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 23 that there is one further on, on the road we are travel, ling. I trot back, I find the cart emptied ; the miser- able beast at last obeys the whip to induce him to move on a little ; of course we shout and cry again, and at last it begins to move slowly on, and at three kilo metres further on we come upon an old hut, where fortunately we find Eivero the blacksmith, a man from Mahon a little dark fellow, who is living there with his three children. As soon as we had arrived our miseries were for- gotten, and whilst the bellows were blowing, and the hammer ringing a merry tune upon the anvil, my chasseurs were hunting for wood, and artichokes, onions, and salad in the little vegetable garden behind the hut ; others cooked, and soon a smoking omelette was produced, made from the whites of the artichokes. This was the first I had ever tasted, and I declare to you that it was excellent. At length the cart was repaired, Eivero paid, and once more we started on our road, if that can be called a road where only a few tracks indistinctly marked out the way through cactuses, aloes, lentiscuses, rocks, hollows, and ruts of every size and shape. In <tn hour's time we had lost our reckonings com- pletely, and that pleasant refreshing smell of the sea, which we had enjoyed at Fondouck with every breeze, had brought clouds which broke over us with frightful violence. What an African storm is can only be understood by experience ; the incessant rolling of the thunder, the long downfall of torrents of rain, are enough to shake the stoutest heart. And the worst of it was that we should have been very much puzzled to know how to 24 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, get back, for we had completely lost our way ; when, straining our eyes in every direction after the heavy storm, I luckily made out some smoke across the low underwood. We made for the point at once, and in a few hundred yards reached an Arab hut, or gourbi, at the edge of a narrow rivulet. Fancy a charcoal-burner's hovel ; in the middle of it a few flaming logs ; three or four Arabs asleep, an old woman creeping close to the fire, a young Arab cutting up tobacco-leaves into strips, two lean dogs growling, and a swarthy child asleep upon a sheepskin. In this country this is called a gourbi. It was still raining ; and these people waiting for their coffee, and now suddenly roused, were much sur- prised to see in their midst a quartermaster on horse- back, chasseurs with their rifles slung over their shoulders and dripping like water-rats, then the cart with old Lubin in it. Their restless eyes expressed uneasiness. I asked them for coffee for my men and myself; the young lad made haste to get us some out of their kettle. After this I had only to ask our way, and the poor creatures showed it us through the little villages of St. Pierre and St. Paul. We reached Alma about six in the evening. This place consists of a long string of houses on each side of the road, crossed by a fine river, about as wide as our Meurthe, and which rushed with great speed over its gravelly bed, in issuing from the mountain's side. On the banks are large wash-houses, where the W(At n are seen on their knees, beating the linen clean on boards, just as they do in Fr^ce ; cattle troughs ; a church ; a gendarmerie ; gardens , Jms with large arch Told by a Chasseur $AfriqU6. 25 ways, where you may see carriages and people standing. But for the mulberry-trees and the olive-trees rising behind, you might think yourself in Europe. As the storm had saturated the ground, we could not bivouac ; and bidding my men to follow me, we found our way to the carriers' inn. This inn was just like ours at home in Lorraine ; there were the barn, the stables, the sheds, the large farmyard behind, full of geese, Guinea-fowls, and common poultry. I asked the landlord, a young man of thirty, for leave to put up our horses in his stable, and for the chasseurs to sleep in the barn. He willingly consented. After having got rid of their knapsacks, my men thought they would like to fish in the river. I saw no reason why they should not, and they set off. After having changed my clothes, I went to the con- tractor to exchange my orders for goods, and to the gendarmerie to get my road-bill signed. I might here tell you of my happy meeting with Brigadier Lefevre, a tall fellow of military bearing, and whose heart was ever in his hand, who invited me, according to custom, to take absinthe, and then to dinner ; I could tell you of the return of my chasseurs with a splendid basket of barbel, which they cooked themselves in the laundry ; and then, whilst we were sitting at dinner, in a large room papered with a fine picture of a lion-hunt, the arrival of the brigadier from the heights of the Beni-Aichia, who had the ague, and saw everything in gloomy colours, whilst we were sing- ing, jolly catches, and everything looked rose-coloured to us. Of course, I might easily expatiate upon this chapter of our march, and tell you of our visit to the " Sucking Calf," where Brigadier Lefevre was quite 26 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, at home; but these things would take too long to tell. But there is one thing which I must not omit, and that is the ai*rival at this place of the schoolmaster Wagner, from Rothau, whom you used to know formerly; you remember the little Alsacian school- master, with his red whiskers, his wide mouth, and his eyes like a pair of blue saucers. Brigadier Lefevre and I were chatting together and laughing and singing, when all at once comes out of a waggon stopped at the door a young woman, with her bundles and her bandboxes. The brigadier cries " Hallo ! here is Madame Wagner !" We help her to unpack, she is invited to a seat ; and great is our joy ; for a pretty face always gladdens a soldier's heart. This lady was talking to us about her husband, and their working the great farm of San Salvatore ; I was listening to her, not without great admiration of her rich brown hair, and white teeth, when down comes her husband in another waggon; he enters, I turn my head, and whom should I see but my old comrade, Wagner of Rothau. Yes, it was himself ; but he, too, had the ague, and he was as thin and dried up as a red herring. We recognise each other; he opens his arms, Crying " Montezuma Goguel, from St. Die, as I live !" And thereupon he bid me salute his wife, which I did with great pleasure. We drank, we talked of home, of our excursions to Fondoy in the Vosges, at Father Q-rollier's, the kirsch- wasser, the nice smoked bacon, the fat larks, the trout, Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 27 the crayfishes, the delicious white wine of Mutzig, till our mouths watered. Wagner's wife was laughing, the two brigadiers laughed too, the man from the Beni-Aichia forgot his ague. How could I do justice to my feelings of that evening? The delight of meeting a friend of one's youth at five hundred leagues from home in the heart of Africa is more than I can express. Here we stayed till five in the morning, when my chasseurs brought me back the horse, the cart, and old Lubin, all ready for a fresh start. Renewed embracings, and then farewell ! I mounted Negro, and having had no sleep for two nights running, I quietly fell asleep in my saddle, without knowing where we were going. Fortunately the road is a straight one ; and as from Alma to the river Isser it is thirty- six kilometres, I had plenty of time before me. Up to the brow of the Beni-Aichia we ascended, and I was asleep ; scarcely did I open my eyes now and then, as in a dream, to become partly conscious of the trees and bushes filing slowly past me. But at the top of the hill the sharp, cool air woke me up completely. The Djurjura, a giant peak of the Atlas, rose before us white with snow, and his great ramparts were spreading beneath our feet, along the plains of the Isser in Kabylia, This region is infested with lions. Africa lay green and smiling before us with her olive woods, her white villages, her mosques, and her blazing sun bathing all in light. No one would have suspected how soon the sword was to sweep through these fair /alleys, with fire and pillage in its tram. 28 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, From this point our road lay downward into the plain, leaving on our right that of Constantine, which passes through Palestro, two-thirds of whose popula- tion were doomed to extermination before a fortnight had passed away ! We had no suspicion of what was coming ; we went on in full confidence, and about twelve arrived at the Isser, a wide valley where several streams unite and descend into the sea. We passed over a bridge ; a few metres further on we found the great caravanserai, a vast square edifice, with a court in the middle, and a splendid syca- more-tree at the right of the gate, where formerly the caravans stopped, and now let to a Jewish merchant. About this building the Isser market is held full in the sunshine. At eight o'clock on Friday morning it is a silent desert ; at twelve o'clock 30,000 persons are crowding it and trading together. Oils, and corn of many kinds, tobacco, baskets full of roots, oranges and peaches, mountains of melons, booths five or six shelves deep loaded with game, are all heaped up together on this vast trodden-down field. The Kabyles bring here their oxen, their mules, their mares, their asses ; Jews are here in crowds, arguing and debating, just as they do at home ; the Kabyle mountaineers 1 sten in silence, with a frowning aspect ; Ca'ids arc gravely traversing the crowd, mounted on superb horses; spahis in scarlet cloaks are moving amongst them, to maintain order amidst this crowd. At five, not a soul is left ! It is all over. Thousands of sparrows, darting out of the caravanserai and the great sycamore, quarrel over the remains of the feast that are left for them. Told by a Chasseur tfAfnque. 29 Such is the market of Isser, one of the principal ones in Algeria. As it Was not Friday, all was quiet when we arrived. We halted at the wooden public-house kept by Mon- sieur Paul, a very good fellow, but so worn out with ague that he could scarcely stand. At this inn some officers were staying on their way from Dollys to Dia- el-Mizan, and it was full of people. We had to look out for another lodging further on, and were at last able to get shelter. I put up my horse in the stable, and my chasseurs began to make their soup. Here I was informed that at the caravanserai there was a quartermaster detached for duty with three men and six horses. Of course, I buckled on my sword, and started off to see who it was. The Jewish trader, who kept a Moorish cafe at the entrance, took me into the court of the caravanserai, which is surrounded with buildings, the roofs of which incline inwards to the court, and the walls of which are everywhere pierced with loopholes. He pointed out the stables to me, and the place where the detachment were lodging ; and imagine, if you can, my satisfaction at finding there in a little chamber, hung with smoked meats, and almost lined with bottles upon shelves, my old friend Collignon, busy putting his papers to rights. Fancy our mutual greetings, and the jollification which followed ! I must not stop to tell you these things, how- ever agreeable it may be to drink with an old comrade, and to talk of friends and neighbours that you have not seen'for years. It would be pleasant to write to you about these things, but you might think me rather too much given to gossiping, and therefore I will proceed. 30 The Story of a Campaign in Kalylia, Next morning, while taking a parting petit verre with Collignon, I could not but notice the prevailing uneasi- ness in people's countenances and conversation. Some traders from Dellys, who had come to market, were mentioning, at the inn, fires which had been seen in the direction of Aumale, market houses destroyed by the Kabyles, and other injuries done. Those people now and then cast a glance at me, to see what effect this news might produce upon me, but I only laughed at their dismal tales. I am not accus- tomed to trouble myself about coming evils. It seemed to them that the twelve native spahis, commanded by a native quartermaster, appeared not to believe much in the safety of the caravanserai, and the Isser market, and one of them at last said to me " Quartermaster, take my advice. Your next march is to Azib-Zamoun, only sixteen kilometres from this place a fine road all the way. Well, I think you had better remain here until twelve. French soldiers, even but five in number, would inspire more confidence than these spahis." "Come now!" I replied; "do you take me for a fool? My orders are to be at Azib-Zamoun before twelve. Suppose anything happened to my detach- ment, would you answer for them ?" At that moment my chasseurs were arriving at the door upon their cart. I came out, shaking hands with Collignon, and bestrode my horse, which Father Lubin, standing by, was holding by the bridle ; then we started. They tell that when terrible things are going to happen the earth trembles, and the sun hides his face ; and other similar tales, to show Nature's horror at the Told ~by a Chasseur cPAfrique. 31 wickedness of the world. I can only say that the weather just now was beautiful, and the larks were singing up in the sky, as if nothing unusual was pre- paring. We passed quietly through the small village of Bordj Mena'iel ; then we began our ascent along a road bordered by corn-fields at each side, up the steep height of Azib-Zamoun. I remember now that at the end of an hour's march we observed at the right-hand side of the road a pretty European house, such as a retired tradesman would enjoy living in a garden in front, inclosed by pali- sades, beds of artichokes, cauliflowers, cabbage-lettuces, radishes, and with a verandah before the door, quite hidden under convolvuluses, honeysuckles, and other flowering climbers hanging all round it. The orchard was full of European trees : there were cherry, plum, and apple-trees, and orange-trees in full bloom. I pulled up to look at this charming residence. My men saw nothing but the artichokes, and one of them said, " Quartermaster, it is an earthly paradise if one could but get in !" But there was a palisading all round ; and, besides, I could espy through the flowers, sitting under the verandah, a black-bearded gentleman, with piercing eyes, who did not look a likely man to allow us to rob his artichokes. So we pursued our way, and I have since learned that the road and bridge surveyors lived there. But I also learned a few days afterwards that that pretty place had been plundered by the Kabyles, its trees cut down, and several of the inhabitants killed. 32 The Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, Men act with the deepest villainy towards each other. Let them find a nest full of young, and they will leave nothing of it but blood and scattered feathers. Pursuing our way we came to Azib-Zamoun, where we pitched our tents. I filled up my cheque for our rations, and then went myself to the innkeeper and contractor, Monsieur Boucher. But scarcely had I opened iny lips to ask for our supply of provisions and fodder for our horses, when this Monsieur Boucher broke out into a furious rage, abused our army as a worthless encumbrance, and charged us with all the misfortunes of the country. Presently his wife came to help him to load us with insults. In a very short time I got angry, and shouted to them to hold their tongues, or I would have them both lashed with the ropes that we had brought to tie up our provender with, and have them brought before the Governor of Tizi-Ouzou, who might listen to their abusive language if he pleased. Then at last they subsided, and delivered in the goods in exchange for my orders. On my return to the bivouac, after eating our soup, and seeing that there were eight hours of daylight left, I decided upon doubling our march to reach Tizi-Ouzou that night. We raised our little camp, and as we were passing out of the village, the Bouchers, man and wife, stood shaking their fists at us. I laughed aloud at them. These poor creatures fell afterwards into the hands of the Kabyles, and must have had some sad thoughts ; by that time they must have found out that but for the soldiers their shop would not be worth much. Told by a Chasseur tfAfrique. 33 Such lessons cost dear ; but men, as it happens, learn best by experience. From Azib-Zamoun our road lay through the wide- spreading valley of the Sebaon, an impetuous stream, almost dry in June and July, but bordered at all times with reeds, tamarisks, and other plants. The barren, scrubby mountain-tops of Kabylia were spreading far away over our heads ; the river was rolling down into the plain. As we advanced, the features of the landscape became more and more striking ; a little to our right, standing out against the blue sky, shone the white walls of the National Fort, and the clearly denned road which winds in zigzag to its gate ; before another summit at our left glittered the Marabout Dubelloi, a little Arab hermitage distinguished by its^ crescent. When we had passed the marshal's camp, and the little village of Vin Blanc, we discerned at last, at the foot of those colossal mountain masses, upon a gently rising ground, the bordj or fortress of Tizi-Ouzou, In Africa the air is much purer and more transparent than in our misty climate, and objects can be made out at great distances. This fort, built upon a low hill scarcely higher than the fields of corn and barley, with its whitewashed wall three yards high, did not look at all imposing. In spite of my good-will, I formed at once a very poor opinion of it, the more because it hid from us the European and Arab villages, both lying on the other and furthest slope of the hill ; so that I could not help fancying the weary time we should have of it. But we should never despair ; and presently I will tell you of the most unexpected entertainment we re- ceived at Tizi-Ouzou to spend our time upon. 34 The Story of a Campaign in Kalylia, Before reaching the forb we had the pleasure of seeing the very beautiful fountain made by the Turks during the time of their occupation of the country. It lies on the left, somewhat below the road, and is surrounded by substantial masonry, even with the surface of the ground, and shaded by two splendid weeping willows. No water could be clearer, cooler, or sweeter than this, and those two fine willows, drooping their long branches and their pale foliage over the basin, produced an admirable effect. Almost every passer-by dismounts at this spring to water the mules and the horses. We did so too, and about six o'clock we arrived at Tizi-Ouzou, at last per- ceiving, on the opposite side of the hill, the European village, with its wide street, its church, its square bor- dered with lime-trees ; and, built on the side of the Dubelloi Mountain, the Arab village, its mosque, the governor's house, where lives Ca'id Ali, and all deeply embowered in the foliage of the orange-trees, the fig- trees, and the oleanders. This prospect was a cheerful one, and I promised myself often to visit both these villages. The fort itself, with its three gates opening towards Algiers, Bougie, and the Arab bureau, commanded the whole neighbourhood. The centre of it is the old fort, heavy and massive, built by the Turks, of quarried stone, twenty to thirty feet high, and furnished with embrasures. Around this central fort had risen a number of military works : the powder magazine, the hospital, the engineering works, two officers' tents, two long barracks of one story only, answering the double purpose of storehouses and soldiers' lodgings ; the whole was surrounded by a wall, several of these buildings Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 35 being themselves fortified, their windows facing the country strongly barred, and their only doors opening on the interior. III. OUR comrades received us with open arms, and the rest of the day was spent in talking over the news. The detachment of the First Eegiment of Chasseurs at Tizi-Ouzou consisted of a lieutenant, a sub-lieu- tenant, three quartermasters, two buglers, a blacksmith, sixty men, and seventy horses. My comrade, Quartermaster Ignar, was on duty that week. I made acquaintance, the same day, at the can- teen, with Quartermaster Deschar, a fine, brave soldier, for whom I have always felt the greatest respect. The next day, after our mess, Deschar, who had been in the artillery, and myself made the round of the fortress, both smoking our pipes ; for my first act, on arriving in any new place, is always to see clearly where I am. Prom the ramparts, there lay in all directions a wide prospect, along both sides of the valley. Des- char explained it all to me. "There," said he, pointing up the road, "there is the National Fort, at the distance of twenty- six kilo- metres* by the road, but in a straight line not more than ten or twelve. It is armed with six rifled guns, and garrisoned with eight hundred men, and is sup- plied with water from an excellent spring. It is to bo regretted that we have no spring water ; we have only tanks ; and our water may be cut off without much difficulty, which would be very awkward during the * Sixteen miles. 36 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia^ groat heats of May, June, and July. Between the National Fort and ourselves, at the bottom of that ravine, runs the Oued-Aissi, a small river rising in the Djurjura, and the water of which is as clear and cold as if it had just welled out of the rock-spring; it is full of good fish, as you will see by-and-by. The Oued- Aissi winds away behind that hill and falls into the Sebaon ; at the confluence of the two rivers is the Arab village of Si-kou-Mcdour, to which we sometimes have a niarch-out. All the mountains round about us are inhabited by Kabyles ; and it must be acknowledged that these men fight well. They are tribes of warriors, especially the Beni- Eaten and the Maatka. Look on that ridge. Don't you see the low white walls among the trees and bushes ? Would you not think those were hawks' nests? That is the village of Bou- noum. The Kabyles never build villages as we do by the river-sides ; they build retreats in the mountain- peaks; their women prefer fetching water in their pitchers every day at a distance of three or four miles ; and the men would rather go up and down the hills a thousand times with tbeir loads of oil, fruits, and vege- tables than trust themselves within our reach. I have even been of opinion that they never trusted anybody, neither the ancient Romans, nor the Arabs, nor the Turks. They have always more confidence in their rocks than in the words and promises of generals." " That is a mark of great want of confidence." " Yes, quarterm aster, and yet we cannot say they are altogether in the wrong, for generals and emperors have been known to break their word. These Beni- Eaten, these Maatka, and all the other Kabyles live, therefore, up in the air, and only pretend to submit Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 37 1 when they know themselves the weakest. Up in their villages, where the huts are dropped here and there without any order, like molehills in a field, they manu- facture all they want yataghans, rifles, powder and ball, and even bad money. As they refuse to trust us, we cannot be expected to trust them." " I am quite of your mind. What is that I see down there V" " That is the European cemetery, surrounded by a low wall. And that road winding through the valley is the mule-road to Dra-el-Mizan further on we lose sight of it in the deep gorges of Maatka." " And this, quartermaster, behind the hospital ?" " That is the burial-place of brave men. There lie the French who were slain in 1857, at the capture of the fort of the Beni-Eaten, when we completed the conquest of the country. Lower down, where the drain- age from the fort comes out, is the soldiers' garden, now let to old Antonio, a good fellow, who sells us vege- tables for our ordinary use ; besides which he keeps a small public-house, where now and then we get a glass of absinthe." Deschar was favouring me with all this information, and much besides, as we walked round the parapets. Then we came down into the village by the Bougie gate, and got a few pints of beer at the sign of " La Femme sans Tete," no great way from the soldiers' stables. The beer of this country is not to be despised before the month of May, and then you cannot always be drinking absinthe and vermouth. So there we were, leaning with our elbows on the table. I was looking out of window at the people coming and going in the street. Within an hour I had 86045 38 The Story of a Campaign in seen the black-bearded young curii pass by, with hia fcree-cornered hat under his arm ; then a pair of nuns vith the white band over the forehead, on their way to the girls' school ; and the schoolmaster Deveaux, formerly a sergeant of Zouaves, whom my friend Des- char called in by tapping at the window, was glad to accept a petit verre, without sitting down, before he opened his school. The brigadier of gendarmes came in to have a look at the new arrivals. What surprised me most of all was to see the forest- keeper, Nivoi, an old grey-headed man, and very deaf, who watched the forests belonging to the State in these parts. He, too, came to get a little refresh- ment across the counter, with his gun slung over his shoulder. Then I thought to myself, ' Why, Tizi-Ouzou is but an outlying part of France, where we have all the same people as at home the cures, and the cheres sceurs, and the forest-keepers, and the gendarmes ; as for the insurrections, the fires, the market-houses razed to the ground, the Beni-Raten and the Maatka, they are all a ridiculous practical joke nothing more." I even felt vexed. I found all these people's counte- nances so quiet and peaceable, that I said to myself again " Goguel, you are a fool to believe all the tales that you hear ; if these folks had any cause of uneasiness, wouldn't they look very different ? Oh, come, come ! there's nothing the matter at all. The game has been put off for a long while to come." But I was out in my reckoning. Hasty judgments are not to be depended upon. On Sunday, the 9th of April, Quartermaster Ignar, Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 39 of the fourth squadron, finished his week of duty, and now it was my turn. All went on quietly till the 12th. On that day I had to walk out the horses on the road to the National Fort. The chasseurs asked my permission to go as far as the Mill of St. Pierre a few kilometres from the fort and I consented. It is a French mill upon the Oued-Aissi, worked by Algerines. Their agent was there, with his wife and his sister-in-law. So we rode pleasantly down the ravine, which is luxuriantly planted everywhere ; the trees are tall and handsome, the cultivation high, and the whole prospect is cheerful and pleasing to the eye. The agent, a kind-hearted man, showed us his whole establishment with every attention ; after which we came back at the trot, for I was afraid we might have gone too far, and would be late back ; but we reached home in time for dinner ; and that same day, whilst we were all busy rubbing down in the stables under the fort, down the slope of the hill, Lieutenant Wolf, front the Arab bureau, arrived accompanied by a few horse- men. " Look well to your horses," said he, " and let them have a good feed ; for there is every probability that you will have to be in the saddle to-night." He went off, and the whole afternoon the place waa in a stir. The old spahi brigadier, Abd-el-Kader Suleiman, who had been for years connected with the Arab bureau, arrived at the top of his horse's speed at five in the afternoon. The noble animal's mane was flying wildly ; his long tail swept the ground. The rider looked no 40 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, less excited, with bis grey beard in unwonted disorder, and bis camel-bair scarf loosely rolled around bis wbite bood. I cried to bim " Well, Abd-el-Kader, wbat news ?" " Don't stop me, quartermaster," be replied, baiting for just a moment, and, in doing so, throwing back bis borse almost on bis haunches. " Ca'id Ali has revolted. Monsieur Goujon, the interpreter, went to speak with him last night, and we are afraid that be and his two spahis have been kept prisoners." And be urged his horse again on bis journey at full speed. I followed him at a distance, and at the moment I was entering in at the gate of Bougie, he was already at the bureau of Commandant Leblanc ; he sprang on bis horse and passed me like an arrow shot from a bow. You have never seen a horse thoroughly in hand unless you have seen an old Arab horseman flying down such a hill as that at full speed. Whilst he was on his way to carry orders elsewhere, I went up to our mess-room, where I found Quarter- masters Ignar and Brissard. " Goguel," said Brissard to me immediately, " here is news ; the lieutenant has ordered me to give him a list of all available horses, to make up three packets of cartridges per man, to prepare orders for six days' rations, and to bold ourselves in readiness to start at any moment." " Very good," said Ignar, " and now we shall get about and see the country ; in three days we shall be at Auniale." I did not agree with them ; and I told them that Ca'id Ali had revolted in our own neighbourhood, which would make it unnecessary for us to go any further. Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 41 " What can Ca'id All expect to do with his big cor- poration ?" said Brissard. " How can that fat pumpkin be kept on horseback ?" I remarked that Ca'id ALL would have no need to march at all; and that he had two brotliers-in-law, Mokraui and Said Ca'id, who would come out in his stead. Upon this Brissard went out to complete his prepa- rations, and about seven o'clock, Lieutenant Cayatte and Sub-Lieutenant Arissy came to give us notice that in an hour we must be ready, and that we should be in all forty men. They recommended us especially not to run, to make no noise, to avoid all that might arouse the enemy, and to be prepared for combat after having laid in six days' provisions. After these orders every man went about his own business to make ready, and at eight o'clock, after mustering, our officers divided the men into two com- panies of twenty men each, the first commanded by Lieutenant Cayatte ; Brissard and Ignar being quarter- masters ; the second by Lieutenant Arissy, and myself as non-commissioned officer. We were to leave in the fort behind us fifteen chas- seurs, a hundred and four mobilised men fgom the Cote-d'Or, five artillerymen under the command of a brigadier, and twenty privates commanded by Quarter- master Deschar, who held at the same time the post of adjutant. The commandant-in-chief of the place was Monsieur Leblanc, the head of the Arab bureau of Tizi-Ouzou. The Arab bureau consisted of Monsieur Sage, captain ; Wolf, lieutenant j Laforcade, sub-lieutenant ; and Mon- 42 The Story of a Campaign in Kalylia, sieur Groujon, interpreter, a very active young man. Add to these one guard of engineers, one guard on the battery,* a young assistant surgeon-major, fresh from college, and Monsieur Desjardins, and all are told. At half-past eight, every man being at his place in the ranks, Lieutenant Cayatte gave the word of com- mand to march, and we began to descend the hill into the village. Crossing the high street, Lieutenant Arissy asked me if I had room for his flask anywhere. A chasseur d'Afrique is never without a little corner for his flask. We halted for a moment at the door of the cafe Thibaud. Mademoiselle filled the flask with eau-de-vie, and offered us a petit verre of cognac, after which we rejoined the detachment, which was pursuing its way in silence along the high road. A dark night came on ; and a short distance further on we took the road to Si-kou-Mcdour, fording the Oued- Aissi. The horses were up to their saddle-girths in the water ; the reflection of the stars trembled in the waves. After reaching the other bank, for more than half an hour we had an almost impracticable road before us, beset with immense cactuses, whose sharp points pierced our clothes and drew blood ; but we went on without a complaint. About eleven, the dogs of Si-kou-Mcdour warned us by their barking that we were turning the village ; we were at no great distance from it, and a few minutes after we came out from that painful stage of our march upon a wide and undefined plain, as well as I was able to judge in that dark, wet night. Here the lieutenant ordered us to draw up in two ranks, then to dismount, and picket and tether our horses. Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 43 This being done, lie called us, the three quarter- masters, and told us to inform the men that we should pitch no tents, light no fires, and that they must make no noise. " The horses," said he, " are not to be unsaddled only unloaded; every man, after having loosed his horse's bridle, will lie close to his horse, his sword buckled on, his rifle under his hand, the bridle round his arm, to be ready to bridle and mount at the first signal. Of course, two sentinels will be placed, and will be relieved every hour. One of you will remain at the horses' heads for two hours, and a brigadier will station himself behind them at the same time ; each man will take his turn at this duty. I will stay awake while Monsieur Arissy rests ; then he will come to relieve me. At four in the morning the horses will have their rations, the coffee will be made, and at five we shall be in the saddle again." After these orders I took my first watch, the lieu- tenant lighted his pipe, and when the horses had been unloaded, silence fell upon the whole detachment. The night was very dark ; we could hear the waters of the Sebaon rushing over its stony bed, and at a greater distance the packs of jackals howling to each other across the valley. The silence was also broken occasionally by the neighing of the horses, which sometimes bit and fought with each other, sometimes too by the cries of the chasseurs, suddenly awoke, who began to abuse and threaten them. At the end of my two hours, I went to awake Ignat who lay asleep in his cloak. He is a very good fellow, but for all that he took it on himself to pretend, while 44 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, shaking himself awake, that I had not given him five minutes' sleep. Corporal Peron went also to awake his comrade, who, by what I could hear, was in no better humour than my friend was. At last I lay down at my horse's side, and went to sleep. Daybreak was just beginning to tinge the mountain summits, when my chasseur Capel woke me. " Here, quartermaster," said he, holding out to me a good quart of coffee, " this will warm you." Immediately I got on my legs and looked around me; we were very near Si-kou-Medour, whose mud- cabins, thatched with reeds, and whose little gardens, separated from each other by huge cactus hedges, lay only at fifty paces from us. We were occupying a narrow plateau behind the village, where a few stacks of straw were standing, fenced round with thorns. A few officers from the Arab bureau, who had arrived after us during the night, had taken up their quarters under shelter of the stacks ; their spahis were prancing on horseback around them. A crowd of Kabyles in groups of fifteen or twenty, habited in their long white burnouses, and their long rifles slung over their shoulders, were coming down from the neighbouring mountains. These were our own contingents, professedly come to support us. I could see all this at a glance. The children from Si-kou-Medour came, too, to mingle amongst us, and were watching us like little magpies, whilst the women congregating around ob- served us from under their veils, and the storks from the house-tops kept their eyes upon us too. Told by a Chasseur (PAfrique. 45 I had never seen so many storks in my life as there were there. I swallowed my coffee, then I joined in tasting the contents of Lieutenant Arissy's flask ; and I called my comrades, Avho wished him good morning. Lieutenant Cayatte came up immediately after ; he ordered the horses to be laden again, their nosebags to be removed, the ropes and the pickets to be taken up. The sun was shining in his glory. In all those Kabyles who were gravely advancing and halting a few paces from the bivouac, I could feel no confidence whatever. Presently the officers of the Arab bureau began to distribute cartridges among them ; mules with further supplies were still arriving, and the distribu- tions went on. The spahis, whose spirits were rising at the appear- ance of so many friends, were chattering with them ; and I said to Abd-el-Kader, who was approaching on horseback, offering him the flask at the same time " I say, corporal, what is the meaning of all these Bedouin fellows coming about us ? Where do they drop from ; and what do they want with us ?" He, looking furtively all round, to make sure that no one was observing him, raised his arm, took a good pull, then slowly passing his hand over his long grizzled moustaches, returned me the flask and replied " Caid Ali has revolted with all his village of Temda ; so you see, quartermaster, we have given notice to all the other tribes to send us men to help us to pillage. These are our friends ! We shall march in front, as usual ; they will follow behind. Ca'id Ali may probably fight, and we are distributing a few cartridges among 46 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, these men to load their guns with. There will be a razzia," he added, smiling. " But suppose our friends turn round upon us ?" said Brissard. "There is no danger of that, you will see. The women and the children have already left Temda ; we shall plunder everything, and then burn the village. There are plenty of cattle at Temda ; if I get a bullock, my friends the chasseurs shall have it." Such was the opinion of this veteran spahi of the Arab bureau. He had seen atrocities of every descrip- tion for thirty years past, and yet he was suspecting no harm this time. Then he darted away to meet fresh groups of Kabyles, and to show them where the car- tridges were being distributed. After a few minutes Lieutenant Cayatte formed us first into fours and then into twos, and placed himself at the head of the column, with a horseman at his side from the Arab bureau, who was to act as our guide > and so we proceeded quietly across the scrubby brush- wood, until we reached the line where the new road is marked out from Tizi-Ouzou to Bougie. Two or three hundred Kabyles were preceding us ; but noticing that the great body of them were not fol- lowing, the lieutenant halted the column, and the guide turned back to see what was delaying those men. He turned to inform us that the Kabyles were divid- ing themselves into two columns, one of which was skirting the foot of the mountains of the Beni-Eaten at our right, the other the banks of the Sebaon at OUT left. He added that these two columns would join ug before we reached Temda. The lieutenant, satisfied with this explanation, after Told by a Chasseur (KAfrique. 47 having made us dismount to tighten our girths, again gave the word to advance. We were proceeding thus, without haste. The road, which is but marked out as yet, follows that magnificent valley of the Sebaon in its whole length ; on each side rise high mountains dotted with olive-trees, out of which peep the white walls of the Kabyle villages. This was a magnificent sight under the slanting rays of the rising sun. The Sebaon, almost dried up, had left three-fourths of its bed bare and dry, and covered with boulders white as marble ; on the side that we were advancing on, the deeper water was winding against the steep bank amongst tamarisks and oleanders. From, time to time flights of teal, widgeon, storks, and other aquatic birds rose at our approach and vanished in the distance. The two columns from, the Arab bureau, having at last made up their minds to move, were accompanying us at a considerable distance the one in a long file, under the shadow of the mountains ; the other on the peb- bles and shingles of the river-bed, full in the sun. They had the appearance of an escort. The march had proceeded thus for an hour, when we discerned at a distance of five or six kilometres before us, across the valley, a high hill on the left, entirely bare of wood, and covered with green corn. The Sebaon made a circuit round the foot of this hill, which was swarming with thousands of Arabs. At the top of a gentle elevation on our right stood an Arab horseman in a black burnouse, and mounted on a black horse. As soon as this man saw us in the distance, he gal- loped down the hill and joined the rebels, 48 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, !No doubt the guide must have told the lieutenant that " here was the enemy," for these words were repeated down the line to the rear-guard in which I was riding. In twenty minutes we reached the elbow of the river, iu this place about half a mile wide, its bed being of hard gravel ; and the width of running water only about ten yards, flowing against the bank on our side. We forded this narrow stream, and on the bed of the river itself we formed in order of battle the first company to the front ; the second, which was mine, to the rear. A few hundred yards in front of us, at the foot of the hill, lay a great orchard of fig-trees, in which we could distinguish five or six Arab horsemen riding to and fro. I was told that these were part of the family of the revolted Ca'id. IV. WHILST we were forming in order of battle, our auxiliary columns of Kabyles had been collecting themselves into one body ; for already, for more than half an hour, the column to our left, which was moving in the gravel beds, had crossed the river, and that on our right, which was keeping to the foot of the moun- tains, had descended into the valley ; so that instead of having them in our flanks as supporters, we now had them in our rear. And all these fine men and brave allies, in their full white burnouses, their long beards, and their guns, stood quietly waiting on the bank, to see what we should do next. A. few indeed had discharged their old muskets, Told by a Chasseur cPAfrique. 49 for they knew that they could not carry half the distance. This was not our business ; this was the concern of the Arab bureau. Lieutenant Cayatte did not seem to trouble himself about them. ; he extended his company in skirmishing order and in five minutes, six saddles, in that fig-tree orchard, were emptied ; we learnt afterwards that two of the horsemen had died of their wounds ; the rest had gained their line of retreat, carrying off the wounded. Thus the fight commenced. And now bring the scene before your mind : The first company mount and go off at a gallop ; the Kabyles, concealed in the corn-fields, rise as fast as they can load, and fire upon them, rapidly retiring at the same time ; our men charge through the orchard and reach the top of the hill; we, in the bottom, formed in readiness impatient to be off and behind us the officers of the Arab bureau, haranguing our auxiliaries to persuade them to pass the Sebaon. The horseman Ali, of the Arab bureau, kept passing and repassing the river, to show them that it was not deep ; but these brave men, looking all the while as solemn as patriarchs, pretended neither to see nor to hear him, when a ball hit his horse just in the middle of the forehead, and laid it dead in the stream. Then all at once our good friends, in the utmost excitement, uttered loud shouts, and threw themselves into the water, some to secure the bridle, others the saddle of the poor beast. Ali reached the bank in safety, and came to join our reserves. During this time, the first company had got two- 50 The Story of a Campaign in Kalylia, thirds of the way up the hill; and the firing was becoming more rapid. All at once we saw, debouching in the rear of our first company on the right, a close column of Kabylcs, with their broad green and yellow standard displayed ; they were coming on full speed, to cut off the retreat of our men. Lieutenant Arissy became aware of the danger in a moment. "There is not a minute to lose," he cried; "draw swords ! forward ! charge !" And we darted off like a flash of lightning. In a very few moments we were in the orchard. There we had to pass in single file down a narrow ravine, and we threw ourselves out in line in the corn, just in front of the Kabyles, who did not wait for us a moment, but beat a hasty retreat. We continued our charge up the first third of the hill, near to three or four old buildings, where a cactua hedge terminated, cutting the hill diagonally. " Now, the best shots, dismount," cried the lieutenant. In a moment I was out of the saddle, and I handed the bridle to the trumpeter Lecomte, and asked him for his chassepot. Then I threaded the narrow passage between the buildings, in which ran a slender stream full of large stones, spotted with great stains of blood ; for it was by this way that the Kabyles had carried off their wounded. At the end of the narrow lane was a field of corn. I found close to me the brigadier Pcron, my orderly Cappel, the old chasseurs Audot and Kouverdier ; we knelt on one knee, and began firing. Two or three mounted chasseurs on the other side of Told ly a Chasseur d'Afrique. 51 the hedge behind us were also firing over the cactuses. Lieutenant Arissy, smiling, mounted on his little bay pony, was pointing for us with his sword, in which direction to fire. " To the right of the field there are two slipping away. Attention !" But they were approaching in closer and closer order, creeping on the ground, when with a sudden start the lieutenant cries " Every man to horse ! Quick, quick ! or we shall be outflanked." I cried to the skirmishers, " Let us cross the fence again." But I had hardly reached the other side when all our men were in full retreat. The trumpeter Lecomte was on the point of galloping off with my horse in his hand. I angrily called him back. He threw the bridle to me, and spurred away in great haste. I could hear the Kabyles running and calling to each other. My horse, seeing the others gone, became dangerously impatient to be gone too. I wanted to mount, but as the ground was on a slope, and the right side for getting on was down the incline beneath, I was unable to reach the stirrup ; my saddle was turn- ing round, my horse rearing to be gone. The Kabyles were coming closer. At last I got to the other, the wrong side. I pulled the saddle round, and with my rifle strap round my throat, and my sword between my legs, I contrived to get into the saddle. It was time indeed. I loosed the reins and the horse sprang off like lightning. The Kabyles, only twenty paces distant, 52 The Story of a Campaign in Kalylia^ had thought to take me alive ; they might have shot me a hundred times j their cruelty and hatred had saved my life. My horse, keeping the others in sight, darted down the hill, in the midst of balls flying like hail. I thus went on about a thousand yards, and then reached the brink of an immense declivity, at the foot of which stretched an arid plain ; a narrow stream of water, slightly embanked, was winding along it ; and behind the stream, amongst the tamarisks, our chasseurs of the first and second companies, deployed in skirmishing order, were kneeling ready to fire. On arriving at the edge of the declivity, I saw Bri- gadier Pcron, lying under his horse, unable to extricate his leg. I cried to him "Peron, fly ! the Kabyles are after us !" Then making a great effort, he drew out his leg; but his scabbard was also caught under the horse, and it was impossible to pull it out. I said to him " Take off your sword-belt, and leave your scabbard behind." He did so, and then descended the hill on all-fours, holding his gun in one hand and his sword-blade in the other. We had not reached the bottom of the hill when the Kabyles were already at the top. Fortunately our chasseurs in ambush gave these first arrivals a warm reception, which enabled us to join the detachment. As soon as we had arrived in the midst of our friends, I was glad to be able to dismount, to put my saddle right, and restore order in my equipment. Lieutenant Arissy, glad to see me again, came to shake hands with me. Told by a Chasseur cPAfrique. 53 At once we went again to present a new front in the dried-up bed of the river, and there we learnt with regret that the old chasseur Audot, as well as Kouverdier, had disappeared from our company. The chasseur Joseph, of the second company, had a ball in his thigh. Peron took possession of Eouverdier's horse, which had joined us. The Kabyles made as if they would have followed us. The black horseman, to lure them 011^ came down even to the foot of the hill, coolly discharged his rifle at us, and then calmly retreated with a slow step, till he reached his own men. The balls hailed round him, raising the dust, but we could not touch him. He was a splendid soldier. No one said it, but it was felt all the same. All the time of the firing our chasseurs were asking each other for cartridges ; and then it was discovered to our dismay that there remained for the whole detach- ment only three packets. . Not a very pleasant prospect, at a distance of seven miles from Tizi-Ouzou ! If the Kabyles would but have shown themselves in the plain, we might have charged them, sword in hand ; but they kept to the higher ground. We therefore recrossed the river, and again met our valuable auxiliaries, who had been so well supplied with cartridges. Their inward satisfaction was manifest in their countenances ; fortunately they had no suspicion of our want of ammunition, or I have no doubt they would have attacked us without further loss of time. All that was left for us to do was to return to Si-kou- Mddour, which we therefore did, and in a couple of hours we were again at our starting-point ; the horses, D '54 The Story oj a Campaign in Kabylia, unbridled and unloaded, were quietly eating their rations of oats in the same spot where we had bivouacked in the morning ; the men were cooking their soup, and six hundred yards in advance, in the direction of the enemy, stood one of our chasseurs on vedette. We spent the night on the same spot. Towards evening, at sunset, came a mule with a load of cartridges, sent to us by the commandant of the district, Leblanc. A strong guard was set around us, for the enemy could not be far off ; no doubt they would follow us. And all that night, thinking of my comrades who were lying dead behind the cactus hedge, I fancied I heard the jackals yelling to each other more loudly than the night before. I remarked upon it to old Abd-el-Kader, who replied that it was the rallying-cry of the Kabyles. How many sad thoughts passed then through my mind, reflecting that but for an instant of time I should have been consigned to the fate of the brave Eouverdier and of old Audot. I wondered how they had been taken ; no doubt Audot had fallen dead in the corn- field, where I last saw him. Eouverdier had run to the end of the fence, hoping to escape by the old buildings, where the Kabyles were lying in wait for him. My thoughts were none of the brightest. At last daylight came, and the guard was relieved. Our rascally auxiliaries, the Kabyles, who had not quite left us yet, came in the midst of us. There was a talk of reinforcements from Tizi-Ouzou, of chasseurs-a-pied, of artillerymen, and so on ; and a spahi even asserted that they were only a couple of miles over the Oued- Aissi. Our friends the Kabyles, seated in groups around us, were listening attentively, when in a moment, without lold ly a Chasseur d'Afrique. 55 any warning, the crack of a rifle is heard, no one can tell whence or how, and the sub-lieutenant, Arissy, who has been quietly watching his horses feed, with his hands crossed behind his back, utters a sudden cry ; he has just received a ball from behind, which has broken his hip-bone and passed into the body. The chasseurs were full of indignation ; the Kabyles spoke not a word. " G-oguel," cried Lieutenant Cayatte to me, turning sharp round, " go to Tizi-Ouzou for the doctor." I leaped into my saddle, and went off at full gallop. After having crossed the Oued-Aissi, I observed at a distance on the road a troop of chasseurs-a-pied, and of artillerymen; but there was no time either to tell news or ask for any. On arriving at the fort, I learned that the old com- mandant, Leblanc, had been relieved of his command, and Monsieur Letellier, a young chef de bataillon of the First Zouaves, appointed in his place. I waited upon him to report the occurrence which had brought me there. He put me a few questions, and then issued orders for the sergeant to go, and at the same time to harness a cart, and bring back the wounded man. I returned to the village slowly to give my horse breathing-time, when I met Sergeant Deveaux, the assistant to the schoolmaster at Tizi-Ouzou, who was coming up to the fort, and who lost no time in telling me that sixty-six chasseurs-a-pied, armed with chasse- pots, commanded by two officers, had arrived that very morning, on their road to the National Fort, with thirty men of the train, and twenty-four artificers belonging to the tenth company of artillery, commanded by Ser- geant-Major Erbs ; but that since our defeat the whole 56 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, tribe of the Bern-Eaten had risen, and that therefore this detachment would stay at Tizi-Ouzou; that the commandant of the National Fort was also relieved of his duties, and replaced "by Colonel Marchal, lieutenant- colonel of the Fourth Regiment of Chasseurs d'Af rique, who had refused to endanger his little detachment, and had ventured alone all through the insurgent country. " He will be there by this time," said the sergeant, " unless he has had his throat cut by the way." After having told me this news, the little Sergeant Deveaux said " I will leave you, for, you see, everybody is going up to the fort ; all Kabylia is in insurrection ; in a short time we shall be besieged. Colombain, the old school- master, has already driven his cow there ; but his wife and children are still at the school-house, securing what they can. Here come the two cheres soeurs, with a pair of heavy baskets, and Monsieur le Cure's men carrying all his treasures. Thibaud at the officers' cafe is pack- ing up his bottles, and there is Louis the butcher coming up trotting with his mule-cart ; he has made already half-a-dozen journeys." " Come now," said I to the sergeant ; " it is quite plain that there are a few cowards here. The Kabyles will never come within fire of the guns of this fortress." "Aha! Quartermaster Goguel," he answered, "I have not all my life been attached as assistant-master to a school. I have seen twenty years' service ; I have followed the First Zouaves in many expeditions, and I know those fellows better than you. In 1857 they gave us plenty of occupation, and long before that they had blockaded Colonel Beaupretre in the old fort. Beau- prctre! what a splen<J?4 fellow ! He was the man to Told oy a Chasseur d'dfrique. 57 deal with the Kabyles, and never spared their heads ; consequently they respect him still, and say among themselves, ' He was a brave man such a brave man !' With no more than thirty chasseurs in the fort, he kept them all at bay." Sergeant Deveaux was going to tell me the whole story, but I was in a hurry. " By-and-by," I cried ; " I can't stop now." And I went on my way. A couple of miles further on, I met our chasseurs, the drivers, and the artillerymen, who were returning at the double. I quickened my pace, and joined our detachment. Every man was on horseback. Sergeant-Major Bris- sard was calling over the muster-roll ; the Kabyle con- tingents standing around us were watching us keenly. Muster over, Lieutenant Cayatte, lighting his pipe, said quietly, " All are present." He formed us by twos, and we filed past our good friends the Kabyles, whose bronzed countenances and dark gleaming eyes were not expressive of much affec. tion for us. Brissard was in the front, I was in the centre, Ignar brought up the rear. A moment before starting, as Brissard was passing near me, I whispered " You see those fellows : this morning they were our friends ; so said the Arab bureau, at least. Now they are with the insurgents. Beware of the pass ! If they can get up their courage when they see themselves ten against one, and their cartridge-boxes full, they will fire a volley upon us ; not a man of the detachment will escape." *' Was that what you were thinking of, Gougel ?" 58 TJie Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, said he, with a knowing wink. " Well, the same notion has got into my head too." After the word of command " March," we had to leap a narrow ditch to get into the road. The lieute- nant placed himself at the very end of the column. Brissard passed first ; then the two trumpeters ; then the two baggage horses ; then all the chasseurs cleared it one after the other. On the other side of the ditch we halted to form in ranks. Three-fourths of the column had sheathed their swords and slung their rifles; there remained only one man and the lieute- nant. Our backs were turned to the Kabyles ; but I had instinctively turned round ; and as the last chasseur, Ketterling, a young Alsacian, was going to jump, his horse missed his footing, and he fell into the ditch, the lieutenant standing alone on the other side. Ketterling raised himself up again, and was on horseback in a moment ; and the lieutenant, having passed too, again commanded " March !" The Kabyles stood motionless. They dared not attack us yet. In two hours' time we were re-entering Tizi-Ouzou, headed by our trumpeter, having left Quartermaster Ignar with eight men, to keep the road open from Berton's Farm, at the distance of a mile and a half from the fort. All the villagers were coming up into the fort behind us, weeping and lamenting, and carrying beds, mat- tresses, furniture, and provisions. Never had I beheld such a scene of alarm and distress. We soldiers picketed our horses in the courtyard, Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 59 got into the barracks which we had left two days before. In the evening at nine, the night being very dark, the commandant of the place, Letellier, sent orders to Quartermaster Ignar to draw nearer with his men, and to guard the road by the Eoman fountain, which is only about six hundred yards from the fort, and on the road by which we had just entered the place. A quiet night followed. Next morning Lieutenant Cayatte took me with thirty men to make a reconnaissance on the road to Si-kou-Medour. Passing near to Ignar, he ordered him back to the fort ; then we pushed on as far as Berton's Farm, where we could see nothing remarkable. We therefore retraced our steps, returning by the old road, which runs by the gendarmerie, and passes the Arab cemetery. The lieutenant ascended a knoll on the left, which commands a view of the valley, and observing nothing, we descended, crossing the road to climb another hill in front of Tizi-Ouzou, where in 1857 stood a redoubt. The lieutenant, having examined the country round, said to me " Goguel, you will remain here with ten men and a corporal, You will throw out three vedettes one to watch in the direction of Maatka, one up the Valley of Sebaon, and the third at the foot of the mountain where the Marabout Dubelloi lives."* Then he went off with the rest of the men, after having instructed me, if I should notice anything, to send the corporal and report to the commandant. * A Marabout is a Maliommcdau priest; liis residence is also called a Marabout. Tr, 60 The Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, About ten, as I was quietly smoking my pipe and looking first one way and then another, suddenly I saw some Arabs crossing the river and approaching the house of the road surveyor. They broke in the door, and in two minutes the flames were leaping on the roof ; but the villains were out of the range of our rifles. Then I could seo them coming out and making for the Berton Farm. Notwithstanding the impossibility of hitting them, I tried to send a few bullets among them, but they fell short. Presently the buildings begin to blaze, the roof falls in, and the four walls alone remain standing. Whilst we were gazing in helpless dismay with arms crossed, there appeared in another direction from the entrance of the pass, and moving towards the Maatka, a long line of Arabs in white burnouses, leading their mules by the bridle. It was Ca'id All's army, passing from tribe to tribe, summoning them to join the insur- rection, or to be burnt out. As a matter of course, means such as these might swell the body of the insurgents at a very rapid rate. The green and yellow standards were flying in the front. The commandant, Letellier, sent a few shells amongst them, which served to drive them closer to the foot of the mountain; but the marching proceeded without Confusion. At nightfall Quartermaster Ignar came to recall me with my ten men ; we therefore fell back upon the fort. We had not been long back, when the pillagers were already swarming in the Arab village ; then they in- vaded the European village, which had been abandoned Told by a Chasseur cPAfnque. 61 the evening before. The commandant immediately ordered out the militia, supported by a few chasseurs- a-pied, to drive them out. A pretty shai'p fire of musketry followed, and many Kabyles were killed ; but others filled their places. V. WE were compelled to fall back, and a few minutes after, about ten, fire broke out in the village ; first in the house belonging to the military garden at the foot of the fort, facing the hospital ; then in the granaries, then at the gendarmerie, and then at last every house in the place burst into flames. Waves and spires of flame broke out everywhere, and the air was alive with myriads of flying sparks. I could hear the crash of falling roofs, and the dull rumble of tumbling walls, and in the streets, over which was spreading the red light of the conflagration, were seen the miscreants who were making all this havoc, traversing the place in all directions in their white cloaks, and with torches in their hands. The unfortunate village people, from their refuge in the fort, beheld the disappearance in smoke and ashes of what they had saved by so much labour. It was truly horrible. A few cannon-shots were fired at those wretches; but this was of no use. By night you can only fire at random. That same evening the pipes leading to the public fountain were cut off ; and now we had no water but what was in the tanks. 62 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, The next day, Sunday, the 16th April, the Comman- dant Letellier declared the state of siege, proclaimed martial law, and regulated the posts and appointed each man his duty. We were now blockaded and cut off from all communication with the outer world. The commandant ran up the standard of France upon the fort ; he took possession of the keys of the cisterns, and distributed rations in the following proportions : For men a litre and a half* of water per day ; women and children, half-rations ; horses, five litres.f Half the garrison were to mount guard on the battlements, while the other half were in reserve. The effective strength of the garrison now stood as follows : 104 mobiles from the Cote-d'Or, officered by a captain, a lieutenant, and a second lieutenant ; 57 Chasseurs d'Afrique, under the command of Lieutenant Cayatte ; 66 chasseurs on foot, commanded by Captain Truchy and Lieutenant Masso ; 50 soldiers of the first regiment of artillery, under Lieutenant Vale ; 24 artil- lery smiths of the 10th company, under Sergeant Erbs ; then the militia of the village to the number of 40, under the command of Captain Thibaud. The inhabitants of the European village encumbered the place, and the commandant found it no easy matter to house so many families ; separate accommodation was very scarce ; they had to be lodged anywhere, in the barracks, in the engineers' tents, and in those of the artillery and of the Arab bureau. We had besides about fifteen Arabs, who had been surprised by the insurrection, and the spahis, who were commanded by the Corporal Abd-el-Ivader Soliman. * About t\vo pints and a half 2'G4 pints, f About a gallon 8'8 pints. Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 63 For all these people provisions and water had to be ftnmd. Fortunately a herd of cattle belonging to a contractor of the National Fort had been obliged to fall back upon the place ; at the moment that the rising took place the herdsman had been unable to meet with any other refuge ; his herd consisted of twenty oxen. There were besides the cows and the cattle belonging to private individuals. In every possible nook and corner were these poor beasts stowed away, even in the dungeons, with such hay and straw as could be got together. On Tuesday, the 18th April, we heard the guns of the National Fort thundering against the enemy ; the Arabs were pressing us very closely. We had been unable to man the redan of the gate of the Arab bureau, on account of its extent ; this gate, therefore, was left to its fate. It was of solid timber for about two yards of its height ; its upper part was of strong wooden bars, and the engineers had built be- hind it a dry stone wall. The redan of the Bougie gate remained in our pos- session to the last, because Commandant Letellier had lost no time in constructing in front of it epaulementa and intrenchments, in which the sentinels found cover. All the guns we had to defend the place were smooth- bores : two mortars, fifteen-pounders ; three four- pounders, and two small mortars, generally called "crapauds." The Kabyles, seeing from afar that the gate of the Arab bureau was unguarded from the outside, hoped to obtain possession of it. They immediately set to work, and the very first night, intrenching themselves in their covered ways, they had thrown up sufficient earth to 64 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, attract our notice. For several nights afterwards they carried on their work with the same zeal. On that day there was continual firing ; they dis- charged a plunging fire into the place. Then, finding out that they had made a mistake in setting fire to the European village before pillaging it, every night was heard the crashing of timbers, whilst they were carrying off half-burnt beams, windows, and doors, and even tiles from amongst the ruins. Sometimes they fell out about the division of the booty; then there would follow a loud clattering of sticks amongst the disputants. As the colonists at Tizi-Ouzou had sown all the fields around the place, with the object of applying the proceeds to the relief of the victims of the war with Prussia, barley and beans were growing in great luxuri- ance up to the very foot of the ramparts. These rich crops were a serious hindrance to the defence. The Arabs glided through the long grasses, and by night crept close to the walls, uttering coarse insults in French against the cure, the cheres sceurs, and others, threatening to cut all our throats within four or five days, and bidding us prepare ourselves. And what was the use then of firing into the long rank grass at the miscreants who were creeping like snakes amongst it ? It would have been a waste of powder and shot. But we might have joked over these small grievances, had it not been for the burning thirst the time for which was fast coming on. I don't know a worse pain in the world than thirst. By the 20th of April we were already suffering con- siderably with our one litre and a half of water, of Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 65 which one-fourth was for coffee, another fourth to drink, and the rest for soup. This was already trying enough ; when the rations were reduced to one litre per man, and three for the horses. You can form no idea of the intense misery of this privation, both for men and for beasts. If you had but seen our oxen wandering without a purpose here and there about the prison courts of the Arabs, and in the fort, lowing deeply from their chests, cries which seemed to issue with difficulty from their dried- up lungs ; if you had seen them carrying their heads low, eyes starting from their heads, nostrils dis- tended and dry, and looking like desiccated carcasses, you would have shuddered ; the meat, when they were killed, was redder than ham. And the sheep and the goats, they were to be seen swallowing the most refuse of bits of paper! And we men every one of us with our faces black with dirt and powder, for we had left off washing ourselves you should have seen us ! With something over our faces that felt like a mask of plastered dirt, we were objects of pity to one another. This was suffering indeed ! and you may be sure that our sensations filled us with rage against the villains who had brought us to this condition. But they were more than a hundred to one ; others by thousands were swarming far out of the reach of our guns ; they kept every road and every pass. All the night through, in the midst of the deep silence, we could hear something or other hammering at the smithy they had set up in the church of Tizi- Ouzou. In the morning, when they were repairing in troops to the trenches and distributing the men to their 60 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, posts, Commandant Letellier never lost the opportunity of sending tliem a few shells ; but during the daytime, whilst the burning heat of the sun beat upon the fort, all was quiet ; for those wretches had resolved to re- duce us by hunger and thirst. I felt certain that Arabs and other traitors shut in with us were keeping our besiegers fully acquainted with all that was going on within. This became evi- dent on the 22nd April. On that day, a few minutes before noon, the whole garrison received notice that at noon exactly a sortie would be made to destroy the Kabyle works, which were harassing us at the gate of the Arab bureau. It was quite as well that the order was given so close upon the time for the attack, since the enemy learnt our in- tention almost the next moment. They were not prepared to receive us ; they required time to call in reinforcements. This will account easily for the sudden appearance of the bearer of a flag of truce at the gate of Bougie ; he held in his hand a reed with a sheet of blue lawyer's paper at the end of it. " Let him in," said the commandant, who guessed the trick in a moment. He was an old grey-bearded Kabyle, acting the saint the man of peace. The commandant from the niidst of his officers asked, " What is your business ?" The fellow replied that he had succeeded in obtaining from his fellow-countrymen, before they stormed the place, that the commandant should be invited to capitulate; and that if he consented, the garrison, the women and the children, should be conveyed in safety to Dellys. " He was an old grey-bearded Kabyle.' 1 Campaign in Kabylia.~\ [I'age 66. Told ly a Chasseur cPAfrique. 67 tf Are you in earnest ?" cried the commandant. "You will see presently how we capitulate." Then, turning to the corporal of gendarmerie, he said " Keep this man in sight, and we will resume our conference by-and-by." And at once, with his sword at his side, his revolver in his band, and his field-glass under his arm, he took the command of tbe troops who were standing in readiness behind the gate. I remained with twelve men on the bastion of the Arab bureau ; Ignar, with the same number, was on the engineers' bastion. The gate lay between us. Lieutenant Cayatte and Quartermaster Brissard, with five chasseurs, remained in reserve at the sortie gate. Ignar and I, with our rifles in the embrasures, were to cover the retreat. Sergeant Erbs, with a fifteen-pounder, now and then threw a shell into the village, to prevent the Arabs from coming in that direc- tion to the support of their friends. The troops forming the sallying party consisted of chasseurs-a-pied, mobiles, a few artillerymen, and the militia, with spades and pickaxes to destroy the Kabyle works. A small four-pounder, worked by five gunners and a corporal, was to support the attack. Of course the engineers had removed the dry stone wall which had been built against the gate. The gate was thrown open wide, and our men dashed out at the charge step. The Kabyles in their works were not more than thirty yards away from us. As long as I live I shall have that spectacle before, my eyes. The soldiers yelled and shouted. 68 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, Six paces in front ran Monsieur Goujon, the inter- preter. The first Arab who showed his head above the covered way he shot dead ; then he leaped in, the butt- end of his rifle rapidly rising and falling. Captain Truchy followed close upon his footsteps ; then the whole body of the chasseurs, with fixed bayonets. There were shouts and howls of rage be- neath us, under the battlements, and frightful curses filled the air and made us shudder. The Arabs only stood the assault a very few minutes, and then fell back; their wounded, after dragging themselves a few yards, dropped. This was the cause, a few days after, of a frightful infection. One of those wretches having dropped just before the redan, the corpse began to decay in the place where he fell, for neither the Arabs nor ourselves could remove it. But to return to the sortie. In a few minutes, from the top of the battlements, we saw a cloud of Arabs joining down. In spite of the grape-shot they came by thousands. They seemed to issue from the ground. Our volleys, every one of which tore right through the mass of them, seemed only to excite them to fury. The commandant saw them, sounded a retreat, and 'n a moment our men withdrew precipitately, and the *ate was closed. The militia and artillerymen had destroyed the >vorks of the Kabyles, and filled up their covered ways ; ind, therefore, the principal object of the sortie had :>een achieved. But all the remainder of that day and light not a man was allowed to close his eyes. "Attention! Every man on the ramparts!" had >cen the order of Commandant Letellicr. He was right, for we were in the middle of a ring of Told by a Chasseur tfAfrique. 69 ITabyles, who were all beside themselves with blind rage ; their standards were flying in all directions. I should never have thought it possible there could be so many Kabyles. We were expecting them every mo- ment to open the assault; but no doubt they had orders from their officers to wait for a more favourable opportunity; and they were hoping to reduce us by thirst. This excitement abated during the night. They had suffered great losses. Our casualties were : one chas- seur, unfortunately left amongst the enemy; and an old corporal in the artillery, who had received a wound in the head, of which he died in hospital. Quarter- master Martin was also severely bitten in the thumb by a Kabyle. After that 22nd of April, the horses began to perish. To bury them seemed almost impossible ; a wide and deep pit made behind the powder magazine was soon filled up. Besides the misery of the horses there was that of the cattle, which were dropping with weakness. I can still fancy I see the old schoolmaster, Colom- bian, a little shrivelled old man, wrapped up in his black and greasy cape, his old battered hat lying over one ear, coming up the canteen, followed by his cow and her calf, which never left him now. I can hear him making his doleful request " Ah, gentlemen officers, pray have pity on my poor cow ! It is all we have got. What is to become of us my wife, my children, and myself without our cow ? Do give us a little water, I beg of you ! See how the poor beasts follow me everywhere !" You may fancy the kind of reception we gave him. Only to hear him asking for w ter was enough to put 70 The Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, ns in a terrible rage ; we were nearly pitching him out of the window. This poor old man used every day to climb up the young plane-trees in the square, the leaves of which he pulled off for his cow. The Kabyles, sighting him from afar, sent bullets flying amongst the boughs, but he never cared. It was of no use calling out to him to come down ; he would not listen to us. The courageous old man succeeded in saving the lives of both his cow and his calf. He richly de- served it. I remember, about that time, a strange and even moving spectacle. A civil engineer, whose name I cannot at present remember, had some thirty asses in- side the fort ; the poor brutes had had no water for several days ; their ears were hanging low ; their tongues were protruding; they were a melancholy sight. At last when they "were beginning to die, and it would have been troublesome work to bury them, it was decided that it would be best to let them go loose, and trust to chance. They were all branded with a hot iron, and the engineer hoped, no doubt, that it would prove the best way to save them and get them back, if we should be rescued from our dreadful position. I was standing just by the redan of the Bougie gate, when they were all brought in a string, to be set at liberty. They could hardly stand ; and it was found very difficult to get them to understand that what we were doing was for their advantage ; they would not move on to the glacis ; aud they had to be pushed on from behind, one after the other. But scarcely had Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 71 they snuffed the open air of the country, when their long ears rose upright again, and they began to trot like hares in the direction of the fountain. They smelt the water at the distance of three-quarters of a mile. Seeing them galloping off at this rate in a long string, with spirits revived, we thought we should have liked to follow them. Since the mishap to Lieutenant Arissy, I had not forgotten to go and see him every day at the hospital. It would be difficult to give you any proper concep- tion of that little whitewashed room that filthy bed, and that almost unbearable odour. Water was wanting, and the bandages could not be washed. There is no need to say more. And now let me declare the truth. In the shop- windows at Paris and elsewhere, you always see pictures of the cheres scours and of Monsieur le Cure seated by the bedsides of the wounded, and succouring the wounded even in the field of battle ; but those we had at Tizi-Ousou were never seen to do this, and remained prudently out of the reach of harm. This is known to all the inhabitants of the fort and the whole garrison. No one will deny it. Surely pictures might be drawn somewhat in harmony with facts. At any rate it would save us the pain of seeing folks shrugging their shoulders at such things as mere fancies. In consequence of this complete isolation, my brave and good lieutenant, whom I had known formerly so gay and so fond of his laugh, was in a state of complete depression. How the sight of him grieved me, and how glad he was to get a little news from the outside world I 72 The Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, Sometimes he boiled over with excitement and would cry " My dear Goguel, is it not melancholy ? Here am I escaped out of Sedan ; here am I, who was in that famous charge in which our regiment conducted itself so nobly, only spared to come here and catch a stray bullet in bivouac after a skirmish. Ah ! if it had but struck me in the heart, I should have been happy to dieJ" Then his feelings would overpower him, and the tears came. You may be sure that these things did not tend to cheerfulness, and I often said that if we ever came out of that hole, the Kabyles would have to smart for it. I pressed the handle of my sword, and thought " You will have a bad time of it when I hear the charge sounded! We will pay you off for what we have suffered through you ! You'll smart !" On their side, the miscreants were no doubt enter- taining themselves with similar reflections. Every morning I could see them with upturned faces, in their trenches, sharpening their daggers, as if they were saying " Make your throats ready ! here's something for you ! Your tanks must be getting empty ; in a very short time you won't care much for your meat !" We were at that time close upon the month of May ; every day it grew hotter ; and in our fort, from nine in the morning till seven in the evening, when the glaring sun of Africa was flooding our white walls with dazzling light and heat, and there was neither vegetation nor shade, we almost visibly dried up. Nothing stirred : there was stillness everywhere ; even our spahis, who Told by a Chasseur tfAfrique. 73 are better able to bear thirst than we are, sat motion- less in their places, with knees drawn up, the head bowed low in a deep stupor. The Arabs have always one consolation under every trouble. They say, " It is written ;" but this mode of reconciling themselves with misfortune did not suit me, and I was resolved to die in the defence of my life. But nevertheless, to be shut up in a place like a living cemetery, and be obliged to mount guard around it in my regular turn, without ever being able to cross swords with the enemy ; to be ever dreaming of drink- ing, and to imagine what a pleasure it would be to draw a long draught of cool beer, and to devise to myself a succession of such illusions, and find them all a deception, this was terrible to bear. Sometimes clouds would pass over our heads, and then we would hopefully say to one another, " It will rain soon." But the clouds floated away amongst the olive-clad mountains, the sun came out fiercer than ever, and we were left parched and dried like fishes on the banks when the water has retired. Sometimes we fancied we could hear a distant storm. But it turned out to be the cannon of the National Fort, or of Dollys, or of Dra-el-Mizan ! The insurrec- tion was spreading in all directions. VI. I AM not altogether ashamed to confess that, in those awful times, I often wished myself back again at St. Die, in the Vosges, shaded by the tall fir-trees, lying on the banks of a cool running stream ; and that at 74 The Story of a Campaign in Rabylia, night time, with my cloak wrapped round my head, in some corner, when I was off duty, I many a time called myself a consummate fool to have come and thrust myself into this hornets' nest at Tizi-Ouzou, whilst so many others, who had remained at home, deaf to the calls of the Provisional Government, were enjoying their regular three meals a day, washed down with good wine, and quietly smoking their pipes at the public- house in the evening, shuffling their cards, and talking over the news of the day. Ah ! how often did I say to myself " Oh, Goguel ! what a fool you must be to have en- listed without a moment's reflection, whilst so many thousands of lads richer than you, and with more to defend, have never stirred from home ! Those fellows will become mayors, they will be members of the Conseil General, deputies for the department ; they will be married to pretty girls, who might very likely have given the preference to you, if you had been there ; and here are you, in this awful mess, perishing with thirst ; with a prospect before you of having your head carried about from one village to another, stuck on the end of a pole ! Poor, poor Goguel ! if you had but shown a little common sense at the right moment ! Of course, if everybody had been compelled to serve, well, you would only have been doing your duty when you marched away from your comfortable home; but as things are, I must confess you are a fool!" Such weie my melancholy reflections. It moved my indignation to see that the Kabyles, instead of attacking us, wanted to catch us alive L : ke rats in a trap. At last the patience of these creatures came to an Told by a Chasseur cTAfrique. 75 end. They thought us at the last extremity, when one evening the clouds, which had been so long coming and going away again, gathered in masses over the fort, the lightnings began to play, arid we had an abundant downfall. What a delightful event both for men and cattle ! Now we had water in plenty and we enjoyed it as we had never enjoyed water before. The rain came down from every roof, and the cisterns were more than half full. The Arabs burst out into a furious rage. " Ah ! French dogs," they yelled from their covered ways, "it is lucky for you that Allah has thought of you ! You have had five or six days added to your lives ; but you will have lost nothing by waiting !" Soon we saw them trooping away in gangs to the neighbouring villages, whence they brought back timbers, planks, bundles of sticks. All this material was piled up behind a mound, facing the gate of the Arab bureau ; and the garrison came to the conclusion that the enemy had decided upon a final assault, and that they would dash in at the first signal, each man with a faggot on his shoulder, which they would pile up at the foot of the wall, to the height of the rampart, when we should meet them hand to hand. We were prepared to give them a warm reception. The attack was expected that night. I was with the reserves at the Arab bureau. The moon was shining brilliantly. Our stables lay close to that bureau ; the ridge of the roof was leaning against the wall of the fort ; and within the court its edge rested upon posts, like a cartshed. Underneath, the horses and mules stood in rows, and inside the back wall, pierced with 76 The Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, loopholes, stood our spaliis with arms ready, watching the open country. I had orders to prevent the least interchange of words between our men and the enemy ; for the Kabyles in their trenches were not many yards from us. So I walked backwards and forwards, smoking my cigarette, listening and observing. At the stroke of midnight I woke Corporal Peron, who mounted guard in his turn ; then, enveloped in my full white cloak, I lay down at full length behind the horses, upon a bundle of straw, under the shelter of the roof, and fell into a sound sleep. How long I slept I cannot tell, nor what the time was when, from my sleeping-place, I saw between the horses' feet an immense hole in the wall, just beneath the manger. " Aha !" said I, thinking in a moment of the Kabyles, " this is the way they mean to come in !" And immediately a black-boarded Kabyle face ap- peared through the hole ; the eyes were gleaming fiercely, like a tiger's about to pounce on his victim. I shuddered ; horror overcame me, and seemed to petrify me. The man held in his hand a long yataghan, and was creeping up in the direction where I lay. Then I saw another, then a third, then more and more. I struggled to rise, I made terrible efforts to cry for help, to call the men to arms. It was impossible ! A heavy weight upon my chest bore me down each time that I rose. The first Kabyle has reached me. He glares upon me in the dark shadow with cruel, hateful eyes ; his arm is lifted high, the yataghan plunges down, and I shiver Told ly a Chasseur cFAfrique. 77 under the deadly wound "with which I am pierced through the body ; I feel the hot blood bubbling from the wound ! Then I am able to shout " Comrades, to the rescue !" The sentinel, much surprised, turns round and asks " What is the matter with you, quartermaster ?" I answer, with both hands upon my hot and satu- rated chest " I am wounded ! I am losing blood fast !" But, strange to say, there was unbroken silence every- where. I rose upon my feet, and what did I see by the clear moonshine ? My white cloak stained and dis- coloured from head to foot. I had just had a night- mare ; and all my alarm I found was caused by a spahi, who had passed by me in haste to carry a pot of hot coffee to a thirsty comrade, and stumbling over a stone, had fallen himself, and discharged its whole contents over me ! This was the story of my supposing myself to be covered with blood ! This was great fun for all our comrades next day, when I gave them an account of my dream. All the garrison enjoyed a hearty laugh, and a good laugh was of rare occurrence in these days ; it was a momentary relief to our misery. Unfortunately, the expected assault never took place. The Kabyles, far from meditating an attack by storm, had built up barracks with their timber, to watch us more at their ease. Several men had been killed on the ramparts ; seventeen horses had died of thirst ; of the cattle only a fourth were left ; the water in the cisterns had again sunk low ; the well at the end of the lightning-conductor had several times been examined 78 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, for water in vain ; help was hoped for expected and none came ! We might easily have fought our way out sword in hand, and with fixed bayonets; but the women and children could not have followed us, and Commandant Letellier was not the man to leave them behind. Be- sides, not a man amongst us would have encouraged such a thought ; we would have died to the last man sooner than be guilty of such cowardice I will do our men that justice. We therefore hoped now only in the column which we were expecting to come to our relief. On the llth of May, being on guard at the powder- magazine bastion, as I was crossing the place about noon, to get my dinner, passing by the waggons of MM. Monte of Algiers, who had put them into the -fort for safety, and turning round before entering the canteen, I observed an immense column of smoke or dust slowly rolling through the air in the far distance. " What is that ?" I asked of one of the drivers. " That, quartermaster, is the caravanserai of Azib- Zamoun on fire." I went in, supposing that he was right. But in the evening, after having relieved my sen- tinels, just as I was about to lie on my camp-bed to enjoy a sleep, the distant booming of a gun made me lift up my head in haste. I listened breathlessly. A second faint report reached the fort, and I exclaimed " If I hear a third, it is the signal, and we are eaved !" And then came the third report ; but so faint in the distance, that without specially directing the attention to it, it might have escaped notice. Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 79 I could have wished to announce the good news to my comrades ; but being on duty, I was unable to quit my post. The whole of that night the Kabyles kept up an in- cessant shouting and firing, no doubt to prevent us from hearing or seeing any further signals. But at four o'clock the old corporal, Abd-el-Kader, appeared, and said to me, with hand outstretched to- wards the gate of the Arab bureau " There are no more Kabyles that way, quarter- master ; they are all gone to the Bougie gate." I could scarcely believe it ; but presently I saw a company of the Mobiles from the Cote-d'Or moving rapidly out from the ramparts, and setting to work to cut corn for the cattle; then, near the marshal's camp, at the angle of the road, prolonged clouds of dust, giving unmistakable notice of a column on the march. Immediately the news spread that the siege was raised, and that we were relieved ! You may imagine, if you can, the joyous excitement of unhappy wretches so long shut up, as they broke out to assure themselves of the fact with their own eyes. Two hours afterwards we saw the little village of Vin Blanc in flames ; then a French officer, riding in at full spe'ed upon a horse covered with foam, to announce to us the arrival of the column of General Lallemand, composed of eight thousand men, ten field guns, and two mitrailleuses. How could I describe to you the enthusiasm of our men, the loud cries in all directions of " Vive la France! Vive la Ei'publique !" The Kabyles retired in haste to the mountains ; they 80 The Story oj a Campaign in Kabylia, concentrated at the Arab village, near the Marabout Dubelloi. A poor gun- driver ran to the ramparts to enjoy the happy sight. I can still see him running up, his face beaming with delight, and leaning over an embrasure, when suddenly he fell back and dropped, his head streaming with blood. The last ball shot by the Kabyles sped for him. They carried him away and buried him. " Come away ! come away !" cried Lieutenant Cay- atte, " we have no time to lose. Bridle your horses, , and take them out to water." But how were we to put their bridles on? They could scarcely open their cracked and chapped mouths. However, we got on their backs and started. I had caught up a piece of soap ; and just as we arrived at the Turkish fountain, the head of the column was beginning to debouch past it ; General Lallemand, seeing the condition we were in, and our haste to reach the water, could not help smiling. Without actually seeing it, you can form no idea of the pleasure of wash- ing, and dipping, and soaping, and rubbing down with sweet, clear, cool water. The whole column was filing past us ; presently came past our own regiment. Our regiment ! That is a pleasure you don't know, because you have never served. His regiment, I tell you, is the soldier's family ; his regiment is everything to him ! The little shakos, under their white sun-covers, the sky-blue jackets, the full, red, flapping trousers, the broad white shoulder-belts, advanced with measured tramp through clouds of dust ; the merry jingling of swords, the neighing of horses once again cheered our listening ears ; we gazed our fill. Told ly a Chasseur ffAfrique. 81 Suddenly a voice cried, " Goguel !" And my old comrade, Eellin, threw himself from his horse ; other non-commissioned officers followed him. The hearty, vigorous grips that were then exchanged, it still does my heart good to think of them, so great was our joy at meeting again. But the column marched on ; our friends were obliged to remount, and set off at the trot to resume their places in the ranks. And as for us, with shirt-sleeves rolled up, soap in hand, we went on with our great wash. Then, after a most complete lathering and rub-down, we returned to Tizi-Ouzou, leading our horses by the bridle. Everything was prospering in our direction, except that at twenty-six kilometres (sixteen miles) from us, on the heights, the National Fort remained closely blockaded. The Kabyles, strongly intrenched all round it, had cut the road at twenty places, and intercepted the supplies ; it was difficult to approach it. During the interval, until they could be driven away, General Lallemand gave orders to rid the neighbourhood of the presence of the enemy ; and as we were returning to the fort, a battalion was just on the point of start- ing, with arms sloped, to capture the Arab village. But the resistance was more serious than we had expected. The Kabyles, enraged to see that we were escaping from them, fought with the courage of despair. A second battalion had to be sent, then a regiment ; then the whole column was engaged. At the first cannon-shot I had ascended the rampart of the old fort, which commanded the whole position. Hundreds of Kabyles, sheltered in the houses of the village, and behind the immense cactus hedges, were 82 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, keeping up a continuous firo from all sides from the midst of the orange-trees, the mulberries, and the sycamores the white smoke of their incessant dis- charges rose in dense clouds. Our artillery soon replied from the European village, hacking all that "beautiful greenery like chopped straw, and our skirmishers were dashing in upon them at the charge step. Many of the lanes and by-streets were already choked with the dead and wounded. The struggle was a long and hard one ; but about nightfall the Kabyles, broken along their whole line, commenced their retreat. Their long brown legs might be seen traversing the country with great strides, and climbing up the Marabout Dubelloi, in order to gain the more distant heights. Now and then a random shot lighted the darkness far away amongst the olive- trees ; then silence fell on all, aud s the flames made the village their prey, lapping round the great old trees, already disfigured by the shot, and whose dark shadows were trembling on the plain. This over, Lallemand's column stayed two days at Tizi-Ouzou. They reconstructed the fountain, laying down the pipes afresh ; they provisioned the place, and took their leave of us on the morning of the third day, leaving with us a company of infantry, a rifled gun, and a mitrailleuse. The column marched northward, in the direction of the sea, and fought the next day the bloody engagement of Taourga, the result of which was the dispersion of the insurgents, and the raising of the blockade of Dellys. In another week the column had returned to Temda, and received the submission of the Beni-Rateu. It was thither that our little detachment, escorting a Told ly a Chasseur d'Afrique. 83 convoy of bread, went to rejoin it. The commandant, Letellier, was at our head. On the road we saw Si- kou-Medour, now completely deserted, the Sebaon, whose stony bed we followed once more, and the hill upon which we had given battle forty days before. At last, about eight o'clock in the morning, we reached Tenida. The column lay encamped there. I spent a few hours with my comrades. We took a turn round the village, and I remember seeing a lot of Turcos in a lane plundering some beehives that they had found. They were covered with bees, and were laughing like lunatics without minding the stings of the irritated insects, having, no doubt, some way of their own of protecting themselves against their effects. They were not afraid even to bite the combs through with their teeth, and were so obliging as to offer us some. On that day they blew up the house of Caid Ali, and set fire to Temda. About four o'clock in the evening, the column had packed up bag and baggage, and was descending to the Sebaon to encamp further up the mountain country. We resumed the road 'o Tizi- Onzou, and about five we were passing through Si-kou-Mcdour, whose inhabitants had joined the in- surgents. The heat was stifling. Everything was quiet in this disorderly collection of gourbis, huts, and hovels, where hundreds of storks had taken up their abode ; every old roof carried two or three huge nests full of young, whose long necks thrown back, and great wide-open bills, seemed ever on the look-out for food. The mother- birds came by dozens from the valley of Sebaon, bring- ing them snakes, toads, and frogs. Even the trees 84 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, were so loaded with these nests that they looked like haystacks. Beneath, in the narrow lanes between the dense hedges, ran large numbers of poultry, which the Arabs had not had time to carry off with the cattle. These were the only inhabitants of Si-kou-Medour. As we approached the village, the commandant gave orders to set fire to the place, which was very soon done by a dozen chasseurs. From the nearest roof a handful of thatch was pulled out, which they lighted with a match, and this served for a torch. In a quarter of an hour the whole place was blazing, and in that hot, still air, the flames soon united into a vast spire ; then the black volumes of smoke rose straight into the sky. I saw then a sight both sad and terrible ; the storks, those birds of the fens, attracted by the cries of their young, hovered awhile in the midst of the black smoke, then falling headlong into the furnace, dropped dead upon their broods. We started off at the quick- step; but how many times I turned round, gazing, upon this heartrending spectacle, and remembering our own sufferings in Prance ; our cities ravaged with fire, our land devas- tated, our relatives shot down by the Prussians! An hour after we re-entered Tizi-Ouzou, and for many days after we could hear the distant roar of irtillery amongst the hills, and could see the villages burning right and left. About the 1st of June, Lallemand's column returned to encamp near to us ; the general found that he was not in sufficient force to raise the blockade of the National Fort ; but General Ceres' column, from six to Told "by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 85 seven thousand strong, was on its way from Atimale ; and efforts were being made to effect a junction of the two armies before commencing the attack. On the evening of the 5th of June, having been to shake hands with my friend Babelon, a lieutenant in ftie First Eegiment of Algerine Tirailleurs, he informed me that on the following night the column would raise the camp, and would reach the foot of the Maatka by daybreak, and pass over its highest ridge to join tho column of General Ceres. Accordingly, Lallemand's column left us the next morning, leaving at Tizi-Ouzou a handful of cavalry, a company of infantry, two field-piece?, and two mitrail- leuses. On the same morning, the 6th of June, this small detachment also started, directing its course by the mule-road to Dra-el-Mizan, towards the mountain on which lies the village of Bounoum. The Kabyles, tinder the belief that we were on our way to attack them in that quarter, descended the hill in dense masses to encounter us, and Lallemand's column, which was some distance further on, profiting by the diversion, made straight for the ridge of the Maatka without meeting any resistance. By eleven o'clock in the morning all was over, the detachment returned to the fort, and that same evening we saw the fires of the two columns lighting up the mountain-tops ; the junction had been effected. From that moment until the 15th of June, every day the deep roll of the artillery was heard behind the Maatka ; but it seems that they were unable to get to the National Fort from that point ; for the united columns of Ceres and Lallemand returned to Tizi- Ouzou. We feared they were dispirited, when one r 86 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, night the whole of the infantry started off, leaving the cavalry behind on the plain ; they reached the foot of the Beni-Eaten about four in the morning, near the mill of St. Pierre, and the assault of those immense heights which are crowned by the National Fort com- menced immediately. From our ramparts we could distinguish our men climbing through the olive-trees and the shrubs, dragging their artillery after them. The whole body were advancing and firing at the same time. The guns were placed in battery on every available shelf, and thundered in their turn ; the Kabyles offered a courageous but ineffectual resistance. The din of our twenty guns awoke the loudest echoes amongst the peaks and crags of the Beni- Eaten. The long, tremen- dous, incessant roar was both grand and terrific. In the midst of the hottest of the action, a sortie was made from the National Fort ; and the Kabyles, attacked in front and rear, at length abandoned their position; they scattered themselves in all directions, and the blockade was raised. At half-past three the two columns were encamping under its walls. As we were now extricated, I might stop at this point, but I must tell you the end of this history ; for what remains belongs not to war only, but to the internal affairs of this beautiful, rich, but unhappy land. vn. ON the evening of the 24th June, Commandant Letellier, of the district of Tizi-Ouzou, took four squadrons of cavalry under his command, and selected Told ly a Chasseur tfAfrique. 87 us for his escort, on account of our Laving supported him in his defence of the fort. We halted upon the ashes of Si-kou-Medour. On the 25th we encamped a little above Temda, and on the 26th, very early, wo started with the commandant, the four squadrons, and the spahis of the Arab bureau. We proceeded to the village of Djema-Sahridj, in the tribe of the Beni- Fraoussen, to receive their submission, and maintain them in it by our presence, for the insurrection was not yet suppressed, and a crowd of insurgents were even yet ready to go and swell the ranks of the enemy. All that day the artillery was heard in the direction of the National Fort ; there must have been a sharp engagement going on up there. Our commandant's precaution proved useful ; our horses were picketed in the middle of the village, and not one of the inhabi- tants, with those before his eyes, felt any inclination to go and fight elsewhere. The village of Djema-Sahridj is perhaps one of the most beautiful in Algeria; seeing it from the valley beneath, one would hardly think so, for rocks are hemming it in and bristling all round it ; but when you have reached it you discover an earthly paradise ; more than fifty springs are bubbling up in the neighbour- hood, and in this land of fierce burning heat water is the first of treasures. Water is abundance, water is wealth. Being thus fortunate, all the houses in Djema- Sahridj are built of stone, roofed with tiles, surrounded Dy charming gardens, and half buried under the grateful shade of walnut, cherry, orange, and fig trees, covered with fruit, and trellised troni tree to tree are immense vines. Near the mosque 1 even observed three palm- trees, which are but rarely f^md in the elevated Kabyle 88 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, country. The women and the children alone had forsaken the village ; but they had not gone far, and we could see them watching us fearfully from the crags and rocks. Then the chasseurs prepared coffee. The Kabyles brought us baskets full of dried figs ; the poor creatures, having witnessed the destruction of so many other villages, were in a state of alarm. At last our com- mandant, who had been walking to and fro, deep in thought, gave out the order to march and we returned to the camp, where our comrades were bivouacked. We started again next day, ascending the bed of the Sebaon, to encamp a few miles further up, near the sources of the river. The valley contracted as we advanced ; brown rocks rose to our right and our left ; cultivated ground became more scarce; brambles, dwarf-oak, and lentiscus became the prevailing vegeta- tion. A few miserable Kabyle villages lay scattered at wide intervals amongst these thickets. The next day, early, the commandant sent off a squadron on a reconnaissance amongst the Beni- Dje'ma ; then he took us to a very advanced spot in the- valley. About eleven we reached a low hill, where we halted the whole day on the watch. In the evening we returned to the camp. The night was passed very quietly in this remote nook, and the next day we were off again, reinforced with a company of the first regi- ment of chasseurs. After having marched three or four hours through brushwood, where there was no appearance of a path, we arrived near a small solitary marabout, almost hidden in the long grass j there was an orchard of fig- Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 89 trees below, on the slope of the ravine, and lower stil' a Kabyle mill by the river's edge, shut ir; with high embankments . This mill, covered with thatch, and its mossy wood- work, seemed to be of great antiquity. The water was supplied by a mill-race of a thousand yards in length, which came down in a rapid torrent over the rocks and boulders, and fell into a great hollow trunk of a tree about fifteen feet long, at the lower end of which was a wooden water-wheel, roughly hewn. In the axle of the wheel was the millstone, in the form of a teetotum. To stop the motion of the machinery, it was only necessary to draw the hollow tree to one side, which, as it was merely suspended by a rope, was easily done, and then the water fell to one side. I examined this attentively, for these mechanical contrivances always interest me. You see, therefore, that water-wheels are not things of yesterday ; for this structure was at least a hundred and fifty years old. All around it grew ash-trees of enormous size. I had seated myself on the bank to smoke a pipe ; Ignar, my comrade, was on vedette with five men near the marabout, and our chasseurs were pulling up onions in the little garden, to eat with their bread. It might have been about ten o'clock when the commandant issued orders to remount. We then descended into the dry bed of the river, where we halted. We had been there a quarter of an hour ; the com- mandant was standing twenty or thirty paces to the front, when we saw approaching us a European woman on a mule, escorted by two armed Kabyles. Thia woman was somewhat advanced in years, and was only 90 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, half clad in a tattered gown ; on her head was a straw hat, with its brim hanging down and fastened over her ears. On reaching the presence of the commandant she alighted from her mule, and throwing herself at his knees, she kissed his hands, his boots, and even his horse's hoofs. We could not tell the meaning of this ; and as Ali, the horseman of the Arab bureau, was passing near me, I inquired what it all meant. " That woman," he replied, " is the wife of a colonist of Bordj-Mena'iel, whom Ca'id Ali made prisoner with fifty others from the same village ; he is sending her under a flag of truce." Never have I seen a sadder and more affecting sight What the unhappy woman said to the commandant I cannot tell ; but I heard him reply " Go ! Eeturn to Ca'id Ali, and tell him that if he still refuses to restore you all to liberty, we will come for you. I am tired of waiting." Then she remounted her mule, and returned escorted by the two Kabyles. We had not long to wait ; about an hour after we saw, debouching into the valley, a troop of armed Kabyles ; they were advancing in slow time, and halted at four hundred yards from us. The commandant went alone to meet them ; a brother of Ca'id Ali ad- vanced on his side ; they exchanged a few words ; then the Caid's brother, turning round, made a sign to his men, and we soon saw approaching from the end of the gorge a crowd of poor creatures, sinking with exhaustion, ragged, torn, and haggard ; they were the remains of the population of Bordj-Menaiel, the sur- vivors of the massacre ! Ca'id Ali had thought fit to retain these as hostages, keeping them in reserve to cut Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. 91 their throats, if h 3 conquered ; and if he was beaten, to restore them to liberty ; this would be pronounced by an Arab bureau to be a highly-extenuating circum- stance. Imagine the joy of these people when they saw us ! There were none but old men, sick people, women, and children some in blouses, some in jackets, hats, or caps, just as they had snatched them up two months before some at home, some in the fields, where they happened to be at work all looking like fugitives from gaol ; I could hardly describe them better. For seventy days they had been dragged from tribe to tribe ; every day these miserable wretches could hear the guns of the column as it drew nearer, and every night Caid Ali drove them further on. They came to press our hands, and tell us of their miseries. You could scarcely believe the story of their hardships. Every village had to feed them by turns ; but they got nothing but corn and dried figs, and every time that the Kabyles met with a check, the villains came whetting the edges of their flissas, and saying " Make ready, it is time !" Then they would pretend to deliberate, and turning round upon their victims, would say " Well, no, not to-day, but to-morrow." I could not bear to tell you of the other cruel out- rages which they perpetrated upon them. It would be too horrible ! Religious fanaticism makes men worse than brutes. The commandant, having recalled Ignar and his five men, mounted all these poor people on mules, which had been requisitioned at the next village, and they departed, under escort of a squad of chasseurs, in the 92 77*0 Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, direction of the spot where the rest of the cavalry were stationed. Their orders were to conduct them the next day to Tizi-Ouzou. The commandant had only retained near him a single man, the one who seemed to him the strongest and most intelligent of the number, to take him to General Lallemand, who was encamped in Upper Kabylia, near the Djurjura. I gazed thoughtfully upon this scene. One figure among the Kabyles chiefly drew my attention ; he was a tall man, with a prominent nose, a short, black, and curly beard. I was considering where I had seen this man, when Brissard said " Don't you recognise that Arab on horseback ? It is Said Caid, the black horseman of Temda." I immediately remembered him. He was riding the same horse, and wore the same black cloak, surveying us with a proud and distant look, and laying his hand upon his beard with an air of perfect indifference. He was come to make his submission, now that longer resistance was useless. The commandant called the word of command to advance. " Quick march !" he cried, pointing to the mountain-tops. "It will take us six hours to get there." And we started off. If I had to describe to you the ways by which we passed in single file, always clambering like goats precipices sometimes on our right, sometimes on our left, the long slopes covered with wild olive-trees, dwarf oaks, myrtles, and junipers, as far as the eye could reach beneath us I should be greatly puzzled to know how to do it. When we reached one peak, and were Baying, " Here we are at last," another higher yet came Told by a Chasseur d'Afnque. 92 in sight; we thought there would never be an end to it. Still our Arab ponies seemed none the worse for the exercise ; they were quite in their element. At long intervals we came upon Kabyle villages lately brought to submission ; the people, standing at their doors, presented us with water in wooden bowls to refresh us. At last, after seven hours of climbing, we came in sight of a plateau extending between two sharp peaks, and covered with tall ash-trees and hoary green olive- trees ; there stood the little white tents, and there moved the red-trousered soldiers of our column. Commandant Letellier, the colonist whom he had "brought, and Ca'id All repaired to head-quarters, and we encamped just above a little ravine where they slaughtered the cattle. At this height the atmosphere is so rarefied that at first it seems to make your brain whirl. I went at once to find out my friend Babelon, the Turco lieutenant. The officers of his regiment had built up for themselves a hut made of leafy boughs of trees ; they were just finishing their dinner. Babelon received me as an old comrade, and the gentlemen called for the cook to return to wait upon me. They kindly made me sit down, which I did with very great pleasure ; my appetite was keen. About nine o'clock I left them. We had been fifteen hours in the saddle, and I wanted to sleep. The next morning, very early, the bugle- call wad already sounding for our departure. I ran to thank Babelon for his kind hospitality, and we took another glass of cognac, standing. 94 The Story of a Campaign in Kdbylia, " Come, Goguel !" said he as we were parting, " soon we sliall meet again at home. As soon as the expedi- tion is over I shall get leave, and you will get your discharge." " The sooner the better," I replied, laughing. He watched me galloping away, and returned to his tent. We then pursued our way along the very ridge of the mountains. The air was free, and pure, and keen. Far away, on the horizon, was the blue sea, fringed with a thin line of white where the waves broke in foam upon the shore ; Algiers, almost suspended in the sky, with its harbour, its gardens, and its white houses ; and, on the other hand, the lofty Djurjura, whose massive buttresses, rugged with rocks and woods, were dotted with Arab villages as far as the eye could reach in every direction as far as the extremity of the plain. Every fresh examination of the scene discovered new objects of interest. It was a grand a beautiful pros- pect! What a colony would France have there if a tide of European emigration had but set in thither during the last thirty years ! All the turbulent spirits whom want and privation have driven into disorder would live there in the enjoyment of plenty ; and then we should have no reason to dread the revolutions that want begets. But the rule of the sword is fruitful of all kinds of evils. The men who turn their backs upon their native land, to seek fortune elsewhere, prefer to emigrate to America, where all men are free, rather than to bend in Algiers under the heavy despotism of Arab bureaux. Whilst at home we have millions of workers without a foot of land that they can call their own, down there in Algeria are millions of acres un- Told ly a Chasseur cPAfrique. 95 cultivated, and waiting for industrious arms to throw up crops in the greatest abundance. The thoughts of all the chasseurs were engaged, no doubt, upon the same subject not a man spoke a word ; and we gazed in silence, dropping our bridles loosely upon our horses' necks, and allowing them to go at their own pace. At nine o'clock we passed the village of Echcriden, where, a few days before, the decisive action of the campaign had been fought. After this blow, the Kabyles, driven out of their last stronghold, had no alternative but to submit. That large village was utterly destroyed. The tall trees were so battered and hacked, and the smaller ones so completely mown down by the grape-shot, that they reminded one of corn laid by a high wind. There I saw a Kabyle weep ! I never had seen ono before. He could not tell where his house had stood, His wife, crouching near him, hid her face between her knees, and their children seemed bewildered. Poor creatures ! that noble chieftain Caid Ali had forced themunto the insurrection by the threat that he would burn them out if they refused to join him. They were all in utter ruin ; but Caid. Ah' had no cause for fear ; he knew that his atrocious acts would obtain easy for- giveness from the Arab bureaux ; for might they not have occasion for his services at some future time ? And Caid Alis and Arab bureaux are found here and there in Europe too, incessantly intriguing to involve nations in war, whenever they may be seeking for mere justice ; selfish men are the same everywhere ; self- interest rouses in them the ferocity of tigers. About eight we arrived at the National Fort, and wo 96 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, picketed our horses on the road as we entered it. The weather was hot. Brissard undertook to find a break- fast for us ; then we went to drink a few bottles of beer with the artillery drivers, who received us hos- pitably. We talked of the events of the war. Ca'id Ali had attempted to take the fort by storm. He had had ladders provided, frightening his men into valour by telling them that whoever failed at least to touch the wall would be accursed that he would have no part in the delights of paradise that he would slide down a razor's edge till he reached perdition. Well ! well ! it was only the Arab version of the Popish delusions Lourdes and La Sallette over again ! We listened attentively, for such things awake pain- ful reflections. In every land the ignorant are but tools in the hands of fanatics to awake terror. Mara- bouts of this kind are in our midst in our own France. What can we do but reflect upon our position ? At three we pursued our route to Tizi-Ouzou, escort- ing a couple of mitrailleuses and a couple of rifled guns. At seven we entered the fort. Here ended our campaign. Early in June the rumour was spread that soldiers whose term of service was ended would very soon re- ceive their discharge ; and on the morning of the 12th of June, Ignar, myself, and twenty-two Chasseurs d'Afrique were leaving Tizi-Ouzou for Dellys. We left behind us Brissard, with Lieutenant Cayatte, and the rest of the chasseurs. That excellent comrade and brave soldier Brissard, and the obliging quai^terinaster Erbes, accompanied us as far as the Turkish fountain. When they left us, tears were standing in their eyes. Told ly a Chasseur d'Afrique. 97 That evening we reached Dellys, and embarked in a coasting vessel for Algiers, where we arrived next day, ind from thence we travelled by railway to Blidah. At last, on the 15th of July, we got our routes in our pockets, and came home as fast as we could. On my arrival home at Saint Die, I found my poor father dying of the terrors of the war, and our country in Prussian occupation. I had seen in Africa some- thing of the blessings of military government, and now I found the same in France! The only difference which I found in our favour was that the Prussian Arab bureaux had not been able, in spite of all their good wishes, to restore to his command the Ca'id Napoleon the Third, who might have been useful to them, when they wanted war again, by diverting the minds of the people from aspirations after liberty. And now, my friend, if you ask me for my opinion upon all these matters, whether I attribute the misery of Algeria to Arab bureaux, bach-agas, agas, ca'ids, sheiks ; or to those army contractors, who after every razzia buy up hundreds of oxen and sheep at nominal prices, and sell them the very same day to our armies at from fifteen to twenty times their prime cost, which I know to be a fact if you ask me whether those are the men who are responsible for our misfortunes, I boldly reply, No. Our governments alone are guilty. If Louis Philippe, whose fondness for money was so well known, had been obliged to pay out of his own purse only the fourth part of what Algeria cost us, he would never have administered the affairs of the colony by Arab bureaux. Certainly not. He would have pro- vided public officers of a very different stamp good prefects, honourable agents, impartial judges, respon- 98 The Story of a Campaign in Kabylia, sible men whose reports he would have carefully examined and verified, for whose expenditure he would have required vouchers down to the last centime ; and if he bad anywhere detected a deficiency, he would not have allowed the matter to remain in suspense for fourteen years ; he would have wanted some account of the matter ; he would have moved heaven and earth, and rummaged through piles of papers to save himself from loss. But as he was not paymaster, but only France, it mattered little to him, and he pronounced the administration of the Arab bureaux to be faultless, the more so because repeated African wars furnished him with opportunities for showing off his sons before the army, and to gain an easy reputation for those men as great generals. Again, if Napoleon the Third had been obliged to fight his own wars, and carry his rifle, and knapsack, and eight or ten days' provisions upon his back, in spite of his wonderful confidence in his star and his destiny, I believe we should have been much less frequently plunged into warfare. Instead of suffering the Kabyles to be worried with vexations, he would have ordered them to be treated with fairness and equity, so as to avoid causes of irritation. But of course, whilst the soldiers were roasting under the sun of Africa and of Mexico, the Emperor was quietly sitting at home in his easy chair, and perhaps reflecting how much war would strengthen the position of his dynasty. His sole con- fidence was in his army to support his dynasty ; and the only way to keep the army well affected was to deal out lavishly promotions, crosses, pensions. War and plunder procure everything. The reproaches, therefore, which fall upon the Arab Told by a Chasseur d'Afrique. bureaux, and the condemnation pronounced agains them, fall with, greater justice upon the government which organised them, and made their interests iden- tical with those of the dynasty. The dynasty ! everything for the dynasty ! Such is the story of France for the last seventy years. What these governments have done for France we see but too well. It is the same in Africa. Here as there, we have a magnificent country, but dynastic egotism has brought all our disasters upon us. The Eepublic alone, the Republic, which has no interest apart from the interests of the nation, she alone can restore happiness to our unfortunate country, and raise Algeria to the position of one of the finest colonies in the world, by establishing a just govern- ment, which shall deal equal justice both to Frenchmen and to Arabs. THE COLLEGE-LIFE OF MAlTRE NABLOT. THE COLLEGE-LIFE OF MAITRE* NABIOT. i. N 1834, during the reign of Louis Philippe, there dwelt at Eichepierre, in Alsace, on the eastern slope of the Vosges, an honest lawyer, Monsieur Didier Nablot by namej his wife Catherine Arnette, and their five children : Jean Paul, Jean Jacques, Jean Philippe, Marie Eeine, and Marie Louise. I. was the eldest of the family, and was intended to inherit my father's practice. As I write, all that happy youthful time returns to fill my memory with pleasant remembrances. I can fancy I see our own old house at the entrance of the village ; its yard, surrounded with sheds, barns, and * Maitre is the professional title applied in France to barristers and notaries. 104 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. stables ; its dunghill, on which the cocks are parading with their hens j its wide roof, over which pigeons are whirling in little clouds ; and there are we children, with our little noses in the air, shouting to drive away the thievish sparrows plundering the pigeon-cote. Behind are old decaying buildings ; and there too lies our garden, sloping down to the foot of the hill, divided by neat box-edging around its square beds, and its long rows of gooseberry-bushes. Our old servant, Babelo, with her petticoats fastened up, is cutting asparagus with an old rusty knife ; my mother is gathering beans, or whatever may be in season, with her wide-brimmed straw hat drooping over her shoulders, and her basket hanging on her arm. I can see it all before my own eyes ! Over us rose the village in successive terraces, dis- playing its numberless windows, high and low, round and square ; its old gables, protected by planks or shingles against the wind and the rain ; its wooden banisters and staircases. The women are coming and going along the galleries ; and at the very top of the hill the sentinels are patrolling, with shouldered arms, along the battery of the old fort. It was a sight never to be forgotten, one of those memories of childhood beautiful as a dream, because at that time we had no thought of care ; breakfast, dinner, and supper stood ready every day, at the ac- customed hour, and we slept peacefully in full confi- dence in kind parents, without any anxious thought for the morrow. This is the happiest period of life. Our father, a little, active, bustling man, was fond of talking in a very loud voice, and proclaiming his The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 105 ideas on all kinds of subjects. He used to try to re- form the manners of the country folks, who, as he many times told us, were sharp practitioners, full oi cunning tricks, who were sure to get any advantage they could out of you, if you had forgotten to dot an " i" or cross a " t." Far from encouraging them to get into law-suits, he always cautioned them to be very prudent, and to think well before they made up their minds ; and when he caught them shirking, or playing an underhand game, laying traps and peeping into back-doors, as he used to call it, he would break out into high indignation. You should have heard him then lecturing them in sharp, severe tones. His voice filled the house ; he could be heard in the street. And his would-be clients, honest men and women as they accounted themselves, cap or broad-brimmed hat in hand, and with downcast, humbled countenances, would slink away down the stairs in deep consultation, and considering whether they should try again. But he would fling his door open and settle that question in a summary way : " Go to Japan and never come back again. I don't want to know any more about your business go and call upon Maitre Nickel !" Doing business in this way, it was not very likely that we should grow rich ; but in all the country round there was but one opinion of my father, and people said, " Maitre Nablot is an honest lawyer he is a very good fellow." Our mother was a tall, fair woman, with a youthful bloom upon her cheeks, although her hair was streaked with silver at the time of which I write. She was the tenderest, the most affectionate, and the most watchful 106 The College-Life of Maiire Ndblot. of mothers. She kept a diligent oversight of her household, allowed no waste, and turned the poorest of rags to some use or other for the good of her children, to keep us decently dressed. All my father's old clothes descended to all his sons in succession, be- ginning with myself. By the time that they came down at length to Jean Philippe, and he too had done with them, it cannot be denied that they were well- worn and patched all over. There were frequent out- cries raised by that young gentleman against his eldest brother, accompanied by just his father's voice and his father's gesticulations, because I was always better clad than he was, a fact for which he saw no justifica- tion. Marie Reine, too, and Marie Louise came in for their mother's left-off clothes ; and so things went on regularly and comfortably all through our childhood. We used at that time to be scholars of Monsieur Magnus's school a respectable old schoolmaster, gene- rally habited in a long threadbare coat, knee-breeches, and shoes rounded at the toes and furnished with copper buckles. A few individuals of this species were still to be found in our mountains at the beginning of Louis Philippe's reign. His school was completely overrun with children ; some very few in number as well dressed as ourselves ; but the rest barefooted, dirty, in tattered blouses or in their shirt-sleeves, in ragged breeches depending from the shoulder by a single brace, a remnant of a cap upon the uncombed shaggy head creatures that should be seen to be believed in and emitting an intolerable odour, especially in winter, when the doors and windows were closed. My brothers and I were lords amongst these miserable little creatures. We were fat and rosy, full of health, The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 107 and remarkably clean; and these little savages, with eyes like cats' or foxes', looked as if they were ready to devour us. Monsieur Magnus, with his stick under his arm, seemed to treat us with more respect than the rest, and never thrashed us except when driven to the very last extremity. We were well-connected children ! we were the sons of monsieur le notaire o Bichepierre ! And on his fete day, and on New Year's Day, our mother used to send him a few cakes of chocolate and two or three bottles of the red wine of Thiancourt. For all that, we were unable to reach the top place in the school. For Christophe Gourdier, the gate- keeper's son ; Jean Baptiste Dabsec, the forest-keeper's son ; and Nicolas Koffel, the dyer's boy, could all write a better hand than we could ; could repeat their lessons better, and would add up and say their tables better than we could. I was in great trouble about this, for we had always been taught to believe that the Nablots, from father to son, had invariably been at the head of their school, and we felt it as a disgrace that the sons of an old soldier, and of a fellow who had nothing to do but drive the poor out of the forest when they might be trying to get a little firewood, and of a poor working man, should pass over our heads. My blood boiled that I should be subjected to such a humiliation. What aggravated me more yet was to know that those three fellows, in the hours between morning and afternoon school, used to have to go into the woods and pick up dead wood to earn their livelihood, whilst we bad all our time to ourselves to learn our lessons. When I thought over these things I became blind 108 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. with rage, and one day meeting Gourdier, the gate- keeper's son, returning into the village without shoes, and loaded with a heavy faggot, I shouted at him, "Beggar!" He was small and thin ; but, without hesitation or doubt, he threw down his faggot, and his dirty, ragged, wide-brimmed hat, and came down upon me like a hungry wolf, and in a few seconds had rained upon me such a storm of blows and kicks that I could not tell where I was or who I was, and the blood ran down from my face in streams. I could not help shouting for succour. But Gourdier with the greatest coolness replaced his bundle upon his shoulder, passing the handle of his axe through the band that tied it, and went on his way up to the fort, just as if nothing had happened. I might have reported his conduct to my father, who would perhaps have had him expelled from the school ; but I had enough good sense left to discern that pro- bably he was in the right after all ; and so I slipped quietly in at the back yard to wash my nose at the pump. From that day I have involuntarily preserved a sort of respect for the old soldier's son, and for all my other schoolfellows who carried bundles of wood upon their shoulders, observing to myself that boys of that sort were tough and bony, that the habit of climbing trees made them quick and sure-footed, and that they were particulai-ly heavy-handed. These considerations led me to reflect a good deal upon the results of physical force ! Not long after this unpleasantness, as I used to go out every Thursday and ever)' Sunday into the woods, The College-Life of Maitre NaUot. 109 bird's-nesting, with five or six of the raggedest boys in the place, my father loudly objected to niy conduct, crying that a son of a notaire is not like a labourer's son ; that he must not lead a vagabond life with roughs, and that every man in this world owes it as a duty to himself and his family to maintain his position by respecting himself, if he wishes to preserve the respect of others. I listened, and soon found out the meaning of it all. He ended by telling me that it was time to turn to serious matters, and that I was now to learn Latin of Monsieur le Cure Hugues. This man was a strong Lorrainer of middle height, lean and big-boned, and with a very red face, and close-cut hair. He was fond of my father, and used often to come in the evening for a rubber. He became my instructor in the declen- sions, the conjugations, and the rule, Liber Petri. Every day after dinner I went over to the cure's house, into his little back parlour, which was full of books, and the open window of which looked out upon a garden shut in with high walls, and full of pinks and stocks. " Ah, Jean Paul ! there you are," he used to say ; " sit down you may begin to repeat." And whilst he was pacing up and down the room, taking huge pinches of snuff from his box which lay on the table, he would be looking out of the window, and repeating to me now and then " Future : amdbo, amabis, amabit I shall love, thou wilt love, he will love. Infinitive: amare, to love. Very good, that will do. Now show me your exercise." Which he took and looked at, and then said "Very good indeed; we shall get on now. You 110 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. already know the first two rules : Ludovicus Rex, Liber Petri. That's right. Now we must take the next rule, Amo Deum, and then the next after that, Implere dolum vino, to fill the cask with wine wine in the ablative a very useful rule, as you will see." My belief is that he was thinking of something else all the while. Then he would dismiss me : " You may go now, Jean Paul, and don't forget to present my salutations to your father and mother." And away I went. This is the way 1 learnt Latin. As soon as it was known in the village that I went to receive lessons from monsieur le cure, I became a very distinguished person ; the old women curtseyed to me, and looked at me with respectful tenderness ; the report ran abroad that I was preparing to go to the seminary. I was saluted and called " Monsieur Jean Paul." And even my former schoolfellows, Gourdier and Dabsec, were impressed by my recent accession of dignity. And as for myself, I strutted about, and put on a grave countenance, answerable to the expectations I supposed the public formed of me ; at home I put on fatherly airs, talking to my brothers and sisters as if they looked to me for protection and indulgence. The notion of acting a part was coming over me ; surely acting must be natural to men and women, in order to put on appearances in keeping with what we suppose to be the public opinion of others, and to judge of our own merit through them. This had gone on more than a year, and monsieur le cure was loud in his praises of my improvement, when for the first time the question was opened of send- The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. Ill ing me to the college of Saarstadt, which conferred bachelors' degrees, with the help of which you. may carry on your studies farther, and become a doctor, or a lawyer, or a judge, or a druggist, or a functionary in the State, by going to study a few years more at Stras- bourg or elsewhere. My parents now talked of nothing else ; and as it was my particular business, I listened with the greatest interest to all that was being said upon this topic, filling my imagination with all the joy and pleasure which I took it for granted would be at my own dis- posal at college, all the wreaths I should carry off according to monsieur le cure's predictions and the excellent position I should occupy in the end, if I yielded our father's practice to Jean Jacques, to take a higher rank myself. All this seemed to me as plain and easy as eating my breakfast. I had yet to learn that others besides myself had a hankering after good berths ; that it took fifteen or twenty years of struggling to attain them, during the whole of which there would have to be plenty of bowing and smiling before my betters, since the prizes, instead of being purely the rewards of suc- cessful competition, are often won by mediocrity and hypocrisy ; and that crowds of disappointed men have to fall into the rear without having obtained what they expected. My father and mother too saw only the best side of everything. Their plans were settled by the autumn of 1834, and from that time my mother could think of nothing but my outfit. My father, who was well posted up in the ordinances and statutes affecting Public Instruction, a copy oi 112 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. which he had bought at Strasbourg, told us, " You must get a cloth coat of bleu de roi, collar and facings light blue ; waistcoat and trousers, ditto ; two pairs of drawers, a blue jacket for undress, two pairs of sheets, six towels, eight shirts, six pocket-handkerchiefs, twelve pairs of stockings six of worsted and six of cotton or thread three nightcaps, a comb and a hair-brush, two pairs of new shoes, with blacking and blacking-brushes. These articles you must have, in obedience to the decree of March 17th, 1808, respecting communal colleges, the decrees of November 16th, 1811, the statute of Sep- tember 28th, 1814, the Royal ordinance of 1821, the circular of 1823," &c., &c. He had studied the whole thing beforehand, and knew even the exact number of buttons required for the uniform. It was quite a state transaction, this dressing of me according to the regulation. The cloth had to be sent for from Saarstadt, as well as the lining and the buttons; and then my mother, knowing that Blaise Eigaud, our village tailor, had a very bad habit of dropping bits of cloth into his bag, had the whole weighed before his eyes in the scales in our washhouse buttons, cloth, lining, thread and all so as to be sure of getting the whole back without any abstractions, remnants and all. I never saw any one look so sold as poor JBlaise at that moment ; he hung his head down like an old fox caught in a snare ; he said nothing, but no doubt thought a good deal about the cleverness of women. However, as work was scarce, and he was certain of good board in the house, and even a glass of wine at dinner, he set to work in the large parlour, beginning by taking my measure, and cutting out the cloth with his great shears. Then he seated himself The College-Life of Maitre Ndblot. 113 cross-legged on the table, with his skein of thread hanging round his neck, and began to drive his needle. The whole family, great and small, watched him. I was always close by, to have the clothes tried on as fast as he went on. My father pursued his study of the laws, statutes, and decrees. In a week, this principal part of my outfit being nearly ready, Malmoury, the shoemaker, having also made me two good pairs of strong shoes with three rows of nails, and the sempstress a set of linen shirts, it was settled that my father should buy me a regxila- tion cap at Monsieur Surloppe's, hatter at Saarstadt, since there was not a man at Richepierre who was capable of making me one after the regulation pattern of 1823. When the clothes had been tried on, paid for, and packed in the old family travelling trunk, my father, my mother, and monsifur le cure, the evening before my departure, after supper delivered me a long sermon, recommending me to work hard, to fulfil all my religious duties, not to forget nay prayers, and to write home at least twice a month ; and the next day early, October 5th, 1834, in the midst of half the village gathered together to wish me good-bye, my old school- fellows, ragged as ever, scattered up and down amidst the crowd our old G-risette harnessed to the char-a- bancs, my father and I seated in front, and my trunk behind me in the straw the whip began to crack, and we prepared for our start. My mother was crying ; my little brothers and sisters were stretching out their arms to me ; old Babelo, who had nursed me when a baby, was running after me with her apron to her eyes, and I was thinking how 114 The College-Life of Motive Nablot. extraordinary were all these demonstrations of grief, as I was going away for my own good. From Richepierre to Saarstadt is a journey of four leagues, through the woods. On the way, here you see a pond, there a sawpit ; now a forest-house half hidden with rocks and fir-trees, then a woodman returning home with his axe over his shoulder, or a Jewish cattle- dealer bringing his cow home from the fair. The people stand by the roadside to see you pass, and salute you with a loud good morning. Up there in the mountain country the people always speak when they meet ; and such meetings are few and far between. At this season of the year the dead leaves are already covering the ground, the cattle are silently roaming through the valleys, and this loneliness and stillness cause a feeling of melancholy. My father did not speak. At times he gave the horse a touch with the end of his whip, and we quickened our pace. About eleven we reached the high level of Hesse, and the town, with its ancient ramparts, its old decaying towers, its church, and its houses of red sandstone, came in sight, at the foot of the hill, in the valley of the Sarre. In twenty minutes we were entering in at the Vosges gate. I had scarcely time to observe the old moat, now divided into gardens, and the guard- house passing rapidly by me. Our coach dived in under the gloomy gateway, the horse-hoofs clattered upon the pavement, and I was beginning to notice the small low houses, but neat and in even lines, when our char-u-bancs stopped in a large square, in front of the Hotel de 1'Abondance, and in the midst of a number of other conveyances diligences, market-carts, travelling The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 115 carriages crowding the archway, while heaps of trunks stood piled up against the walls. At that period the Hotel de 1'Abondance was one of the first in the country the roast meat, and the fricassees, and the fine wines of Madame Abler were famed from Strasbourg to Nancy. All the commercial travellers, all the landed proprietors of that part of the country, were sure to stop at L'Abondance, where they knew they could get an excellent dinner at forty sous, and as many rooms as they wanted. It was at that time a great thoroughfare, and of course, at the close of the vacation, when so many Alsacians and Lorrainers were bringing back their children to school, the crush was greater than ever. A groom came to take our horse out. My trunk was carried up to the first floor, and we followed it to give our clothes a brushing, for we were white with dust ; after which we returned downstairs to dinner. The long dining-room was full of visitors; whole families of Alsacians, fathers and mothers, children great and small, had all trooped in to see the town, and do a little shopping before leaving some son or brother at the college.* We found with some difficulty a small table and a space near a window. But we were admirably waited * The University of France is not, as with us, a local designation. All professors, public teachers, and masters are necessarily members of that vast body, which is an organisation for the education of the country, reaching and covering every inhabited portion of it. The French colleges are either national (or imperial, or royal) or com- munal. Of the former there a v e thirty-nine, of the latter three hundred and twenty, mostly in a very imperfect and inefficient state. The constitution of the University of Franco dates from the year 1808, under the Empire. Tr. 116 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. upon, and bad soup, roast meat, a large dish of chou- croute garnished with sausages, ham, and salad ; and then walnuts, grapes, biscuits, cheese ; and every dish accompanied with excellent wine. Never had I seen such a stirring sight. As soon as dinner was over, and my father had had a cup of coffee, he rose and said " Now, Jean Paul, I am going to introduce you to Monsieur Eufin, the principal come along." We came out, and crossed the crowded market- square. A few cuirassier officers, with their undress caps sloped over the left ear, and waists tightly compressed in the light shell-jacket, were leisurely strolling amongst the crowd, jingling their spurs. We turned to the left, up the Rue de la Sarre, and were soon ascending the broad flight of steps along the frontage of the old Capuchin convent, transformed under the Empire into a college. " This is the place," said my father ; " come up." The principal entrance to the vestibule was still open, for the classes were only to open on the following day. An old tailor, Vandenberg, who was also the college door-keeper, still allowed people to come and go, merely watching them through the narrow window of his lodge ; but for all that the echoing of our foot- steps under the hollow archway, and over the flags of the vestibule, awoke in me certain melancholy re- flections. We passed along the great corridor, through which the old monks used formerly to pass to their chapel, and whose long line of high narrow windows resembled an arcade. My father tapped at a door. There was an odour like incense. "Come in," cried a nasal voice. The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 117 It was Canard, one of the college servants a dimi- nutive man, a dark and ill-conditioned sort of fellow, whose hair was shining with pomatum. He was tyisy dusting the furniture with a feather-brush. " Is monsieur le principal within ?" " He is in there, sir," answered Canard, pointing to a door on the right. We had to tap again, and again we heard " Come in." Then we entered Monsieur Eufin's study, quite the study of a college principal. The waxed floor was bright and polished ; there was a fine library ; a large porcelain marble-topped stove, banded with shining brass, stood in a corner. The furniture was of walnut- wood, the curtains of dark damask in a word, every- thing was grand and imposing. The high wide window- looked out upon the great quadrangle. Monsieur 1'Abbe Rufin was a little, portly, com- fortable-looking man, in a long black cassock, and with clean white hands. His left eye was dim and fixed, but the right was keen and watchful. Monsieur Rufin was reading, but he laid his book on the table, and rose to receive us, inviting us to be seated. We took seats. My fathor respectfully handed the principal a letter from. Monsieur Hugues, which no doubt contained everything that was satisfactory with regard to myself. " Very well," said Monsieur Eufin, after he had read it through, " this is quite sufficient. We will do our best to carry out your views. The classes will open to- morrow. You have only to get your box carried to the college, and we will find the young man a suitable place both in the schoolroom and in the dormitories." K 118 The College-Life of Mditre Nablot. He patted my cheek with his dimpled fingers, looking kindly upon me, while I was getting more and more confused. "As he knows the declensions, the regular verbs, and the first rules of syntax," said the principal, " we may at once place him under Monsieur Gradus, in the sixth class ; and he will begin upon De viris illustribu& urbis Romce." I could not stir, and my father sat deeply attentive. " He is a fine lad," said Monsieur Eufin, after a short silence. ! Then having taken down my surname and Christian names in his register, received the fees for the first quarter, and given his acknowledgment, monsieur le principal was opening the door to us, when a flood of new-comers filled the antechamber a whole family of Lorrainers three boys who were to be enrolled, with their father and mother, and the cure of their commune. Seeing this party, Monsieur Eufin made haste to dis- miss us, and turning round to the fresh arrivals, said " Pray come in." We came out into the corridor, the door closed, and in silence we moved on to the street. An uneasy feeling was creeping over me, while all my enthusiasm was oozing away. I felt as if I should have very much preferred to return home. My father, no doubt, guessed at my thoughts, and as we walked quietly on, he said " Now it is all settled ; we will go and tell the people at the inn to carry your trunk to the college. You will find them all very good people. You will work well, won't you ? You will often write home ; and, if there is any need, I will come and see you. It is rather a The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 119 difficult stage of our life, but we have all to go through with, it." I knew by his voice and manner that he was trying to control himself, and for the first time I appreciated bhe fulness of his love for me. When he had given his orders at the hotel, we turned )ut again for a short walk through the town. He pointed out the principal buildings to me ; and it seemed to me as if he spoke to me with a certain degree )f consideration, as one would to a young man. " That," said he, " is the Palais de Justice ; there bhe judges sit, and there, too, the standing timber is sold. There are the infantry barracks, and here is the military hospital," &c. We visited every part of the little town, even its incient prison, its infirmary, St. Nicholas, and its synagogue. All this was merely to pass away the time, and to put off the moment of our separation. At half-past five we returned to the college; my trunk had arrived, the servant had taken it to the dor- mitory, and thither he conducted us. We spoke to Madame Thiebaud, the matron, and her son, who had lost an eye. Upstairs, in the immense long corridor, was a great crowd of pupils just arrived. The elder ones had each a small private room old monks' cells, looking into the inner court. They were all very busy settling their little property, and handing over their stock of linen to the housekeeper. They sang and they laughed just like other folks when they have just had a good dinner; they looked at us as we passed them, saying, " There, that's a new fellow !" And there were people walking about the corridor with their sons. 120 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. Monsieur Canard took us to a higher story, where \ve entered the long dormitory. Here were long rows of small beds, in two rows, running in even lines from one end of the room to the other. " This is the washing-room," said he, pointing from the open door at a couple of great tin water-jugs ; "here the boys wash before going down at five to morning lessons." And then, at the very end of the room, close to the two bottom windows, he showed me my bed, already made, with its little round bolster, and its red-bordered counterpane ; my trunk was standing at the foot of the bed. All this stir and excitement, all these bursts of boyish laughter, all these strangers coming and going around us, gave me an unhappy presentiment of the isolation I should soon suffer. I looked around for some sym- pathetic countenance, but every one was busied about his own concerns. I was beginning to feel over- whelmed. None but scholars in their third or fourth year, who have got well broken in, can laugh on returning to college ; but all new boys, as I believe, feel a swelling at the heart, and a ball in the throat. Well, after this glance at the establishment, my father thanked Canard for having conducted us about, and slipped something into his hand. Night approaching, we came down again, and as we came into the court below we found old Vandenberg, with his old grey linen cap drawn over his cars, his nose and chin almost meeting, his knitted jacket hang- ing from his stooping shoulders, and looking just like an old Capuchin monk risen from the grave ; he was The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. 121 opening a small cupboard tinder the vaulted roof of the vestibule, from which he drew a rope, and began to pull it. Then the chapel bell began to peal, its penetrating sound filled all the old corridors, and the pupils came down in double files. It was the supper hour, which had been put earlier for the purpose of allowing friends and relations time to get home the same day. They were mustering in the court, the little ones first, the big ones in the rear. At that moment farewells and embraces began in all directions. " Adieu, Jacques ! Adieu, Leon ! Come, my boy, keep up your courage !" A few little ones cried, and their mothers with them. I put on the best face I could ; but the moment when the bell ceased to toll my father said, "Now, Jean Paul," and held out his arms to me, and then my tears broke forth unbidden. My father could not speak ; he held me in his arms ; and only in a minute or two, having recovered his com- posure, he said to me in a voice broken with emotion " No more ! I will tell your mother that you were a brave boy to the last moment. And now, work with all your might ; and tell us as often as you can how you are getting on." He again embraced me, and went out abruptly. The same moment the door-keeper slammed the great door, turned the key, and now I was a prisoner ! And without at all knowing how it happened, I was placed amongst the very little boys ; with our masters at our side, we defiled by twos in good order to pa on to the dining-room. 122 The College-Life of Maitre Nabkt. That evening I was too deep in my melancholy re- flections to take any particular notice of the long dining- hall, with its tall windows opening upon the garden court ; its old oak reading-desk ; the two old pictures, so thick with the crust of ages that nothing could be made out of them ; the long tables at which we sat divided into sections. I did not even observe, at the end, the table of monsieur le principal, where the pro- fessors and assistant-masters were eating better food than we had, and were drinking better wine ; nor the old hatch through which Mademoiselle Thcrese, the cook, handed dishes to Canard and his mate Miston. My thoughts were far away. " Come, little chap ! eat your supper," said the big fellow whose duty it was to help us, an old boy already whiskered, but a good-natured fellow Barabino, from the Harberg " eat and drink, there's nothing like it to drive away care !" The other boys began to laugh, but Barabino re- proved them, and said " Let him alone ! By-and-by, I tell you, he will be at the top of you all ! He is out of spirits just now ; so might any one be, especially after leaving behind the good dinners you used to get at home, and coming into this college of Saarstadt ; there's no great satis- faction ki seeing nothing but lentils, beans, and peas, peas, beans, and lentils, on the table every day all the year round, dry bread without any butter, salad and no oil to it, and sour wine in fact, just the sort of provi- sions which monsieur le principal calls in his circulars ' food, wholesome, abundant, and varied !' I can't say I like it myself. It is not jolly ; less than that mighfc make a little fellow look crestfallen for a day or two." The College-Life of Maitre NaUot. 123 Such was the opinion of big Barabino plainly ex- pressed and the sounds of laughter ceased. After supper, walking alone about the long corridor where my schoolfellows were telling each other about their holidays, I could willingly have cried again. Night caine at last, the bell rang again, and there was once more a mustering to go to the dormitory. All those footsteps, running in confusion up the old monkish staircase, seemed to me like thunder. I recognised my own bed by the little trunk at its foot, and having undressed, I slipped into my narrow resting-place, without forgetting to say my prayers. The lamp was burning at the central pillar ; Monsieur Wolfranim, one of the masters, was slowly pacing up and down until we should all be in bed ; then he put out the lamp, and went to bed in his own little cell at the corner of the dormitory. Monsieur Eufin, on the stroke of ten, at the moment when the bugles were sounding the curfew at the infantry barracks, glided by like a shadow. The moon was shining through the window-panes in calm silence ; tny neighbours were fast asleep and I too soon dropped :>ff in my turn. II. THE pale light of dawn was scarcely glimmering lown the two long lines of windows between which we ay sleeping so comfortably, when that abominable bell oegan its j anglings again. Misery ! misery ! it was five o'clock, and we had to jet up already. Never have I known any wretchedness like it, and 124 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. although thirty-seven years have passed over niy head since that time, I still sometimes fancy I can hear old Vandenberg's bell with its clear, sharp, aggravating tones. I can still see my schoolfellows, waking slowly, rubbing their sleepy eyes, yawning, then wearily, wearily sitting up in bed, taking out the black ing- pot, and the shoe-brushes out of the night-table, and beginning to black their shoes; then they are all gathered in the washing-room, refreshing their faces at the large zinc washstand; then coming down to the schoolroom, where Monsieur Wolframm inspects hands and shoes before reading prayers. That old ill-paved schoolroom, with its desks cut and hacked by generations of scholars ; the master in his chair beneath the smoky lamp, the scratching pens, the thumbing of old dictionaries, the exercises, the translations done by cribbing it is all before me still. I shudder at the remembrance, my flesh creeps when I think of it ! And are there people so devoid of common sense as to argue that this is the happiest part of our lives ? After two hours of this wearisome toil, the bell clangs again; down go the desks with a terrible clatter there's a race to the refectory, where Canard and Miston are dealing out great slices of bread for our breakfast. Boys whose connections are known to be good, of whose parents Canard has a good opinion, get all the nice crusts; the rest, unlucky boys, whose fathers have slipped nothing but a piece of forty sous into Canard's greedy palm, will get crumb all the year round. Moreover, those boys with rich parents will get from home hams, sausages, pots of jam and of The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 125 compote ; of all of which they will forget to offer any to their schoolfellows ! The first lesson, and the most instructive at college, is this, and it is neither Latin nor Greek, but good French viz., if you want to earn the favourable notice of Monsieur Canard, of monsieur le principal, of messieurs the professors, and even your schoolfellows, you will have to be rich. Hence are opened out the very first glimpses of the nature of the position ; by this royal road to distinction fools begin to learn that they are the superiors of boys who get no good things from home ; for, as a matter of course, those who feed on the fat of the land are made of a richer kind of stuff ! From this point the poor boy begins to shrink within himself, to reflect with bitterness upon what passes around him, to nurse his indignation in silence. Yes, this is the evil beginning of many other things, the point whence love departs, and all the harmony which should never cease to rule in all our hearts. . Base natures are early revealed ; brought up in poverty at home, they are not the less fond of hams and preserves ; they fawn upon the rich, they crawl humbly at their feet, they smile at everything they say, they hire themselves out to be their flatterers and sycophants ; and as their reward, they are sometimes permitted by their patrons to lick the bottom of a jam-pot, or to nibble at the remains of a sausage. Thus an alliance may become established between the fat bourgeois and his man of business. But this is only the exception ; from that very day the two classes part asunder ; and if, as it not unfrequently happens, the servility of cer- tain professors towards those of their pupils who take 126 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. private lessons, or whose parents are able to forward their interests, comes to be added to all the other advantages enjoyed by the sons of the rich, then the line is drawn sharper and deeper still; and so does the feeling of resentment too become deeper and sharper. I was only ten years old, but coming down from Monsieur Gradus's class the very first day, I knew all this by instinct, just as I have told it you, and I said to myself " Jean Paul, here you are what Gourdier was at Eichepierre. Work ha.rd, take care of yourself, and don't expect anything from anybody." I had observed Monsieur Gradus smiling upon the sons of Monsieur Poitevin, the rich land proprietor at St. Nicholas, who was a friend of Monsieur Rufiu's. I had seen him look caressingly at Monsieur Vaugiro, the nephew of a ci-devant colonel of the Imperial Guard, who had become a priest when the wars were over ; I had seen him look coldly and haughtily upon the sons of the poor, and especially the shabby day- scholars, whose schooling was paid for by the municipal council of Saarstadt. These last had to be careful what they were about ; never were they to hear a word of encouragement; humiliations came down upon them in never-failing succession. A child can see or guess these things ; I understood the consequences of not being rich, and I formed the resolution never to suffer myself to be trodden down and domineered over by a superior race. And now that I have spoken my mind, let us go on. There were fifteen in our class great and small The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 127 boys who had long determined what career to choose, and boys who did not know what a career meant. I have the whole fifteen before me even now, seated in their places at the end of our little whitewashed schoolroom. First came Zillinger, the tall son of the forest-keeper of Wasselonne, with his shoi-t jacket- sleeves, his long face, square brow, and compressed lips. He has come to learn Latin ; lie does not mean to waste his father's money ; and he will soon want to know how it happens that he does not get his regular due portion of Latin, and whether it is on account of those small boys that the class is kept back. He con- siders that he ought to be attended to, for did not his father "pay for him in advance ? Then comes Stein- brenner, a heavy fellow, son of the brewer at Eeichs- hoffen, who asks for his due, and being still no farther than the sixth class, is calculating his examination expenses after he shall have passed his Bachelor's degree, and the cost of his medical studies at Stras- bourg. Then the two brothers Bloum, sons of a sub- stantial paper manufacturer at Ober-Hazlach, who will take in no more than a moderate quantity of Latin, not enough to cause indigestion ; since, being intended for trade, it is a luxury in their case. Geoffrey of Sarrebourg, another tall lad, takes his Latin easy ; the Poitevins and Vaugiro have found their first lesson quite enough for them. The day-scholars, sons of old pensioned soldiers, and of small bourgeois of Saar- stadt, will first try to carry off a summary victory at the bayonet's point ; the first month they will be in the advanced guard ; but as the strong Alsacians mean to advance with a firm and steady front and Monsieur Gradus encourages only the sons of people who have 128 The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. money tlie second quarter will be disastrous, and they will only work just enough to escape punishment. Oh, my brave comrades, Moreau, Desplanches, Engel- hard, Chassard ! I can see you still standing calm and onmoved under the rolling fire of Monsieur Gradus's ill-natured jokes, who calls you dunces and fools in spite of all your exertions, and relegates you to the tail of the class, drawing a sharp line between you and the rest. How full of scorn and contempt are your coun- tenances, as you stand eyeing him strutting up and down the class-room with his nose elevated in the air, wiping his glasses, and putting 'on ridiculous airs of importance because he is a Bachelor ! I have it all before my eyes I am with them still, and can fancy I hear the never-ending weary round of Latin repetitions. It sends me to sleep even now, thirty years after. Out of my little corner I looked on, and resolved not to let the big Alsacians bury me alive. I had the start of them at the beginning, thanks to the lessons I had had from Monsieur Hugues. But they were such great fellows, so persistent over their work, swallowing vocabularies, verbs, adverbs, and syntax with an insa- tiable appetite ! Their fathers had no cause to com- plain of their idleness. They got an equivalent for their money. But what melancholy teaching it was ! How dry ! how barren ! Instead of beginning with simple read- ings, which the professor himself should describe to his scholars the sense of which he should first ex- plain, and afterwards the words and phrases to oblige children for four long years, even before reading as an art, to pour out torrents of unconnected words and The College-Life of Matire Ndbkt. 129 abstract rules surely it is enough to stupefy a human being ! The very first day, a rational man, after having heard repetition lessons for a few minutes, would have passed on to the written exercises, and would have spoken somewhat as follows : "My friends, I have looked over your exercises. They are very bad, because you don't know how to set about them ; you translate all the words just as they corne. Of course that plan won't do. If you want to make a good translation of it, you must consider wbo it is that is speaking ; is it a soldier, or a rustic, or a philosopher? For they would all spoak differently upon the same subject, because they have different notions upon it ; and when you know who is speaking, you get a better idea how he would speak. " Then you must try to ascertain the subject, the matter in question ; for if you don't take the trouble to find out the subject, you translate at random, and run the risk of writing great nonsense. " Well, now, you can't get to know these two things in the very first sentence you come to, nor in the second. You will want to examine the whole page. Tou ought, therefore, to read the Latin from beginning to end, looking in a dictionary for the words you have not yeb learnt ; and only then, after having caught in some degree the general sense of the passage, you will begin to translate each sentence separately ; and each of these sentences must bear a proper relation to the whole." This is the way in which I imagine that a genuine teacher would address his class ; and this method of referring to the general sense or idea, rather than to the detached words and isolated phrases, would have been both simpler and more scientific. But, uiifortu- 130 The College-Life of Mailre Nablot. nately, Monsieur Gradus proceeded in a very different fashion : " Look for your subject, your verb, and your governed case. Then construct your sentence. The subject answers to the question, who or what ? The direct com- plement answers to the question, whom or what ? The subject is the nominative case. The complement or completion of the predicate is in the accusative case. Active and deponent verbs are followed by a direct object. Passive verbs have none." To Japan with your rubbish ! Aren't your direct and indirect objects, your deponent verbs, your attri- butes, your nominatives, and your accusatives all a gi- gantic practical j oke ? How is a child to understand this : " The subject is in the nominative case, the direct ob- ject in the accusative." Will all this jargon open out the minds of our yoxith? With rules such as these the veriest fools may dispense with the trouble of thinking. You put an um instead of an us, you change is into ibus, and that is what their science comes to. But why um rather than us, why ibus rather than is ? Why ? why ? Now those are our classical studies abstract rules which are not explained, words instead of ideas. Memory for words is of the first importance. Memory alone is exercised and developed. Feeling, reasoning, sound sense, and common sense are all buried alive under mountains of words. I return to my story with what patience I may. For what is the use of arguing with men who refuse to hear ? The doctrine of the day is, that to insure order, our youth must first undergo seven or eight years' im- prisonment at college, to be fashioned to bodily and spiritual debasement. Where would our governments The College-Life of Maitre Nablot, 131 be, if by gross mismanagement it should happen that these boys, grown into men, should enter life with notions of justice and liberty? And then those tradi- tions, those legendary pictures, those compulsory formulas, and those monkish revelations, what would happen to those venerable and ancient follies, by means of which impostors in high places have governed us for ages ? Where would all these sublime inventions be sent to ? Why, the abomination of desolation would follow. Ah ! Bonaparte knew what he was about when he restored the Jesuits. Imagine the weariness, the disgust of children laid hold of and subjected to treatment of this sort. Surely the intellect of the majority must have struck roots deep and strong to resist such onslaughts as these. Every day I wept in secret ; and Monsieur Canard poured no balm into my wounded spirit when he set before me the loose crumby portions of bread, from which the crust had been stolen for the benefit of the rich. Injustice always made my blood boil. Woe to him who comes into the world with a sense of justice ! he will smart for it as long as he lives. In this state of distress I made the acquaintance of a boy named Charles Hoffmann, nicknamed G-oberlot, the son of the wealthiest banker in Saarstadt. His father, a very bigoted devotee, had discovered him read- ing Moliere's Tartuffe, and had sent him to be shut up in college to expiate his offence. Goberlot thought upon most matters as I did ; and even then, in the midst of our troubles, we were begin- ning to speculate upon the Divine character, and to wonder why we were doomed to live in a college whero we became every day more inclined to curse the day we 132 TU College-Life of MaUre Nabtot. were born ; and we doubted whether there was such a thing as Divine justice. Every Thursday and Sunday, when we went out for a walk, Goberlot and I used to wonder and argue upon these questions, and I inquired " Why is Monsieur Gradus such a fool, and Canard so unjust ? Why should Monsieur Laperche, the pro- fessor of the fourth class, look so extremely grave, if it is a fact, as the world says, that he has not two ideas in his head ? And why is Monsieur Perrot, the pro- fessor of rhetoric, who knows more than all the rest put together, both lame and very ugly ? Why do we suffer from the folly of other people, incapable as we are of resistance?" I could not reconcile these things with what I knew of the justice of God. And then Goberlot, who had been taught by the priests, answered " That's for our perfecting. If they were not all so stupid, so unfair, and so selfish, we should have no merits, and we should not get to Paradise." " And what is to become of them ?" said I. " Oh ! I am sure I cannot tell," he replied ; " per- haps their destruction is for our salvation." Poor boys ! there was no one to help us out of our difficulties, and so we got deeper and deeper into doubts and perplexities. On that day we were crossing through the town in twos, under the oversight of Monsieur Wolframm. Sometimes we used to come out of the town by the gato that faces the Vosges, or eastern gate, sometimes by the western. But now the sky was becoming dull and grey in the rainy autumnal season, and we could Ilie College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 133 not walk far without exposing ourselves to the cold showers. As soon as we reached the country, all eyes were directed towards the distant summits of the Vosges, and we would say " Do you see, down there, that little white chapel in the midst of the fir-trees ? That's Dabo that's where we live." Then another " Do you see the Altenberg between those two great mountains ? Eichepierre is just behind that." How our poor hearts throbbed before the distant view, and how vividly our village, our small home, our kind indulgent parents, rose to our aching memories ! We could have cried, but for the fear of ridicule. And so we trudged wearily on, until we reached the skirts of the great forest stretching out its thousands of bare and rugged branches. No more green foliage; the birds are silent; there broods a mournful stillness, while the giant pines uplift their tall dark spires as far as sight can stretch, and the pathways through the forest are strewn deep, by the stormy blast, with swirl- ing heaps of fallen leaves. Winter is drawing near, cold winter ! grey clouds gather round in sluggish masses ; heavy drops begin to plash upon the leaves ; we must run for it we mus t go back to the college. Breathless we ' reach the ol & ' monks' entrance and Vandenberg goes to look for his key while we are shouting outside, " Make haste, let us in," and kicking at the door. At last he shambles up, lets us in at his leisure, and we rush under the old archway, as wet as drowned rats. Such were our autumn walks. I 134 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. And then in five or six weeks the winter is upon us. In a single night a great white pall is spread over the whole face of town and country. The roofs of the houses are white, the courts are white, so are the ram- parts, and the mountains, and the plain. White, white everywhere as far as the eye can reach. Oh, what a life we began to live then ! The falling snow, falling, falling still : the creaking weathercocks ; the long, damp, dirty corridors ! Oh, what a difference between this and the pleasant cheerful winters at home, in the corner of the hearth-place, your cotton cap pulled over your ears, your feet comfortably dry, and your careful mother saying, " Now, Jean Paul, don't go out ; you might catcli cold, or you might get chil- blains." Aha ! Canard, and Miston, and Father Dominique took no account of colds or chilblains ; what did they care whether the son of a poor village lawyer, whose gratuity to the servants was a paltry forty sous, had colds and chilblains or not ? Lessons on practical philosophy and experimental physics came to you without much cost in those days ! No fire in the dormitory ; the tall windows, thickly covered with frost from November until February, give a full passage to the north wind through their chinks. There is no possibility of sleeping, on account of the cold ; so you roll up into a little ball between your scanty coverings, you hold your feet with both hands ; and at last the power of sleep asserts itself. The bed is a little bit warmer and you drop off. J>nt all too soon old Vandenberg's bell wakes you up. Oh, misery ! misery ! I don't believe there is anything worse for a sleeping child than to be t uddcnly woke up The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 135 before daylight, in a dormitory of immense length, where everything that is wet or damp is freezing, where currents of ice-cold wind are blowing cruelly ; and to be obliged to get up at once and dress, black your shoes, break the ice in the washstand, and descend the long cold staircase, shivering, only half rubbed dry on account of the chilblains, and the numbness, and the chapped hands. You sanguinely hope you may get a warming by the schoolroom stove, and there you find, to your anguish, all the big fellows, with whiskers coming, in a dense circle round the stove, drawn close up, laughing and grinning, and not one of them good- natured enough to make room for you and say, " Come along, young 'un, get yourself dry and warm here in my place !" No, not one. Poor human nature ! thou art a long way from perfection ; greatly thou needest softening and refining ! Unhappily, no one thinks of that in our colleges Greek and Latin fill up the whole time. A little of theoretical and practical morals, a course of simple humanity, would not be altogether out of place. But the chief business is to manufacture Bachelors who shall afterwards make the best they can of their Bachelorship. Well, when the master on duty had made his ap- pearance too, and had seated himself in his chair of state, and inspected our hands and shoes, gaping himself as if he had not had half his sleep, how was it possible for a boy to study ? how could he retain his lesson even after reading it a hundred times, as long as he was asleep with his eyes open ? I have often experienced this myself; the best of good-will is not sufficient; you must also have the 136 The College-Life of MaUre Nablot. power. Children want sleep more than their elders* no child ever sleeps too long. Let the big boys get up if you will, but do let the poor little ones get an extra hour. Nature requires it, and common sense teaches it. " You don't know your lessons, Monsieur Nablot ? You have been asleep in school hours. You don't go out next Thursday, and you will write out the verb dormir twenty times." Why not a hundred times, fool ? Ah ! those weary tasks, those pensums ; they weigh upon my memory worse than all the other iniquities. Telling a child, who does not know his lesson, that he shall write it out twenty times the very same words twenty times over, the same burdensome tax twice ten times, just like an old blind mill-horse shambling round his wheel is not this sure to make him hate his lessons? Is it not grinding out of him everything that is pleasant and amiable? I appeal to all reasonable creatures for an answer. However, such were our college punishments in my time. Then, on Thursdays and Sundays, by way of recrea- tion, they treated us to an explication of the mysteries of our Holy Catholic, Apostolic, and Eoman religion, and we were indoctrinated with sacramental mysteries, and told to ask no questions ; and we were carefully taught the doctrine of papal indulgences namely, that the Church has power to remit temporal penances, by appropriating to us the superfluous merits of the Blessed Virgin and all the saints. All this was very clear, wasn't it ? I remember that sometimes I presumed to hint to Monsieur Rufin, when he had done explaining these The College-Life of Mattre Nablot. 137 wonderful things, that I could not understand him, and then he would break out into a passion, crying " It is a mystery ! If you understood it, it would not be a mystery ! Now do you understand ?" Then, for fear that he should get worse, and should keep me in, and give me dry bread and water, I humbly said " Yes, monsieur le principal, now I understand." " Ah !" he rejoined, " it is well for you ; but you have been a long while about it. You are a reasoner, a free- thinker, Monsieur Nablot. People who reason come to a bad end. Faith alone can save. You must believe." These words troubled me, and made me anxious, and when I got a little time alone with Goberlot, I said to him ". God has given us legs to walk with, and eyes to see . with ; and has He given us reason that we should not reason with it?" But Goberlot knew nothing about these matters. His Latin wag of no use to him here. When religious instruction was over, we had leave to run in the corridors for an hour. Then we had dinner. One of the older boys, perched up in the pulpit in the dining-hall, used to read aloud to us the voyages and travels of the Jesuit fathers in China, or other stories of that kind, which we were obliged to listen to with the greatest attention. For as soon as the meal was over, monsieur le principal always examined a few of the scholars upon what had been read, and those who could not answer to his satisfaction had to go without wine the next day. I may be judging uncharitably ; but since that time, thinking over those readings, I have often thought that 138 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. the object of tliem was to take the attention of the pupils away from the Lad food, arid the slightly reddened water, that were set before us. During the depth of winter, Monsieur Kufin, after supper, used to send for some of the smaller boys to visit him in. his room ; but only the Poitevins, the Vaugiros, the Henriaz, sons of substantial people who could pay well, My poor friend Goberlot and I stood outside in the cold ; we were not invited in, and yet we were as young as the rest, and quite as cold. However, we did not die of it ; quite the contrary. After five or six sharp frosts, having borne the severity of the cold with such help as we could get by stamping our heels and swinging our arms, we had grown ruddy and strong, and able to stand wintry weather without flinching. When we had snowball fights with the day- boys, it was we who stood the brunt of the battle ; it was we whom the enemy dreaded the most when they came down upon us at the charge-step, but recoiled from our heroic resistance when we stood firm and shouted to the retreating " highly-connected" boys, " Stand fast come on !" At home, in spite of all my mother's tender care, I was always catching cold ; but ever since that winter I have hardly known what it was to have a cold ; and even to this day, when I cough to try the strength of my lungs, the window-panes rattle with the deep sound. Habit is everything except in the case of injustice and wrong. No amount of habit can make me used to that! January, February, and March passed away ; con- jugations, declensions, and rules marked the flight of time. The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 139 And then the fine days of spring came gently down upon us. The deep snow slowly melted away ; in all directions, during the tedious school hours, we could hear the heaps of snow sliding off the roofs, and falling in a curve in huge lumps into the courtyard below, with a noise like distant thunder. The melting snow was shovelled up in great dirty mounds, and stood piled up against the walls. The temperature was rising; the sun, the warm welcome sun, darted his comforting rays into all the cold dark corners, and this delicious warmth was felt to be removing the dampness away from our dormitory. From the upper windows we could see the trees that were planted within the batteries, the fine tall limes, gradually changing to a light and tender green, amidst which we knew we should soon hear the bees and the cockchafers humming. And the sparrows, too, but lately objects as pitiable as ourselves, fluttering even about our feet in the snow, to catch a crumb of bread, those poor house-sparrows were already beginning to twitter and quarrel, to worry and chase each other. Yes, here was spring indeed ! Everybody, even Canard himself, looked a little less ugly; we gazed with a sense of comfort and happiness into each other's faces, as we became conscious of the approach of the Easter holidays. Compositions were written twice a week. The big Alsacians were the best hands at that ; they expected to ride over the heads of all the class, and take the highest places by storm, and so reach the fifth class. Of course they had a right, having always worked so strenuously. Next to those fellows I came, on account of my good 140 7 he College-Life of Mattre Nablot. memory. I remembered even what I had never been taught to understand ; and in spite of every disadvan- tage, I stood higher than Poiteviu, Heuriaz, andVaugiro. My friend Goberlot and I had excellent abilities ; Monsieur Gradus himself confessed it ; but then we were never incorrigible violators of all the rules of dis- cipline. We shunned society, and loved only solitude ; we were given to arguing, we were addicted to fighting, we were most contumacious and refractory. Such was the character we bore. We had had more pensums, more imprisonments, than all the rest of the class put together. What would you have ? We have all our own way of seeing things. If we had been asked for our opinion of Mon- sieur Gradus, we could have supplied him with a character which would perhaps have been worse than ours, and on examination it might have been found that we were the best justified in our sentence. Day by day the holidays came closer and closer, and now that I think of it, I fancy I can hear half a dozen of the older boys the elder Leman, of Abreche- villc ; Barabino, from the Harberg ; and Limon, the brewer's son, and the rest marching up and down arm in arm, and singing along the corridors the holiday song, which they had learnt from the old boys before them, and which descended from one generation of schoolboys to another in Saarstadt College. The tears rise as I hum it over to myself: "Ah! ah! ah! Valete studia, Omiiia jam tscdia Vertantur ill gaudia Hi ! hi ! hi ! Vale rnagistcr mi," &c. &c, ' Ah ! Ah ! Ah ! Valete studia." Campaign in Kabylia.'] [Page 140 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 141 Yes, no doubt, if college years do seem the best in our life to some few men, it must be because they have forgotten everything but the approach of holiday time. Just for a moment, let us do the same. Winter is past and gone. Compositions are over. The first days of April are here. Palm Sunday and Good Friday are gone. Easter is coming. From all sides, friends and relations come to fetch us home. Many scholars are already off. My father has written the day before that he will come and fetch me, and I am still sitting at morning lessons. Every now and then the door opens, and a name is called. First one, then another of my schoolfellows hears his name, and trembles with joy and excitement as he shuts down his desk, and runs to the door. His parents are outside, waiting in the courtyard. Every time the door opens my heart beats. Now it will be my turn ! No, it is some one else. At last, suddenly the name of Jean Paul Nablot sounds through the room. I rise precipitately clear at a bound a table that stands in my way I run, with my knees almost failing me for joy, and in another moment I am in my father's arms. Tears of emotion fill the eyes of both. " Well, Jean Paul, I am just come from the prin- cipal's. He says your compositions are good, and that you have a good memory, but that you don't Avork as much as you might. He says you are too fond of being alone, and that you want to argue. Surely you don't want to give me pain ?" I sobbed aloud. <* Come, come !" said he, " you will work bettor after 142 The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. the holidays. Come along, and don't let us mention that again." And we pass out. Old Vandenberg looks at us ; he lets us out, and, oh, joy! I am free again. Every trouble is forgotten. There stands the well-known old char-a-bancs before the college gate ; we take our seats, and in a moment are rattling over the paved roads. We reach the gate of the Vosges, and now Grisette is galloping merrily along the sandy road which leads to Richepierre. My spirits are returning, and my father, observing my ruddy cheeks and clear bright eyes, troubles himself no more about my love of solitude. No doubt it occurs to him " Oh, the principal has made quite a mistake ; whether the boy loves solitude or not is neither here nor there." In an hour we have crossed Hesse, and while Grisette is trotting away under the long arches of beech, oak, and birch, with green and swelling buds, I tell him about the thousands of acts of injustice and tyranny under which I had smarted; for, as I viewed the matter, masters and professors were all leagued against me. My good father listened with interest ; he had a good many comments to make upon my revelations, and even by my own version that excellent man saw plainly how matters stood ; he did not think I was altogether in the wrong ; and after having listened to me some time with a thoughtful interest he replied " My son, it is quite possible that all you state is true. I readily believe you. We are not rich; we make great sacrifices for your sake. Try to The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 143 us for all our trouble and anxiety, and don't fret be- cause of the wrongs you have to endure from others. Your first duty is to do no wrong to them, to fulfil your duties honestly, and to rise in the world by labour, courage, and perseverance, in the teeth of all that bar your way. Get this well into your mind, that you will not rise by the help, but in spite, of the world. What- ever other people can take from you, they will. Such seeins to be the law of our existence. You are just now beginning to open your eyes to the difficulties of life ; but all this is nothing compared to what is to come. Your experience as yet is but very small. By- and-by, when you have to make yourself a name, and gain a position, in the midst of thousands who will form into close ranks, or if they cannot do that, spread out their elbows to keep you out, then real difficulties will begin. Therefore keep calm and cool ; don't get uselessly angry. Your health is good ; your first trials are over. That is enougli for one time. Your object now is to get your Bachelor's degree. There is no entrance into any profession without. Give your mind to that object now, and work with that prospect before you." Such were the wise, kind words of that excellent man, and I readily perceived that he was quite right. I formed the resolution to follow his good advice, first to give him pleasure, and my mother too ; but in the second place, to annoy those who seemed to me to be anxious to clog my wheels, and throw hindrances in my way. Hence it is plain that the first result of my college experience was love for those who worked for my good, and bitter hatred for those others who, as I believed, 144 The College-Life of MaUre Nablot. . purposely stood in my way, and to whom, of course, I imputed every imaginable fault envy, injustice, bad faith, greediness, and stupidity. To be fair and do justice to our adversaries we want time ; to a child it is scarcely possible. Unfortunately, the eagerness after their profits exhibited by too many of our college prin- cipals gives a child but a poor opinion of human nature ; and soon he comes to see nothing but a group of greedy speculators in those whom he ought to acknowledge to be his best friends. An additional reason for this blot in the reputation of the men who are entrusted with the important charge of education in our smaller colleges is their wretched position. Is it fair to expect devotion to their profes- sion from men who have not enough to live upon who are unable to obtain from the State the means of main- taining the superior social rank to which their learning and the importance of their functions entitle them ? But you may be sure that, at that early period in my history, I did not trouble my head about such specula- tions ; and if I put forward these views now, it is only because I consider it the duty of every conscientious man to think and express himself in this way. In a couple of hours from our departure from Saar- stadt we reached the foot of the rocky hill which lies before Kichepierre. The pace slackened. Grisette was panting, my father was encouraging her with his voice " Hue ! hue !" I thoughtfully set my eyes again upon our old village, with my heart stirred up with the memories of childhood, and the pleasure of meeting again those whom I loved best in the world. At last the first house on the hill came in sight. Grisette resumed her former pace, and we drove down The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. 145 the long street, bordered on each side by barns, dung- hills, and cart-sheds. My mother was waiting at the door, my brothers and sisters were looking out for me. " Ha ! ha ! There he is ! I see him ! There's Jean Paul !" And all our neighbours were at their windows. Before the conveyance stopped I had jumped down, and kissed my mother over and over again. My brothers and sisters hung upon my neck, and in we went, all in a heap, into the large sitting-room, where dinner was awaiting us. What more can I say ? That fortnight passed away as swiftly as one day. All my old schoolfellows at Magnus's came to see me. Gourdier and Dabsec passed night and morning, bare- footed and bare-chested, with their burdens of wood upon their shoulders ; they stopped, throwing back their long ragged locks off their brown faces, and gazed upon me without speaking. "[How do you do, Gourdier ?" I cried one day to one that Monsieur Magnus used to proclaim the best boy in the school. A flash of intelligence darted from his hazel eyes. " How are you ?" he replied abruptly, pulling up his burden, with the handle of his axe beneath it, and recommencing his toilsome journey to the fort. I had become less proud than I used to be ; but he had not forgotten that I had once called him a beggar, and he could not forgive me. Perhaps he was thinking that if he had but had money enough, he too might have carried on his educa- tion; and he was feeling indignant at having been obliged to stay his progress. I cannot tell ; but it is 146 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. quite likely, for lie was very ambitious at school. Not having oil for his lamp at home, he used to sit at night before the mouth of the oven to read his books, with his head down between his knees ; and when he came to school in the morning, his eyes were red with the heat of the fire. I believe, then, that he was angry with me for having been more fortunate than he, and being able to study at my ease. Monsieur le cure also came once or twice to dine with us during these holidays ; he examined me, and seemed satisfied, especially with my improvement in sacred history. Then I had to leave home again, and return to join my class at Monsieur Gradus's ; and I felt a great depression. Still I kept up my spirits better than the first time, and I said to myself, " After all, one does get away." On the 29th of April, my father took me back to school, and the classes opened the very next morning. m. THE worst trouble at the small colleges in that day was the perpetual traffic in school-books carried on by the principals. These conscientious workers did not content them- selves with the legitimate profits which they derived from the board of the pupils. Every year, and some- times at intervals of only six months, immense heavy parcels came full of French, Greek, and Latin gram- mars, dictionaries, histories, sacred and Roman, on a new plan, which the professors immediately adopted The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. 147 in order to procure the principal a prompt sale of his goods. All the old grammars, arithmetics, and primers were flung into the basket ; Lhomond being out of date, Noel and Chapsal took his place. Noel and Chapsal died in their turn, and Burnouf was ready to fill the gap ; and so on. And so it came to pass that, to enable the principal to gain a profit of five sous, a crowd of boys never knew their grammar nor their rules even after five or six years of constant application, because they were put on new books upon old subjects every year. I do not believe that in any business the greed of gain displayed itself more shamelessly. Under the pretext of perfect- ing the method of teaching, the pupils learnt nothing thoroughly. This is exactly what happened that year. Before Easter we had had the rudiments of Lhomond, his grammar, and his catechism of history. On our return, Monsieur G-radus put into all our hands the books of a certain gentleman who refined and improved upon Lhomond; and now we had to commit everything to memory, always by heart : new rules, new examples, new primitive and derivative tenses, &c., &c. Of course, everything was left unexplained. Those who had imagined they knew something, because they had stuffed a lot of words into their memories, now found that they knew nothing. The same thing had to be begun over again with fresh words, and with a fresh arrangement. For my part, I confess that those two grammars never ceased to make war upon each other in my poor brain, until my college days were over ; I could never tell which to go to. But monsieur le prin- 148 The College-Lije of MaUre Nablot. cipal had got a profit of two or three francs out of every scholar, the parents had paid fifteen or twenty, and the transaction was closed. Do let us pass on. The old Alsacians having with their long strides passed out of Monsieur Gradus's class, after Easter a new batch of boarders and day-scholars, the best in the seventh class, came to their places ; these were Masse, Marchal, the brothers Martin, Baudouin, Moll, &c. This time we were all about the same age, a very lucky circumstance, for the mind of a boy of fifteen is not the same as that of a boy of ten or twelve ; the professor who speaks to the one cannot be understood by the other. The tail will in that case always be sacrificed to the head. I do not mean to tire you out by telling you about our new grammar. I suffered enough from it myself, and I will inflict none of it upon you. But there was an odd circumstance at that time, which used to puzzle me excessively during the first few days of the term. In summer time our windows stood open, on account of the overpowering heat which prevailed between the walls of the old cloisters. Whilst reciting conjugations, or the fables of La Fon- taine, we used to hear a loud and singular voice rising from time to time, giving out a most melancholy note, with wonderful cadences "Kai i i ! Ka'i i i ! Kai i i !" From two o'clock till four we heard this cry at least a hundred times, and I said to myself, " That's a bird. But what bird is there with a note like that ? I never heard such a strange cry for a bird as that." The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 149 Well would you believe it ? it was Greek ! It wag tlie cry of Monsieur Laperche, professor in the fourth class, in the next class-room, teaching his pupils Greek, which he did not know himself ! I found that out by- and-by, when I had the pleasure of entering his class. He used gravely to pace up and down the room, care- fully measuring his steps with his long heron's legs, and with much importance followed the lesson of the boy who was translating, by the help of an interlineal translation; and when a boy stuck fast, hindered by some word he did not know, then Monsieur Laperche's full and sufficient explanation was as follows: He would throw back his little flat bald head, with its thin fringe of whisker, open his mouth until it reached his ears, and in the gravest manner emit the cry, " Ka'i i i ? Ka'i i i ?" which in Greek just means, "And and ?" This much for the ladies who have not learnt Greek. That solitary cry, in the great courtyard, where the midsummer heat glowed even in the depth of the dark shades, that prolonged, dismal, monotonous cry used at length to send us to sleep. All my unhappy school- fellows and myself, leaning over the long table, stared at each other with dim, dull eyes and drooping lids, trying all we could to resist the sleepy influence of that humming. And whilst one was repeating his page of vocabularies or word-lists, and Monsieur Gradus, with his legs crossed, was wearily yawning under cover of his hands, or wiping his spectacles, dreaming about some soiree in town, or some jolly picnic, without thinking any more of the vocabulary than of the Great Mogul, we poor lads, weighed down by that melancholy cry, " Ka'i 'i Ka'i i," which arose as regularly as X 150 The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. the dull tick of a kitchen clock, we could just know that our heads were drop drop dropping down gently, gently till at last the tip of the nose touched the desk ; then we were happy oh, so comfortable and so happy ! We slept soundly but not for long ! In a very few minutes the sharp angry voice of Monsieur Gradus, more terrible than the voice of doom, awoke us from our happy unconsciousness : "Monsieur Scheffler Monsieur Nablot write out the verb dormir ten times. Stand up repeat your lesson." And we rose, and began to repeat as we had often done before: " Agricola, farmer; asinus, ass," &c. All those lists of words, I have them still before me, with their blots of ink and stains of grease. They never were of much use to me, but at that time they worried me fearfully. And I recollect that the following year I had to begin the same story over again under another pro- fessor ! It is awful to think of killing time for school- boys in that ridiculous fashion, and disgusting them for life with what it ought to have been a pleasure to learn. How many useful things we might have been taught, instead of those unmeaning strings of uncon- nected words ! What sound principles might have been instilled into our minds, leading us on to a rational appreciation of the spirit of languages both living and dead ! All that we went through scarcely seemed to be serious work. It was old-fashioned routine. It was a farce ! They declared they were strengthening our memories; but memory has something better to do than to load itself with such lumber as long strings of The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. 151 words, dry conjugations, and abstract rules. It is not rules that make language, any more than rhetoric eloquence, or school philosophy common sense. Words are merely words, and cannot take the place of any- thing else ideas least of all. But let us proceed, and we will resiime this discus- sion by-and-by. What with all those words and words, those rules and rules, and all those exercises for improving the memory, we should have fallen into a state of down- right stupidity but for the Thursday and Sunday walks in the very pretty neighbourhood of Saarstadt. How delightful it was to breathe the fresh air ! We used to walk to the saw-mills, or to the Bonne Fontaine, shaded by the leafy beech and fir trees. We used to stay at the first village we came to ; and then all the boys who had rich connections, les fils de bonne famille, whose pockets had some lining to them, used to order whipped cream, strawberries, fresh butter, honey, bacon omelettes. They were not allowed wine, lest these young gentle- men should take more than they could conveniently carry, the blame of which would assuredly have fallen upon the unlucky master in charge. Therefore in respect of drink they were limited to beer My friend Goberlot and I never having a sou in our pockets, used to roani a great deal further, right into the depths of the woods, running like squirrels along the shady by-paths, and climbing the tallest forest trees, at the risk of our necks. And when we had reached the very top, and could see nothing above us but the immense expanse of heaven, and nothing below us but the vast ocean of the masses of foliage, then, 152 The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. hearing no sound to disturb the profound silence, we would again begin our discussions upon religion as it was taught us, and upon the injustice and the follies of the professors much delighted at being out of the sight and hearing of Monsieur Gradus, Monsieur Wolf- ramm, and Canard, and Monsieur Rufin glad at being far away from the smoke- stained schoolroom, and as happy as the birds of the air. This happiness lasted until the rest, having finished stuffing themselves, collected themselves in a body at the skirts of the wood, and shouted all together, " He ! hohu !" till the cries, penetrating and echoing up the heights, at length reached us. At this call, with one last fond look at the setting sun, we descended our lofty watch-tower, and slowly gained the village, very sorry that we had not been able to stay balancing ourselves on our tree-top till the stars were out. As soon as we were in sight, all the fellows shouted, " Here they come ! Here are the deserters !" And the master immediately put us under arrest, for having separated from the main body and delayed the return home. But what did we care ? Had we not had the unspeakable enjoyment of a free run through the green forest? Had we not breathed the pure mountain air ? Had not our eyes gazed afar beyond the wooded mountains, upon the distant blue summits of Alsace and Lorraine ? We had laid in a stock of happy thoughts for many days to come. The moment we reached our rat-hole we were packed off to our cell, whilst *he rest, who had fared sump- The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. 153 tuously already, walked into the dining-hall ; but Goberlot and I, who had had nothing since morning, were fain to content ourselves with dry bread. In all candour, we must have been endowed with admirable tempers not to have conceived a horror of all our species. But Goberlot, who had been brought up by a devout Catholic father, under the complete influence of cures and Jesuits, who dined three or four days in the week at their house, and in return made unlimited promises of Paradise to the whole family my friend Goberlot, winking and leering, had from his childhood learnt to see the comic side of things. But I was born a philosopher, and I held the unjust in supreme contempt, and this sentiment, even against my wish, betrayed itself continually in my countenance. How many times Monsieur Gradus, and later on Mon- sieur Laperche, felt insulted when they caught my eye resting on them ! " Monsieur Nablot," they cried, " what do you mean by looking at me in that way ?" No answer. " Two hours' close confinement for you 1" - I smiled. " Four !" I smiled again. How could I help it ? I despised th ) men ; they saw that, and could not forgive me. Things went on much in the same way until the [,nuual compositions came on. The notes on my cha- racter were no improvement upon those made at Easter. Yet I was at the top of my class. I translated and recited better than all my schoolfellows. The wish to humble the rich fellows in my class, aa Gourdier had formerly humbled me, made mo work 154 The College-Life of Maltre Nablot. with extraordinary ardour. Several times I remained in on the Thursdays, to go over my work whilst tho rest were walking. After the August compositions, which were to count double, I was nothing but skin and bone ; but having shown some of the elder boys my rough copies of exer- cises and translations, they all declared that I should get the first prizes. I therefore depended upon my good success, and even wrote to my father to announce my approaching triumph. The old corridors had already echoed for the last fortnight with the delightful air of the holiday song, when the great day of the prize distribution arrived. The gates were crowded with parents and relations, friends, and municipal councillors, civic dignitaries and military officials, all in the uniform of their respective ranks; imposing cocked hats, red waistcoats, great Alsacian bonnets, black coats, round hats, helmets, plumes, and silk dresses began to defile down the ves- tibule of the old cloister, ascending to the large hall where the prizes were to be distributed, which was splendidly decorated with festoons of flowers, a grand Latin inscription over the door, and a raised platform at one end covered with prize books, and prize wreaths of leaves, according to our French custom. We were drawn up in the court, when my father ran to me full of the joy that was beaming out of his eyes to tell me that my mother had come to crown me. He embraced me, and I hardly had strength to answei him, I was so overcome by my feelings. In a few minutes, all the company being settled in their places, we passed through that magnificent as- sembly, and took our places on the two sides of the The College-Life of Maitre Ndblot. 155 platform; while the Cuirassiers' band, with its big drum, its fifes, its chime of Chinese "bells, its trumpets, and its clarionets, made the windows rattle with a triumphal march which shook the very marrow in our bones. Next after this, monsieur le maire, with his official sash over his shoulder, uttered a few well-selected sentences about the happy meeting. Then Monsieur Wilhelm, the master of the industrial school, read a fine speech upon the origin of human knowledge, be- ginning at the invention of the forge by Tubal Cain, and ending with the invention of the steam-engine ; passing from the Hebrews to the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Eomans, the barbarous Merovingians, who had no glass to their windows ; the race of Capet, only a little less ignorant than the Merovingians ; the Arabs, the Turks, up to the taking of Constantinople by means of enormous guns, &c., &c. The ladies were inclined to faint ; there was a great desire to cry out, " Stop ! stop !" but in such a dignified assembly that would have been highly improper, and we were compelled to wait until he should stop of his own accord. The speech had been going on more than an hour, when at last he was seen turning over his last leaf, and a sigh of relief and gratified expectation was heard from the whole assembly. But, alas ! he had not quite done yet. With a self-satisfied smile, he then told us he should forbear entering on the chapter of modern inventions, and spare the sensitive modesty of his contemporaries, and especially of His Majesty King Louis Philippe. He took another quarter of an hour to explain the The College-Life of tiailre Nablot. delicacy of Iris motives, and we were beginning to look at one another with dismay, when at length he made a very low bow, and sat down amidst the applause of the company. Immediately Monsieur Laperche began to call the names of the successful competitors, beginning of course with the hilosophers. These were his special favourites, and the cause of immense self-gratulation. Monsieur Laperche enjoyed the advantage of a very tall person, which enabled him to see over the heads of all the company. Besides this, he possessed an unctuous and far-reaching though somewhat nasal voice, which he practised every day over his Greek. I was boiling with excitement during this calling over of names ; the fire of hope and expectation kindled in my cheeks. All my schoolfellows felt and looked the same. We could scarcely wait for our turn ; but as between the announcements, whilst each prize-taker came down the steps into the body to receive his crown from the hands of his parents, the band played a little air, this took up time, and it was therefore three o'clock before our class was called up. I had already distinguished my father and mother seated together in the midst of the gazing brilliant crowd, when Monsieur Laperche began to call the names of the sixth class, and instead of my name, which everybody fully expected would come first, the names of Messieurs Louis and Claude Poitevin, Henriaz, Vaugiro, were announced; and all these pupils were the principal's personal friends ! I turned as pale as ashes. At last I heard my name called to receive the prize The College-Life of Maitre Nabtot. 15? for memoriter lessons, which, could not possibly bo re- fused me, as I always knew my lessons the best in *he class. In a moment I recovered myself, and ran full of ex- citement and happiness to be crowned by my father and mother, who embraced me Avith tears in their eyes. Then I returned to my place ; and in a few minutes, the prize distribution being over, the croAvd slowly passed out down the wooden staircase, with a loud rolling sound of many footsteps. I went down. My power of thought had returned, and I shuddered. At the door, within the vestibule, I found my father alone. He was waiting for me, and embraced me again with the greatest affection, saying " I am. satisfied, Jean Paul, quite satisfied ; you have done all that I could have expected. Come! your mother is waiting for us at the Abondance. Your box is already in ; we are going to start directly." I followed him thoughtfully. About ten we arrived at Eichepierre. The wholo way, notwithstanding the praises of my parents, I had not spoken a word. The wrong that had been done me had stunned nic. I could not believe it. It seemed horrible to me ! IV. I HAVE given you an account of my first year at college, and I think you must have had enough of it. The four following years were deplorably like that first one. After Monsieur Gradus came Monsieur Laurent j after 158 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. Monsieur Laurent, Monsieur Laperche ; after Monsieur Laperche, Monsieur Damiens ; after Monsieur Damiens Monsieur Fischer. After De Viris Ulustribus Romce canie Cornelius Nepos, SelectceProfanis,'ViTgi]ii Eclogae and the Georgics, De Senectute, Odes of Horace, Mcecenas atavis, &c. , without reckoning in Greek Chrestoniathy , the Fables of jEsop, Xenophon's Cyropsedia, and the first book of the Iliad. Rudiments followed upon rudiments, primi- tive tenses and primitive tenses, grammar and grammar, rules and rules, and the whole without explanations ! We were taught Latin and Greek just as Monsieur Kufin taught us mysteries. And then physical sciences without instruments, chemistry without a laboratory, natural history without specimens, history without criticism ! Words ! words ! words ! Is it surprising that many people have their heads filled with nothing but words ? For ten years together we get nothing else. The general low condition of intellectual power arises from this cause. The Jesuitical training introduced by Bonaparte, under the name of the University, is answerable for this ; memory is set up above reasoning ; formulas and inviolable rules are clapped over intelligence as an iron cage covers over a bird. The French are not naturally a race of fools and monkeys. Our merchants, our engineers, our men of science, and our artisans are quite up to the mark of the English, Germans, and Americans. If there are amongst us so many shallow wits, who mistake grand and hollow phrases, loud-sounding words, extravagant gesticulations in a word, play-acting for the very acme of eloquence and of genius, there is no doubt of the reason ; it is simply the natural result of the education The College-Life of Maitre Nablot 159 which has for seventy years been forced upon us. The bourgeois have aimed at filling the places of the ancient nobility. Step by step they have followed the methods taught us by the old royal colleges under the direction of the priests, while other nations were following the path of progress by the development of intelligence through the demonstration and exposition of truth. A man remembers what he has understood. Words and phrases crammed into an overladen memory are quickly forgotten. It is a happy event when there is found in any of our poor municipal colleges a professor endowed with good common- sense, and \vho knows how to use his gift; who aims at impressing upon his pupils the truth that the beauty and perfection of a literary work are not dependent upon the arrangement of words so much as upon the precision of the thoughts, the depth of the feeling, and the truth of the observations. Such a man out of the most ordinary materials will turn out first-rate scholars, upon the principle, perhaps, that " amongst the blind a one-eyed man is king." I had begun my education young, full of ardour, and imagining that the most brilliant prospects lay before me. But after five years of elementary instruction had sufficiently lowered the tone of my mind, such was the confusion surging up in my memory of chemical terms, geography, natural science, Latin, Greek, mythology, nouns proper, dates, rules, and even German, which Monsieur Laperche taught after the same method as his Greek such was the muddle in my head, that I could not tell either what I did know or what I didn't know. I mistook words for things ! After having recited 160 The College- Life of Maitre NaUot. like a parrot the list of simple bodies, I thought I knew them ; after repeating by rote a chapter of physics, I believed myself as great a savant as Ampere, Arago, or Gay-Lussac. And yet I had neither seen what I talked about nor worked at one single ex- periment. Greek and Latin were treated in the same way ; and when they talked to me of the beauty of an ode of Horace, of a passage of Homer, of an oration of De- mosthenes, I thought it was all a bad joke, and that nothing could be more tedious and uninteresting. It was my opinion that all those old writers wrote rubbish, and that they tacked on words to words by the rules of syntax, exactly as Monsieur Gradus did. Bossuet, Corneille, Racine, and Boileau seemed to me no better. Their very masterpieces made me break out in a cold perspiration. All my schoolfellows viewed things in the same light. But what could we do ? We wanted to get our Bachelor's degree, and have done with it. So we tried to look convinced, just as those unfortuuate cures are obliged to do who are compelled for bread to give their assent to mysteries and false creeds. Weari- ness and discouragement laid hold of us all. Is this the way to develop the taste and the appreciation of youth for the beautiful and the true ? Is this the way to inspire them with a love for modem literature, and an admiration of the great poets and philosophers of old? In a word, we had been stupefied. And since we are upon that topic, I maintain that a large proportion of the young men who leave our colleges are no better ; they have lost the free exercise of their rational faculties, and they require two or three years of active life to The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 161 recover their proper tone. Many never do get over it, and remain machines all their lives. After bowing to the opinion of the professors, they bow to the opinion of the gazette. Amongst themselves they pay each other the compliment of styling one another serious- minded men correct thinkers. They denounce every movement that has a tendency to progress, and pay implicit obedience to formulas alone. Whatever dis- turbs the order or sequence of their formulas is not to be endured ; they won't hear of it. They thrust it from them as unfit to be dealt with. Worse yet, many young men lose more than their common-sense ; they sacrifice that feeling of natural dignity which belongs to every civilised man. I am not alluding to the vices bred by constant isolation from the outer world, in those close establishments where there is no refreshing time for mingling with others besides those you see daily about you, a weari- ness which brings some of them to the level of the solitary brutes. I rather mean the sentiment of justice and liberty, the spirit required to stand up for one's rights against all adversaries, at the same time that one learns to respect the rights of others. I am. alluding to that baseness and degradation which assume the place of the native pride of every right-minclcd man, when, unhappily, all the days of his youth he has before his eyes the spectacle of unfair preferences yielded to fortune, to the detriment and loss of labour and talent. What can result from such a system but moral and intellectual degradation ? I am thankful to say that I have always had an abhorrence of injustice. It is to this feeling that I owe niy deliverance from utter degradation. 162 The College- Life of Maitre Nablot. In the fourth year of ray residence, being now in tht second class, there happened during the winter a singulai occurrence. I was then fifteen. I had been some months ill ill of ennui, pale, hollow-eyed, and as thin as a lath ; my long brown hair fell in a tangled mass over my forehead ; a light down was beginning to shade my cheeks and upper lip. I was sinking. I needed all the stock ot health and strength which I had drawn from my happy life at home and in the fields to back me up against the unwholesome influences of that college life. During play-hours I lay half reclining on the form behind my desk, gazing with lazy indifference upon the games of the other boys. I looked on the dark side of every- thing. The year before my friend Goberlot had left for Fribourg, from which he returned a good deal changed for the worse. But this forms no part of my history, and I will not repeat anything to an old comrade's discredit. I scarcely ever laughed. I said to myself, " What a misery it is to be living in this world ! What a mob of Canards, of Graduses, and of Laperches beset us on every side ! Life is a melancholy thing. What lies are forced down our throats for truths ! Oh ! why are we condemned to such a heap of miseries, without knowing how or why ? Of what crime have we been guilty that we were made out of the dust, in which we lay so still ?" There was no comfort in thoughts like these, but for a long time I had been brooding over them ; and my thoughts upon the providence of God made me more unhappy still. I trembled and wept without any cause ; The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 163 I Lad become as weak as a girl. It was rudiments and lists of words, and cramming, and injustice which had reduced me to this state. The flashes of good sense which from time to time passed across my mind brought no comfort with them at all. Now at that critical time there were three or four big fellows of eighteen to twenty, who had indulged them- selves in the bad habit of annoying, and even beating, the small boys, when the poor little creatures did not choose to put up with their ill-usage with a good grace. They were, of course, fils de bonne faniille who sought amusement in this way, instead of prepar- ing for their degree. But they had the advantage of being taught by private tutors, and they were sure to pass. Bastien, the outdoor warden, shut his eyes upon these proceedings ; and so those tyrants had an easy life of it. The most persistent of those ill-conditioned fellows was Monsieur Charles Balet, the son of the Advocate Balet of Saarbourg an indolent rascal, a drunkard, an utterly good-for-nothing vagabond, whose vices did but grow from day to day until, as life went on, having ruined himself utterly, he became a vagrant tinker, leading his skinny donkey by the bridle, and thrashing his poor wife as if she had no feeling. All the country round knows him. But at that time he was rich ; he played vulgar practical jokes, and put no restraint upon his insolence and his brutality towards little boys who were unable to resist him. One evening, during one of the sharpest frosts of 164 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. January, all the pupils were in the schoolroom, some playing at main chaude, some at ninepins, others were conversing round the stove, when all at once a loud burst of laughter was heard. Monsieur Charles Balet had just played a practical joke upon one of the little ones, Lucien Marchal, a good little boy of ten or eleven, remarkable for his gentleness and his quietness, and even for a certain dreaminess, as it sometimes happens with children who are for the first time removed from their parents, and kept locked in like malefactors. Monsieur Charles Balet had just dragged at the little fellow's inner clothing through a hole, and this was the explanation of all that outbreak of merriment. Little Marchal, red with shame, was putting back his dress in all haste, when Charles Balet, encouraged by the success of his first exploit, again pulled it out with increased rudeness and violence, so that the rent was becoming wider at every tug ; and Marchal, in the mids-t of that mocking crowd, having no defender, burst into tears. From behind my desk I saw all this ; I felt my nerves quivering with indignation. For a long time I had borne a deep ill-will against that bully, who nevertheless had never ventured upon attacking me, no doubt con- cluding that if he did, although he was much taller and stronger, the attempt might not be unaccompanied with danger to his precious person, and danger was what ho was always averse to. And in mj own heart, aware that I was the weaker of the two, I hesitated ; but the cries of poor Marchal confirmed in me a settled purpose. " I say, Balet," I cried out in a loud voice, " I will The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 165 thank you to stop that sort of joking. I tell you, you shall not worry those little fellows any longer." Amazed at niy audacity, the bully turned sharp round, and glared at me from head to foot, in utter astonish- nient that a Nabot, as he called me, should dare to call his authority in question. All the others, not less surprised, stood mute with expectation, gazing and listening. Feeling certain that a battle must be fought, I calmly left my place at the desk, and resolved that if the great bully should get victory, I would make him pay dearly for it. First he turned red, then he turned pale. " You won't let me !" he shouted, grinning at me " you won't let me ! And who are you ?" I coldly replied, but with teeth and lips tightly com pressed " No, I shall not allow you to bully the little ones." Then he lifted his hand, but in a moment my pent- up rage had its fill of satisfaction ; at a bound I was at his throat like a tiger, with my nails fast clenched behind his ears. He howled with pain and rage. At the same moment all the other fellows, especially the little ones, delighted at the punishment their tyrant was receiving, cried enthusiastically " Well done, Nablot ! well done !" But I needed no encouragement. The big brute struck me on the face with both his fists, and made the blood fly from my nose, but I never let go. I clutched him, my nails went into his flesh deeper and deeper, and I was laughing with delight, and kicking the fellow's shins with all my might, and with such rage and fury that presently he shouted out 166 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. " Help ! help ! lie is throttling me !" Not a boy moved a finger. " Aha ! you big coward," I cried, redoubling my blows "you are frightened, are you?" And the thunders of applause, and the cries ot " Bravo, Nablot ! well done, Nablot !" at last reached the ears of the outdoor warden, who heard them from the corridor, and of monsieur le principal, who heard them from his study. All at once the door burst open, and Monsieur Rufin, Monsieur Wolframm, Canard, and Miston appeared at the door of the schoolroom. Balet, seeing help at hand, redoubled his blows upon my face ; but he was staggering, he was suffocating, and tears were running from his starting eyes, when I was seized upon from all sides at once, and pulled from my adversary. "Monsieur Nablot, you are expelled!" cried the principal " you are expelled ! What! in your position, to maltreat Monsieur Balet ! it is abominable !" I could hear nothing, and whilst they were pulling me by the arms and by my collar to carry me away, I cried to the bully, with a loud laugh " Now, you big coward, there's a lesson for you ! you'll know now that you mustn't worry the little boys. Look out for yourself!" And as he was for a moment regaining confidence, seeing me held fast, and approaching me with a menacing gesture, I shook off my captors with a violent effort, sprang at the scoundrel, struck him on the face, and spat on : t. Then the principal, with great indignation, ordered the bystanders to lay hold of me, and carry me to the cells. The College- Life of Maitre Nablot. 167 The prison windows were broken; only the bars remained. The cold and the wind, the rain and the snow, penetrated by turns into this dark and narrow dungeon, where a ray of the sun was a very rare visitor. There I was left upon the cold stones, and never moved for four hours, while the blood was freezing upon my face. I heard the bell ring for supper, then for play- time, then for bed. Everybody had been in bed more than an hour, and it was freezing hard, when I heard a distant step in the corridor. A key clinked in the door. It was the principal, who alone seems to have remembered me. Canard, Miston, Father Dominique, Father Vandenberg had forgotten me, or perhaps they considered me un- worthy to live, after such a monstrous crime as thrash- ing Monsieiir Balet, the son of the richest lawyer in Saarbourg. Monsieur Rufin was holding his caudle, and keeping it from the wind with one hand. He said " Eise go to bed. I have sent to inform your father he will come and fetch you away to-morrow." I rose without a word of reply, and went up the long dark staircase. In passing the lavatory I washed niy bloodstained and bedabbled face, and then got into bed, thankful to know that I should so soon be delivered from this prison where I had suffered so much. The thought was so delightful that I could not help laugh- ing in bed. I kept turning over in my mind the words, " In your position, to strike Monsieur Balet !" "What could be the meaning of that ? At daybreak I was still fast asleep. Vandenberg's ell had not awoke me ; and as my schoolfellows knew 168 The College-Life of Mattre Nablot. that I was expelled, and my face was black and blue, and I was still asleep, nobody thought it worth while to awake me. Monsieur Wolframm never gave a thought to me. I did not awaue until ten, and then I lay alone in the great deserted dormitory, the windows of which were white whn frost. The bell was ringing for school. I rose in a most determined frame of mind. I washed, and while I was dressing, seated upon my bed, and feeling cheered at the prospect of liberty, and the effect of the bright crisp-looking snow-light outside, I gave way to my rising spirits, and began to whistle like a blackbird. I was sick of canting hypocrites, aud come what might, what could be worse than that degrading state of existence called college-life ? and I thought within myself " I will be my father's clerk, I will work in the office, until I am old enough to begin to serve my time." My ideas became clearer and clearer in my mind, and I was forming my resolutions in the most cheerful spirit, when the door opened at the end of the long dormitory, and there appeared Monsieur Canard in a coloured neck-handkerchief, and a queer little cap over his left ear, crying to me with a sneer " Surely, Monsieur Nablot, you are not going to leave us ? Your papa is downstairs waiting for you." As I supposed my connection with this college was now cut, I answered him snuffling through my nose just with his own peculiar twang " Presently, Monsieur Canard, presently." He started back, much offended. " Who gave you leave, sir, to mimic me ? You're a cad." The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. 169 " And you, Monsieur Canard, you are a cheat and a toady ; for four years you have given mo nothing but crumb, because my father didn't tip you to your satisfaction." Then he turned crimson, and as ho stood undecided what to say or do, I passed him slowly, and went down- stairs. From the principal's room I could hear my father's voice, and I knocked. " Come in." There stood my father indeed. Seeing me enter the room with my face disfigured and all discoloured, he Avas deeply affected, and in spite of the pain and anxiety 1 had given him, he kissed me tenderly. " My poor lad," said he, " how could you GO ill-treat a schoolfellow ?--Yct it is not your way," " Monsieur Nablot," interrupted the principal, " you ire quite mistaken ; your son is an unmanageable boy. He has the worst of tempers." " That big Balct is three years older than I im," I then replied. " For a long time he has been in the habit of bullying the little boys. I told him I would not stand it, and it was he who began. Ask anybody you like if he did not begin." " Monsieur Balet," said the principal, " is now iu hospital. You beat him most infamously ; his legs are black with bruises. You wanted to strangle him. You are a violent and outrageous character." "I have never hurt any one before," I replied, " but I will not stand an insult. Balet thought I was the weaker ; he was very much mistaken ! All the boys were on my side ; ask them what took place. You inust ask them, and not Balet, nor Monsieur Wolframm, 170 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. who was not present. Send for all the little fellows. Ask them ; you will soon see who was in the right ! " There was a moment's silence, and my father, with a trembling voice, said to me " Listen, iny dear boy. I have interceded for you. It is a disgrace it is the greatest possible disgrace to be expelled from college. It sticks to a man through life ! I have just begged of monsieur le principal to forgive you, and he has yielded upon one condition, and that is that you will apologise to Monsieur Balet, who is one of the oldest boys at school one " "Never!" I abruptly broke in, "never! When I am in the right, I never make apologies. It would be a disgraceful and mean act. You have always taught me that it is better to bear anything rather than to do a mean act !" " You hear that ?" said the principal. My father turned pale with grief and agitation. He looked upon me a few seconds, his eyes filled with tears. " Oh, Jean Paul !" he whispered to me. Then, turn- ing round to the principal, he said in a hoarse voice, " I will make the apology for him, monsieur le princi- pal, if you will allow me." Hearing this, I took up my cap off the chair, and rushed out with my heart too full for utterance. The principal cried out to me from his room " Return to your place in the schoolroom ; for the sake of the good man whose son you are, I will consent to receive you still." I stood for a couple of seconds in the anteroom, ask- ing myself whether I should accept the proffered grace. Never had I reflected so rapidly. Thoughts passed The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 171 through me like flashes of lightning. My love for my father at last decided me. " I will go on to the end of this year," I said, " and then it will all be over. I have had enough and too much of it." And then, with a slower pace, crossing the court, I re-entered the schoolroom. All eyes were lifted. I passed by the stove, stepped over my desk, and took my seat. Monsieur Wolfraniin approached softly as if to inquire ; but before he could speak, I said to him in a low voice " I have returned by order of the principal." At the same moment my father and Monsieur Rufin passed through the court before the windows without stopping. The assistant master returned to his seat, and I set quietly about my exercise as if nothing had happened, until the bell rang for dinner. Everything went on as usual. Nobody alluded to the past. In another week old Balet came and sat in his place again. Sometimes, when I lifted my eyes, I caught his watching me ; but he immediately looked in another direction. He was still a nuisance to the small boys ; but his prestige was gone. Some of the other big boys took the part of the little ones, and kept him down somewhat. I became gloomier than I had been before these occurrences. I felt deeply humbled that my father had made apologies for me. Every time I thought of it my blood boiled. It seemed unnatural ; and, if the truth must be told, I felt angry with him. Things went on in this unsatisfactory way until the 172 The College-Life of Maitre Naltot. end of the year. My schoolfellows stood aloof from me to some extent ; but I cared very little, for their friendship ; for since the departure of Goberlot I had not cared to make any new friends. My studies inte- rested me less and less. At last, as before, the holi- days came round again. I did not get a single prize. This time my disgust seemed incurable, and I felt resolutely bent on not returning. V. THAT year the holidays were melancholy enough. I had resolved not to return to college, and yet I dared not tell my parents, knowing how grieved they would be. Instead of walking, as I used to do formerly, in the woods and the valleys in their beautiful autumnal dress instead of bathing under the overhanging beeches, and fishing beneath the great rocks, which used to revive my spirits and refresh my body, I stayed moodily at home. There was no more pleasure in our pretty garden oil the slope of the hill no more pride in its fruit walls covered with espaliers its little arbour embowered in vine, and sweet peas, and honeysuckle, and hop. I gazed with a vacant eye upon the great beds of goose- berries and raspberries, where my father and Babelo used to be so busy gathering the ripe rich fruit. The big golden pears, and the heavy crops of rosy apples, bending down with their weight the branches of the old orchard trees all these seemed to have nothing to say to me. I could hear my brothers' and sisters' loud cries of joy in the street, as the heavily -laden waggons passed The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 173 from the field to the barn ; but I did not even look out of the window ; and for long days I used to sit in the office by the side of Monsieur Pierron, a nice old clerk, grave and quiet, and rather eccentric, as lawyers' clerks generally are, and fond of seeing everything in the most methodical order his pen at his right hand, close by the inkstand, his great birch-bark snuff-box at his left just under his hand, so that he might never have to look for anything, or to think more than was necessary. I used to see parties of peasant men and women, five or six at a time, the women in dirty old gowns and flannel petticoats, the men in blue smocks, looking care- worn and suspicious, eyeing one another stealthily. I used to see these unpleasant-looking folks come and try to carry out their quarrels under our eyes over their conditions of sale, or their leases. They would try to overreach each other by the most transparent and ridiculous devices, sci'atching their rough heads, or laying their hands on their stomachs instead of their hearts, to attest the truth of their statements ! And my father was generally obliged to explain at full length, point after point, just what they wanted, for they were not always confident themselves as to that; then what they could do legally, for on that matter they were quite in the dark, and they thought everything was fair, and everything allowed, even to conspiring together against the public peace. Their wicked intentions were often clearly written upon their ill-favoured countenances, and manifested in their words and their gestures. I used to feel angry with them. My father often had some difficulty, too, to contain himself; but he was advancing in years, and 174 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. he found the maintenance and education of his family a great expense, and heavy to meet ; and very often Avhen these faithless and untrustworthy creatures could not be brought to terms with each other, and it all seemed over, he would go over the whole thing again with the most admirable patience, and at last succeeded by the mere power of his good sense, justice, and up- rightness in bringing them to one mind, and getting them to sign an amicable agreement. Such is the life of a village notary ! Some might imagine that he would not require to know so much as town lawyers ; but that is a great mistake. In town you have barristers and solicitors, land surveyors and builders, experienced men in every profession, who can enlighten you, and help you out of your difficulties. But in the country the village lawyer has to be every- thing, to do everything. He has only his own resources to depend upon. In the town every man knows what he wants, how he wants it, and what conditions he is subject to ; but, for the most part, the peasants know nothing about it. Towards the end of the holidays my aversion to returning to college became overwhelming, and I was the more to be pitied because I felt I had not the courage to refuse openly. No, no ; I dared not inflict such suffering upon my loving parents, whose best earthly hopes centred in me. But at the end of the holidays I broke out. My resolution burst from me unexpectedly. It was morn- ing, before the appearance of our old clerk. I was already sitting in my accustomed place in the study, with my arm upon the window-seat, and dreamily mourning over my fate. My poor father, who was 7he College-Life of Mailre Nablot. 175 busy over a deed which he had been studying up to the midnight before, was paying no attention to me ; he was quite absorbed, when I suddenly exclaimed " Sooner than return to that college, I'll go and drown myself!" The poor man turned round in surprise. He gazed upon me a few seconds, pale with agitation ; then raising a voice that trembled with alarm and fear, he said " Is this the return I deserve for so many years of labour ? There go all my hopes ! And must I hear this from a son in whom I had put all my trust ? I have loved him too much !" He threw down his pen in despair. " Yes, I have loved him too much. Per- haps I have wronged his brothers. This is my punishment." He began to pace the room with agitated steps. His words lacerated my heart. I felt that he was right, and I was not making him a proper return for his affection. I was unworthy of it, and I hung my head down with shame and contrition. " Well ! and what do you mean to do ?." said he, after a painful pause, sitting down again, downcast and distressed. "What shall you do for your living? Everybody must work in this life." " Whatever you like," I replied ; " make me a shoe- maker, or a baker, or a tailor. I had rather do anything than go back to Latin again." At this moment my mother entered, and my father said to her, in a voice choking with emotion " Here is Jean Paul refusing to return to college !" " No, no," I cried, " I have had enough of it ; I ain only a fool ; I am always the last. The professors 176 The College-Life of Maitre Nalkt. always put me in the tail of the class, and, in spite of all my work, I cannot get any forwarder. You were mistaken about me ; you thought I had good abilities, but I have not. I am good enough for a trade, but for nothing else, and that is the truth." " Who told you that ?" said my father, more and more excited. " I say so." " Well," said he, " you are quite under a mistake. You don't know the reason why you never got any prizes, whilst you deserved them all ? Must I tell you now ? It was because I " and he struck his breast " I had not enough money to pay the whole of your fees. From the first year I have only paid half ; you have been excused the rest." His voice failed, and he was unable to continue. " I was obliged to educate and place your brothers and sisters," he resumed with difficulty ; " I could not do everything for you alone, and forget my other children. I am not rich, and there are five of you." He kept pacing the room, and hid his face in his handkerchief. " That was the agreement with the principal. At the end of the first year he said to me, ' Your son, by virtue of his exercises, should have carried oft' all the prizes, but his class would have been discouraged ; besides, he works too easily, and his schoolfellows work harder than he does.' And then when I asked time for payment for the second half-year which I had been unable to collect at once, having placed your sister Marie Eeine at Molsheim in that year he said to me, ' Df n't mention that. I know how you are situated. Your family is large, so 1'Abbe Hugues told me. Your The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 177 son does you honour, but I hope you will not insist upon his being crowned ; let it satisfy you to know that he merits that distinction. There are in the same class with himself sons of my own personal friends, and these young people must be encouraged to work.' " His agitation increased, and he wept as he said " That has been all along the state of matters, as I have never paid more than half-terms for you. I would not tell you so ; I was determined that I would bear that humiliation alone." Then, seeing my father's tears and his great distress, I rose from my seat, and cried " My dear father, will you forgive me ? I will do all that you wish. I will never again make such a request." He received me in his arms, and said with inexpres- sible tenderness, gazing into my face " Courage, my boy ! take courage ! Many worse misfortunes may happen to you than the present. But remember that the worst misfortune that can befall you, though not an irreparable one, is failure in the per- formance of your duty. I forgive you with all my heart. And now ask your mother, too, to forgive you, for she knew nothing about this cither, and you have compelled me to disclose in her presence the fact I wished to conceal from her that we are indebted to strangers for half your education." I knelt before my mother, who was weeping with her face hidden between her hands ; she kissed me, and as we seemed scarcely recovering yet from our emotion, my father said, " Pierroii will soon bo here. Let us go into the dining-rooni." We went out. " At what time shall we start, father ?" said I. 178 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. " Directly after breakfast, Jean Paul. I have told Nicolas to put the horse to. At four o'clock I must be home, for the Didiers have promised to come this even- ing and sign their deed. Pierron is going to \vrite out the fair copy." " And your boxes are ready," said my good mother ; " they are packed and corded." Then, whatever might happen, even if my disgust had been ten times greater, I should have considered myself disgraced if I had made the smallest objection. On the contrary, I was in a hurry to begin work, and to have done with my last two years at college ; but I would go through them bravely, not reckoning on prizes, but quite determined on the next best thing, to deserve them. VI. THAT year I got a little study to myself, looking out, like all the others, upon the inner court ; it was an old monk's cell, whitewashed, furnished with a small bed, a chair, and a deal table. I was now sixteen, and was placed in the class of the older boys. I was more comfortable now ; I could work a little independently at nights, and study my lessons with more care. All this was satisfactory. Moreover I had the pleasure of becoming acquainted with a professor worthy of that name, for all the rest at our college were mere routine men, who carried on their trade of teaching just as shoes and stockings are made, working always on the same lasts, and by the same patterns a work which does not require much thought. The College-Life of Maitre Ndblot. 179 Since my arrival at Saarstadt I had frequently seen Monsieur Perrot crossing the court to his class-room, morning and evening, with a limping step, and his hat thrown back. He had nothing of the elegant de- meanour of Monsieur Gradus, none of the majestic conceit of Monsieur Laperche. He was lame in both his legs, and had to walk with the help of a stick, some- times in a rather laughable fashion, as he was hasten- ing along to keep to his time. His shoulders were unequal, his lips thick, his forehead high and bald. Brass spectacles sat loosely upon his round and flat- tened nose ; all his misshapen clothes seemed tossed on him with a pitchfork, and hung uneasily upon him. In fact, you could hardly set your eyes on a more un- fashionable man. But Monsieur Perrot had that which was altogether wanting in his colleagues. He was an excellent Greek, Latin, and French scholar. He was a well-lettered man in the full meaning of the word ; and more than this, he possessed the rare talent for communicating both his knowledge and his love of learning to his pupils, whom he loved sincerely and unaffectedly in proportion as he found in them the love of study and amiable natural dispositions. I shall never forget his first lecture in rhetoric that term, and my astonishment when, instead of beginning at once to correct the bad grammar in our holiday exercises, he quietly bundled all that heap of exercises into his hinder pockets, saying to us " Ah ! that will do. That's ancient history by this time. Let us come to something more modern." There were fifteen of us seated there in the long and still half-deserted class-room ; our backs were to the 180 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. windows at the end of the room, and he sat before us upon a chair which he had placed not far from the stove. First he took off one of his boots, which seemed to trouble him, rubbed the place, put on his boot again in a dreamy way, and then commenced " Gentlemen, you will take notes of my lectures. You will write out an abridgment of my course. This is the only effectual way to impress things upon your memory. You will leave wide margins in your note- books, and in these margins you will briefly set down the headings of the chapters, with short hints referring to the matter contained opposite. Eunning your eye down these headings, you will get at a glance a clear idea of the subject-matter of the chapter before you ; and if this is not always sufficient to recall the details to your mind, why, then you will carefully re-peruse that portion of the text. " Use your time, gentlemen, to the best advantage. As for me, I will spare no pains to form a good rhetoric class. And rhetoric, or composition, remember, will always be xiseful to you, into whatever profession you may by-and-by enter. For though there are not many who leave this college who are destined to become authors, poets, and professional men of letters, yet you will always find it useful to be able to take an enlight- ened view of any literary work. This will contribute, in the first place, to the development of your intelli- gence, and in the next, to your appreciation of the more serious and durable enjoyments of our life." Such were the opening observations of this good and sensible man made with a simplicity which took me by surprise ; for until that time I had never met with any professors but bunglers and helpless im The College-Life of Matire Nablot. 181 beciles, puffed up with conceit of their grammatical Anowledge, whilst Monsieur Perrot spoke of the straightforward reading of Greek and Latin authors as a very simple thing. To me this seemed an im- possible feat, being stiffly crusted over with the hard shells left upon ine by four primers, which, far from helping me in any difficulty whatever, confounded me more and more. But I soon learnt to acknowledge that under a real master difficulties vanish away like smoke. That year of composition, and the following year of philosophy, were the only good time I had during my college-life. It was a period of awakening after a long and dismal nightmare. It was the season in which a world of new and beautiful ideas seemed to burst into life in my mind. Mental health returned ^ iny nausea and disgust departed ; for I had now a master who loved me, and I felt it and knew it. What had I wanted all the previous time but a little affection, a little visible interest, to give myself Avholly to my work with all my heart ? But until then I htid only met with cold, grasping creatures, flatterers to the rich, and hard upon the poor. Yes, this is but too true. Even now my indignation has scarcely cooled, after a lapse of four-and-thirty years. I tingle to this day to the very tips of my fingers. Monsieur Perrot was really fond of his pupils. In the depth of those severe winters, in the play-hour, when the wind was howling through the long cloisters, and the snow accumulating against the frosted panes, and everybody was shivering along the corridors, ho would come stumbling along in the evening upon his poor weak legs ; he would prop himself up on a couple 182 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. of big boys, and stir up the spirits of us all, singing like one of us big boys that popular old glee, " Frere Jacques, dorinez-vous ?" or else " Malbrouck s'en va-t-en guerre! mironton, mironton, mirontain-e," and soon the old convent was in a roar of merriment, and we laughed as happy boys alone can laugh, till old Van- denberg's bell sent us all off to bed. At class-time we discoursed on the orations, the speeches of the great men of Athens and of Rome. We .compared Demosthenes the thunderer with Cicero the Apathetic; the funeral oration spoken by Pericles in Thucydides' history over the warriors who fell in the : Peloponnesian war, with that delivered by Bossuet over :the great Conde. We debated, we almost fought, so ; great was our excitement, so deep our interest in the; .utterances of those giants of old. Now it was Masse,' now Scheffler, or Nablot, who maintained from the deskj the superiority of this or that masterpiece against the attack of his comrades. Monsieur Perrot, seated in the midst, with his spectacles pushed up on his fore- head, and his nose snuffing the battle, stimulated and excited first one, then the other ; and when by chance one of us made a palpable hit, struck out a novel argu- ment, or threw out a crushing reply, he would spring from his seat in a laughable tumult of enthusiasm, and hobble along, limping and stumbling against the desks, and uttering exclamations of delight. At last, when the bell gave the signal to finish and close the discussion, our good master summed up, and all the class became unanimous in their praises of those ancients, and agreed that they at least knew well the art of writing and of speaking. The climaxes of De- mosthenes, and the perorations of Cicero, especially won The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 183 our approbation, and we felt we should nave been happy to have been allowed to be present at those great assemblies, where the whole body of citizens were listening from one end of the vast open space to the other, crowding even the terraced roofs to listen to the formidable orators standing face to face in mortal conflict on the war with Philip, or discussing the agrarian laws, the arrest of the Gracchi, and other stirring controversies upon the great events of antiquity. The second part of our rhetoric course, after Easter, was more interesting still, consisting of lectures on the drama. Now Monsieur Perrot introduced us to the Greek theatre, which was far more grand and imposing than ours, being laid under the open sky, with all the advantages of the accompaniments of natural scenery, during the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, or the Panathensea, in the presence of the multitudes who had met together from the Ionian Islands, from Crete, and the Asiatic colonies. Before these vast assemblies were given representa- tions of the BacchsD, the Supplices, (Edipus Rex, or Hecuba, amidst the applause of the enraptured multi- tude. The voice of the actors was carried to a greater distance by great mouths of bronze. The choruses, composed of women in white robes of linen, sang be- tween the parts of hope, of enthusiasm, of fear ; and sometimes they chanted invocations to the infernal gods, or to fate. The play was acted out in the pre- sence of all those thousands from all parts of Greece, and tlie deep interest of tho crowd was in itself an important part of the scene. As for the comedies, they were played with a less 184 The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. imposing show in the agora or market-place, where the spectators laughed at their ease. There, too, Socrates showed himself in public, amongst the tradesmen's stalls. Sometimes he would add i r-B3 himself to a shoemaker, sometimes to a fish- monger, sometimes to a market-keeper, raising a laugh at their expense. He was a formidable rival to the comedians, Monsieur Perrot informed us, on account of which the writers of comedies conspired against him : the sophist Auytus, the public orator Lycon, the wretched poet Melitus, men with whom a poet of Aris- tophanes' genius should never have leagued himself. At the same time we learnt the laws of the Greek accents, hexameters and iambics, Greek dialects, and all these without any extraordinary difficulty, because now we had a master who taught nothing but what he knew himself. "We still had time to read a few passages of Thucy- dides' History of ilia Peloponnesutn War, the Hist or >/ nf Masinissa from -Polylius, and the opening chapters of the Annals of Tacitus. Well, we made rapid progress ; and, strangest of all, instead of being the last in the class, as under my late masters, I was now at its head. It is true that Mon- sieur Perrot now and then had to find fault with me for an occasional barbarism in words or solecism in lan- guage in my Latin exercises ; there were false quanti- ties in the verses which I compounded with liberal subsidies from my dictionary and my Gradus ad Par- nassum. But he always maintained that I had a better knowledge of the language than any of my school- fellows; and as for French, I will say nothing upon that score. They all held me to be a young Cicero. I The College-Life of Maitre Ndblot. 185 am thankful to say I had the good sense not to believe them ! Now, about that time, Monsieur Perrot, who was very fond of reading our modern authors, having one day accidentally left behind him in the school-room a small volume bound in red morocco, I read it by the light of my lamp. It was Les Orientales of Victor Hugo, with his odes and ballads, which fairly drove me into a frenzy of enthusiasm. I had never seen anything like this before. That vivid and, luminous style in painting the scenes of Eastern life, the originality of that brilliant writer's genius, the picturesque descrip- tions of life in the Middle Ages, astonished and de- lighted me. All that I had read until then seemed dim and insipid in comparison, and the next day I was seen running through the corridors, and crying that Eacine, Boileau, Corncille, and even Lafontaine were wretched poets ; that they never had true poetic inspiration, and that they must be pulled down from their eminence. The little book passed from hand to hand, and my schoolfellows all voted by acclamation that I was right. A couple of days after, Monsieur Perrot, having long searched in vain for his Orientales, remembered that he had left it in the class-room, and addressing himself first to me " Monsieur Nablot," said he, " have you perchance found a little book of mine, bound in red morocco ?" I turned very red, for just now it was in other hands, I did not know whose. " Here it is," cried Scheffler ; " Monsieur Nablot lent it me." 186 The College-Life of Matire Nablot. " Thank you," said Monsieur Perrot, receiving it back again. " I am glad you have read nearly all your authors now; for after reading this you will wiite nothing naturally again. Down to the year's end you will see nothing but giaours glittering with jewels, and decapitated heads stuck upon the tops of minarets, talking to each other like philosophers in arm-chairs. I know all about it," he cried ; " I am quite distressed at my own carelessness. I suppose you have read the book, Monsieur Nablot, and all you others ?" " Tes, sir, we have." " Ah ! I was sure of it." And 1 obbling upon his stick up and down the room, he broke into loud complaints " Where is the sense of it all ? Did he get his style from the Greeks ? Did he get it from the Romans ? Has it any correspondence with the genius of the French people? What school does he belong to? Tell me that ! Tell me if you can." As we made no reply, he cried " He has it straight from the barbarous nations from the Moors, the Arabs nay, from the Germans perhaps ; it is so muddy ! Can even I tell what school of thought and composition it belongs to ? It is all mad stuff! You can't reduce it to any known rule ! It is not poetry. It is painting and what sort of paint- ing ? Red upon white white upon red ; no delicate hues no shading ; sharp lines which pain the eyes, like the shrill horns at the fair which deafen your ears ! Antithesis upon antithesis adjective upon adjective. Everything is for effect everything ! It is a mere play of imagination. There is no excuse for him. He is a young man his health is good he moves in the best The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 187 society he has "been through college. I positively cannot understand it." And stopping short " Monsieur Nablot, you find all that very fine ?" " Yes, sir." " And you, Masse Scheffler all of you ?" " Yes, sir, very fine." Then Monsieur Perrot, in high indignation, cried " You are all apes, every one of you. What was the use of my teaching you the rules of Aristotle and Quin- tilian ? Do you really admire all that rubbish, Mon- sieur Nablot ?" He fixed his large eager eyes upon me. " Yes, sir," I replied, with some feeling. "Why?" " It is quite new to me. It is dazzling." " But that is no reason," cried he. " Suppose the inspector were to ask you questions, do you suppose that you would satisfy him ? What would you say to him?" " I should say that if the Greeks had always followed 2Eschylus they would never have had Sophocles, and if they had always imitated Sophocles they would not have known Euripides." " No, no, that won't do sit down," said Monsieur Perrot; "you are tainted with sophistry. We will now read again the Ars Poetica of Horace to re- cover our scattered senses. For, gentlemen," said he, uplifting his little book, " this is the invasion of tho barbarians. We are assaulted on the south by the Numidians, on the north by the Scandinavians. These people are not governed by our rules. They have scarcely even a history. We we trace our origin from 188 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. the Latins, and through the Latins from the Greeks, nations renowned for their strong good sense, and their pure simplicity. All these romancers are not French- men at all. They do but upset all our traditions. I don't dispute their possession of talent and genius ; but they have employed their talent and their genius to fight us with our own weapons. But their time is short. A Marius will arise, and the classic writers will be avenged. Let us hope and believe that it will be so. If Marius should not appear, the national genius will be ruined !" Poor Monsieur Perrot was really very much troubled. The rout of the classic writers would have been in his eyes a national calamity. During the summer time he often accompanied us in our walks, leaning upon my shoulder with one hand, and upon his stick with the other. He trotted along like a kid. The pleasure of being surrounded by his pupils quite transformed him, and he even became almost handsome. I never saw a more childlike, ingenuous enthusiast. Our usual walk was in the direction of the old saw- pits ; and when we got into the woods, under the deep shadow of the beeches and tall dark fir-trees, the valley spreading far beneath us, with its broad meadows stretching to the horizon, yellow with buttercups and dandelions, and the silver thread of- the river winding in and out beneath the long herbage and the dense foliage of the trees, whilst we were accelerating our pace to reach the forest-house, Monsieur Perrot made grand speeches and apostrophised nature, and helped us to raise our hearts to the Giver of all good. We answered our best ; the little fellows gathered round The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. 189 us and listened with admiration ; and the new assistant- master, Bastien, an old pupil of Monsieur Perrot's, joined in the conversation. The song of the thrush, the mournful cooing of the ring-dove amongst the forest-trees, the scream of a hawk high in the air, often would bring us to a stand for a moment or two, and with head bent back, and shaded eyes, we gazed at the rapacious bird describing in the sky his wide-sweeping and slowly-contracting circles. Then, having recovered our breath, we started off again along the sandy road. Then passing at a slower pace the little high -arched bridge, where the women, loaded with their sacks of dead leaves, and the chil- dren with their bundles, take a rest and a breathing- time, a little further o a I a winding in the valley, we discovered the sawpit inn. There our professor had put out his bees to board and lodge, for he was a lover of bees, of gardening, of agriculture, and, in a word, everything that belongs to rural life. Here we ate a crust of bread under the arbour, and drank a glass of beer. Monsieur Perrot sent for butter and a plate of his own honey; and we looked upon each other like philosophers, wise men, something very much above the common herd " Learning from the idle worldling's vacant face, That fortune's gifts are not without their settled price." Such are my remembrances of the Thursdays and Sundays in those two happy years. There is indeed a wide difference between one pro- fessor and another. We can hardly be too grateful to the learned and sympathising tutor, who hasbe- 190 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. stowed upon us the best of his time, the matured fruits of his experience, and his labour, to develop in us some of the best gifts of God, looking for no recom- pense but a kindly remembrance perhaps a regret after he has quitted this earthly scene. There are such deserving men to be found in our small colleges ; and do you know what reward they receive after thirty or forty years of unremitting service after so much labour, and such sacrifices ? A pension of one thou- sand or eleven hundred francs ! After a couple of hours' stay at the little inn, when the declining sun began to warn us that we had stayed out long enough, we returned home to Saarstadt. To bring my belles-lettres year to an end, I must tell you that at the close of the year, thanks to Monsieur Perrot's good offices, and notwithstanding the private arrangement between the principal and my father, I obtained all the first prizes of my class. That year, I remember, monsieur le maire in his address alluded to Marshal Villars, who declared that none of his victories had given him more pleasure than the first prizes he won at college. He also quoted Vauvenargues, who said that " the first blush of morn- ing dawn is not lovelier than the early dawn of fame." I acknowledged the truth of these sayings at the moment when, on my return home, my mother, niy brothers, my sisters, Monsieur le Cure Hugues, our good kind old Babelo, all whom I loved, waiting for me at the door, took me in their arms with cries of joy when they saw the char-u-bancs loaded with crowns. That was a glorious day ! All those happy holidays I was trotting right and left in th.e mountains, setting bird-traps, snaring The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 191 thrushes, fly-fishing in the river. All my indisposition had passed away ; I had no thought of becoming a shoemaker now. There is nothing like success to pro- mote health and good spirits. VII. MANY years have passed away since the date of this story, and almost all the good people of whom I have spoken sleep in peace under the sod. Their souls, as good Monsieur Perrot used to say, are reaping the fruits of their labour. Such, indeed, is my hope and belief of Monsieur Perrot himself, for he was an excellent man. But to my thinking, now that I have had four-and-twenty years of practice as a village notary, and I am better acquainted with the affairs of this world, it seems to me that, instead of keeping close to generalities, our professor would not have done amiss to introduce into his course of philosophy the study of some of the principles of the civil code, the penal code, and the practice of law, which often turn out very useful to know, when you have to defend your rights and your property against the devices of conspirators who too often practise upon the ignorance of youth and inex- perience. But this was not down in the programme for the course ; and unfortunately, after seven years spent at college, a young man finds he knows a multitude of useless things, but remains in ignorance of some of the most essential. Monsieur Perrot went, of course, by the programme. The first day we entered his philosophy class he 192 The College-Life of Maitre Nabkt, joyously announced that, now that he had taught us to speak, he was going to teach us to think ; and that the reflective faculty distinguished the man from the beast. "The beasts cannot reflect," hecried; " those creatures with their limited faculties never ask themselves, ' What am I ? whence did I conic ? what shall I be when this life is over ?' They don't even know what it is to live and to die. Every day the poor labourer who digs the soil, lifting his melancholy eyes to heaven, asks, ' What shall I be when time has passed away when my mouldering bones shall lie in the village cemetery, or be heaped up with many others in the gravedigger's hut ? What will happen to me then ? What will be- come of my soul ?' For that we have an immortal soul is the comfort of every miserable and down-trodden peasant." As he spoke, Monsieur Perrot became moved ; he smote upon his breast, and delivered his arguments or made his statements with increasing fervour. But I must confess, now that I have long thought on these matters for myself, and have escaped from the semi- heathen philosophy of our schools, that our good pro- fessor never brought any proofs, Scriptural or other- wise, to bear upon his declarations concerning the existence and the immortality of the soul. He was quite content when he had appealed to the " universal consent of mankind," and the " witness of conscience." Yet there are other and far more convincing proofs, and which lead much further into the truths of Divine things. But none of these things are found in the eclectic philosophy of Monsieur Cousin. As for our friend Perrot's philosophy, even sacred philosophy, it was only a rhetorical exercise. Whoever The College-Life of Maitre Naltot. 193 talked the loudest and fastest was always right ! When he set us to dispute upon abstract questions we used to demolish one another with the most crushing argu- ments ; while Monsieur Perrot, in utter astonishment at our wonderful skill, hobbled with his stick up and down the class-room at an amazing pace, shouting to us " Good ! good ! That's right, Nablot ! Now you've settled him ! Answer him, Masse, if you have an answer. Capital ! first-rate ! famous ! Now, this is admirable ! Now you, Blum, what have you to say ? Ah ! that is a wonderful observation of yours. I have never had such a class in my life. You all deserve to go up to dispute at Paris. You say things which have never been written anywhere. It is all new. You have ex- hausted the subject." His good opinion of us puffed us up not a little. We thought ourselves the equals of Plato and of Socrates. But his own discourse on the soul was something in this wise, borrowed almost exclusively from the ancient classics : " The soul is here. We feel it to be so. It gives us life. It enables us to think. Is there a human being degraded so low as not to acknowledge the existence of the soul, nor feel any anxiety as to its future destiny ? Our soul is imperishable. The earth holds only our bones, but the soul has fled and lives in the celestial spheres. The benefit conferred upon us by philosophy and Christianity is an acknowledged fact, demonstrated by the universal consent of all civilised nations. The r incient Egyptians, ignorant of the existence of the boul, embalmed the body to preserve it. They built 194 The College-Life of Maitre Nciblot. great pyramids to hold it and secure it against destruc- tion, -which illustrates the longing desire of man to prolong his existence after death non omnis mortar. And so it was for many ages, until Plato, a true philo- sopher, made the discovery of the soul. All his prede- cessors had seen nothing but matter ; but to this sublime genius, spirit, thought, and soul became manifest. " The body decays, but the spirit survives the mortal wreck. Such was this grand discovery, the most splendid made in historic times, and which forms the true basis of all religion, the secure foundation of modern society. " Since the discoveiy of the immortality of the soul, the body is no longer embalmed. The body is despised ; it is delivered over to destruction. " Formerly the monarchs of the East alone had the prospect of existing beyond death by means of their spices and their pyramids. But now the poorest peasant has the comfort of knowing that he will live through his immortal soul. With this hope he may sweat, and toil, and suffer without a complaint ; and if we must acknowledge that our holy religion alone gives him this assurance, it is right also to acknowledge that philosophy caught the first idea of it a kind of super- natural revelation, of which Plato himself could not foresee all the consequences." So it was that our classic-fed professor handed over to heathen philosophy the credit of discovering that which Divine revelation alone had given to the heathen, by the many channels now unknown, but which doubt- less did exist, and by which the knowledge of truth in the highest things became dimly perceptible to some of the more inquiring and enlightened heathen. The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 195 And then lie pursued " We will together analyse the PJicedo of Plato, and you will see that the immortality of the soul was made known by him. " Let us, therefore, be convinced that we have souls, and then all will go on well. " Not a peasant would plough the soil for another, not a soldier would lay down his life for his king and his country to defend the property of the rich, if they were not assured of a life in a better world. And I, my dear scholars, do you suppose that I would so willingly sacrifice my natural tastes ? Do you not see that I would much rather go and look after my bees, and run in the woods, and read poetry, and keep a little diary of all the fancies in my imagination, than shut myself up in a dark room, cold in winter, hot in summer ? Do you imagine that I would have sacrificed my youth for a wretched annual stipend of fifteen hundred francs, if I had not a better world to look forward to, in which I should reap the benefit of my toil ? No ! I should have applied myself to something else. " The conviction of the immortality of my soul alone sustains me. All the injustice, all the abominations, all the hypocrisy, and the lies which often wound our feelings, fail to rouse us to resist legitimate power. I say to myself, ' There is the more merit in enduring them courageously, and in submitting to the will of God, who will amply recompense us.' " The poor man's eyes filled with tears in uttering these things, especially in paying his devoted homage to legitimate authority, however iniquitously exercised. And as we all loved him, we felt it to the bottom of our hearts. 196 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. " Yes," said he, " all Christian civilisation rests on this principle that the soul survives the destruction of the body. " Never have any legislators devised anything more consummately wise or more useful. For people with- out number workmen, peasants, soldiers, school- masters, professors have nothing that they can call their own ; and therefore the guarantee of a property in a soul which cannot be taken from them, and which shall inherit all the compensations that the body must not claim, either before or after it is turned into dust, is of the utmost value to them. "This wonderful conception secures order in this world, and the dispensation of justice in the next. " Materialistic philosophers alone deny the existence of the soul. But materialists are worldly, carnal beings, who cling close to the good things of this life men corrupted and cankered by ambition, envy, and covetous- ness, who would deprive an unhappy people of their only comfort, to excite them to rebellion against society. " They have not a single proof to allege against the existence of the soul, which is demonstrated to us by the universal consent of all mankind, and the testimony of our inner consciousness. " Now let this be sufficient. The soul is a fact which each of us can observe and verify for otirselves by the mere power of reflection. " We will begin our course of philosophy with the study of the soul, which possesses three faculties perception, understanding, and activity." Such was, word for word, our first lesson in philosophy, which I have just copied from an old exercise-book The College-Life of Maitre NaUot. 197 lying on a bookshelf along with those belonging to my law studies. The deficiency which will strike every one is the absence of any reference to even the first principles of the Christian religion. After such teaching as this, and after the kind of intellectual discipline which he made us go through, I suppose Monsieur Perrot was not far wrong, according to his own views, in condemning the eclectic philosophy invented by Monsieur Cousin. To discuss ideas with- out presenting any positive fact in support is a mere waste of time. At any rate, this kind of exercise gave us supple tongues, and several of my schoolfellows became excel- lent advocates. I could now tell you of the visit of Monsieur Ozana, the inspector from Paris, who was astonished at our wonderful fluency, our forensic fervour, and the novelty of our arguments. I fancy I can still see him coming and going in a thoughtful, dreamy mood, perhaps asking himself if he was really to believe his own ears. I remember that he spoke to one of us, whose voice was not quite so strong nor his manner so forward as the rest, and asked him good- humouredly " Come, come ! that is not bad at all. Your course is nearly over now. What profession have you chosen for yourself?" " I should like to become an advocate, monsieur 1'inspecteur." " An advocate !" he cried ; " then, my friend, you must do as the others do you must shout. When a man shouts loudly enough, he cannot hear his own S 198 The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. voice, and lie drowns the voices of his opponents, and this is an immense advantage." Monsieur 1'inspecteur soon found out what sort of philosophy we favoured. No doubt his own opinions squared with those of Monsieur Perrot in philosophy, and he wound up by paying him a compliment upon his method of instruction. But it is time that I should finish the history of my college-life, for I find that the interest I take in it has caused me to neglect more important matters. I should have a great deal more to tell you about my degree examination ; and it would be easy to point out the absurdities and anomalies of this system of examinations. It leaves to chance the selection of those questions by which each scholar is to be examined, so that if you are in luck, if you stumble by chance upon a passage in Virgil, or the Cyropcedia, and if in history you happen to be taken in the reign of Louis the Fourteenth, or in geography upon the straits in Europe, and in composition upon something equally easy, your examination is a farce, and a boy in the fourth class might very easily get through it. If, on the other hand, you get the choruses in Sophocles, or the prin- ciples of reasoning by Doctor Kant of Konigsberg, you are safe to be plucked without loss of time. I had this terrible misfortune. All my class-fellows passed as easily as a letter through the post, but I had to return at the end of the holidays for six weeks more. Ah! if you had but seen my distress, and how 1 cried on my return home that night at eleven o'clock ! I had walked all the way from Saarstadt to Riche- pierre. My father opened the door to me. He had The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 199 risen in haste, on hearing me tap at the shutter, ex- pecting to hear none but good news. " Well," he cried, " you have passed ?" I could only answer with broken exclamations. And so I was obliged to set to work again during the holidays. Monsieur Perrot, when he heard the fatal news, raised his hands to heaven. He declared I was his best pupil, and he could not understand this unexpected catastrophe at all. On my supplemental examination I passed with the comment Valde bene, the only one of all the candidates who was honoured with such a distinction. And yet surely I could never have acquired all this ability in six weeks after having been pronounced an incapable ! What would you have ? I had been unlucky. Luck or no luck, it is all the same for young men of means. For poor lads ill-luck means the failure of all their expectations. Never should the responsibility of such important issues be left to mere chance. An examination, to be satisfactory, ought to cover a very large extent of ground, and be, in fact, searching and decisive. The most serious and the best concerted measures ought to be taken. Written and competitive examinations seem to me far preferable to the viva voce, although they occupy more time. The further I go, the more I wish to say ; but, as the rules of rhetoric say, limits must be laid down, and we must be on our guard against the influence of ex- citement. I therefore proceed to sum up. It was not to please myself that I have undertaken to relate to you the events of my college-life ; on the contrary, I have done so in much bitterness of spirit. 200 The College-Life of Maitre Nallot. But it is my opinion that, in the present melancholy state of things, it is the duty of every good citizen to enlighten the representatives of the people with the fruits of his experience, and with such observations as he has been able to gather together on so important a subject as Popular Education. The habits of mind and of body acquired during the years of childhood and youth cleave to the man through life. Into whatever mental attitude you throw a child of seven, he will hardly alter it through life. Now the college course puts us all into an attitude which I cannot but condemn, inasmuch as it aims in a dispro- portionate measure at the development of mere memory, at the expense of the powers of active thought and will. It tends to educate men into functionaries, and crushes independence of thought and action ; it deprives the individual of the faculties required to initiate enter- prises, and subjugates his mind to the dominion of Rule. In a word, it makes men into machines, and does this of set purpose. The whole system is devised with that object in view, and has no other end. Here is the method invented by the old royal colleges, formerly brought to perfection by the Jesuits, to gain the possession of our fair country ; it is simple enough it consists in losing a great deal of time over useless matters, and in leaving men in ignorance of whatever might be suspected of leading to their emancipation, by supplying them with information which would give them an assured means of livelihood. Under such a system originality of character is put out of countenance, and men are all shaped upon one mould. Every man having his little square marked out for him, and not having an idea how to live outside The College-Life of Maitre Nablot. 201 of it, stays in it, and submissively bows to any govern- ment which may present itself. In forty years I have beheld the successive falls of Charles the Tenth, Louis Philippe, the Eepublic of '48, and Napoleon the Third, and the day following each of these frightful catastro- phes the machine still worked on just the same as evei*. The ruins of Paris, the volleys of musketry, the deporta- tions, the acts of violence and flagrant injustice in all directions, made no perceptible difference. Every functionary sat quietly at his desk, making notes of the new measures, the new laws, and the new autho- rities, and taking special care not to express any sympathy for those who were removed by any cause whatever. All these revolutions which are allowed to take place for fear of losing situations are the natural result of our system of education. But this famous system not only gives birth to functionaries who readily accept every change of government ; it also engenders in considerable abun- dance the very movers of revolutions. The State can- not give employment to all the Bachelors that the university turns out every year. Not a few are left out in the cold. What can these unfortunate individuals do, with their Greek, their Latin, and their rhetoric and philosophy ? Nothing whatever. They are not wanted for clerks either in arts or in commerce. They are un- classed ; they are sore and irritated, and naturally find fault with everything. If, instead of cramming them with Greek and Latin, they had been taught something of modern languages, of chemistry, mechanics, commercial geography, politi- cal economy, these very malcontents would only be too 202 The College-Life of Maltre Nallot. happy to go off like the English and the Germans, to seek fortune in other lands, and would not stay at home in useless crowds to criticise, find fault with, and upset everything. Many others, hearing of their success, would follow their example. The grand but terrible question of rich and poor, which seems to open a wider breach after each social convulsion, would lose its most dreaded agitators, and the example of emigration once fairly set, who knows if, with time and fair treatment, the whole body politic and social might not rise to a state of calm peace and regularity ? Again, instead of drawing a hard and fast line be- tween elementary and higher education, it seems to me that it would be wiser to give all the elasticity possible to the work of popular and elementary instruction, in order to efface the sharp line which separates the people from the bourgeoisie, and to destroy to its foundations that mistrust and defiance which now keeps them asunder. This would enable those to walk in harmony who now never will work cordially together. Napoleon the Third, during the twenty years of his reign, had but one invariable object in view to divide the people from the bourgeois. All his measures bore the complexion of this fixed resolution. And let it be well known, for it is a fact to which men shut their eyes, he only succeeded too well. Bonapartism has grown and fed upon the division and separation of the two great classes of Frenchmen. It may grow again with fresh life, unless the bourgeois will hasten to bridge over that gap by educating the people, and by yielding to them their just rights. I am not saying this to please the Bonapartists. I The College-Life of Matire Nablot. 203 am only pointing out what is an undoubted fact, clear as daylight. All the Jesuitry and all the refining in the world will have no effect in altering this fact. The fusion so much talked of should be the fusion of the two great divisions in our nation. This alone will destroy Bonapartism, and regenerate our unhappy country. Let the bourgeois reflect on my words. THE SECRET OF REACTION. THE SECRET OF REACTION. [T was the month of February, 1848. For several days the newspapers had been speaking about a banquet which was to be held at the Champs-Elysces, under the presidency of M. Odilon Barrot ; the members of the Opposition, the journalists, and the youth of the public schools had received invitations en masse. Maitre Gaspare! Fix, Mayor of Tiefenbach, with his spectacles on his nose, and his feet in his warm slippers, read these news every morning, until the entrance of his usher Frionnet, a little carroty-headed lame man, who never failed to limp in at the stroke of eight every morning. " See," he cried, handing him the paper " see the folly of those Parisians. Just look at that Ledru- KolKn, that Odilon Barrot, that fellow Lamartine, and all that revolutionary mob conspiring together to unsettle the public peace. If I were Louis Philippe I 208 The Secret of Reaction. would sweep away every one of that disorderly lot! Boom ! boom ! Hear the cannon ! Not a man would I let off." " But what do these people mean, the idiots ?" cried Frionnet. " What do they mean by their joint liabili- ties ? Is a man worth your notice who is unable to pay two hundred francs a year in direct taxes upon doors and windows, on real and personal property, and on licences ? Before meddling with public affairs a man ought to know how to manage his own." " Quite clear and manifest," replied Maitre Gaspard ; " it is plain as the daylight. But don't let us get angry, Frionnet. What can a banquet more or a banquet less prove ? When they have eaten their fill, and got well drunk, and spent all their money, the fools will be satis- fied. In another fortnight or three weeks they will begin somewhere else, and we shall go on all the same. Come, sit down, and let us mind our business." Then they opened Maitre G-aspard's great portfolio, and began to take hard measures against debtors in arrears ; and this serious work kept their thoughts away from the political troubles that were looming, as they supposed, only in the distance. But one fine morning, when it had happened that they had had no papers for three days which was accounted for by the difficulty of the roads during the melting of the snow whilst these two wise men were engaged upon their favourite occupation, all at once they saw hurrying past their windows, and jumping over the puddles, M. le Controleur Couleaux, usually a very g a :e and solemn personage. " What is the matter ?" cried Maitre Gaspard; "surely eomething is going on ?" The Secret of Reaction. 209 " Yes, that is not his natural way," remarked Frionnet, rising. Both opened the office door. M. Couleaux was already coming up the stairs two at a time, and crying out in the passage " Monsieur le maire, has the Moniteur arrived ?" " No," said Maitre Gaspard, " you know very well that the walking postman has not been for three days on account of the bad roads across the moun- tain." "Ah!" cried Couleaux, rushing in as pale as ashes, and dropping into an armchair. " Ah ! a great misfor- tune has happened ! An express from Sarrebourg has just brought in this letter from Paris, from my nephew, the young barrister. Do read it read it for yourself! Was there ever worse news?" Frionnet took the letter, and drawing near to the window, read aloud "My DEAR UNCLE, A revolution has broken out in Paris. The king has fled. A provisional govern- ment is established. The names are : Ledru-Rollin, Lamartine, Arago, Marie, Cremieux, &c., &c." While Frionnet was reading, all the colour left his face, but Maitre Gaspard reddened up to his ears. " Well, my poor, poor friends, what do you think of all that?" stammered the controlcur. " We are lost and ruined !" cried Frionnet ; " our debtors are now our masters, and they will cut our throats, every one." Hearing this opinion, Maitre Gaspard ^ as seized with a fit of coughing ; then he rose, and opened a window to let in a little air. Couleaux, with eyes staring before 210 The Secret of Reaction. him, evidently saw the guillotine already gaping wide for him. Docteur Hornus, whom Maitre Gaspard called a Jacobin, for no better reason than that he wore a tuft of beard and long hair, was just passing down the street to visit his patients, and monsieur le niaire, sud- denly rousing himself, cried " Hallo ! good morning, doctor. You have heard the great news?" " Yes, the Republic is proclaimed," replied M. Hornus with great satisfaction ; " it is rather quick work, but as we have got it, we will do our best to keep it." And he laughed, passing his fingers through his beard. "Ah, doctor!" cried Couleaux, "you are no doubt right. A Republic ! Why, we all want it it is the most admirable form of government ; but, unfortunately, the people " When he heard these doleful anticipations, Hornus turned on his heel and went his way. Then M. le Controleur, turning as yellow as a ripe quince, went out without another word ; and the two colleagues, staring at each other in the window-recess, cried together " What is to be done now ?" " I will go to Mayenthal," said Maitre Gaspard, after an anxious pause ; " M. Thomassin, our deputy, must have come home ; he is a prudent, sensible man ; you may be sure he knows a way to get out of this mess." " Yes, yes, do make haste ; he is the man to give the word of command. The first thing is to get the right password the cry. You write and tell me, M. lo Maire, when you return ; I shall expect you." The Secret of Reaction. 21] "All right!" cried Maitre Gaspard, running to the back of the house into the yard, shouting " Faxland ! Faxland ! harness the pair of greys, quick ; we are going to Mayenthal." Faxland, an old hussar of the First Empire, had just been rubbing down his horses. Outside a peasant wag shouting " Vive la Ecpublique !" " You hoar, monsieur le niaire ?" said he ; " what is that they are shouting down there ?" " Never you mind, only make haste ; it is no busi- ness of ours what they are shouting." Then Faxland got the horses out, and M. G-aspard himself, drawing the char-a-bancs out of the coach- house, flung into it a truss of straw, and said to his groom " Go and put on your big boots. Hi ! don't forget my cloak." He finished harnessing the horses himself, and tight- ened the straps ; and when his wife canie out to see what was the matter, he was already stepping over the seat, and wrapping himself in the cloak that Faxland had brought him, and told his wife in the tone of a man who is determined to be master " I shall come back to-night, Simonne, between six and seven ; let the supper wait. Now, you, jump up and let us start." " Hue !" cried Faxland, and the horses, under the influence of a smart touch of the whip, darted off like arrows. Faxland having had no time for his breakfast, had just swallowed in the kitchen a glass of eati-de-vie to open out his ideas, and as he galloped furiously along he avoided ruts, stones, and other obstacles with perfect 212 The Secret of Reaction. skill. But at the end of the village, as cries of " Vive la Republique !" were bursting out from the Three Pigeons Inn, a thought flashed across his mind, and he said to himself " The Emperor has come back," and with a voice of thunder, waving his fur cap with one hand, a.nd flourishing his whip with the other, he began to cry " Vive 1'Euiperour !" Maitre Gaspard uttered no sound ; seated low down, with his back in the straw, and the broad brim of his hat pulled over his eyes, his mind was wandering dreamily over diminished salaries, descents of mountaineers down into the villages when they should hear of the procla- mation of the Republic, and all the other calamities which he felt must happen. He did not try and stop Faxland, well knowing that on the first order to stop shouting "Vive 1'Empereur!" the old soldier would, almost to a certainty, spill the vehicle into the nearest ditch, at the risk of breaking the bones of both. At every village they passed it was the same story ; Faxland rose from his seat and lashed his horses to the same tune of " Vive 1'Empereur ! Vive la Republique ! hue ! on with ye !" The folks gazed in astonishment, saying " Why, that's the Mayor of Tiefenbach, a tremendously rich fellow. What's the matter ? what does it all mean ?" In other villages, whither the news had already penetrated, swarms of people filled the streets ; the inns and public-houses were humming like beehives ; men, women, and children were standing on their door-steps singing and crying incessantly " Vive la Ecpublique !" Faxland's loud voice repeating " Vive 1'Empereur I" The Secret of Reaction. 213 brought their faces round upon us; and a few old soldiers in blouses and in cotton caps waved them over their heads with the same cry, which redoubled the worthy man's joy and enthusiasm. " I was sure he wasn't dead ! I knew he would come back !" he cried.. " Jle was sure to come; I knew it all along !" Maitre Gaspard was still deep in thought. What a confusion of ideas was racking the poor man's brain! and how impatient he was to get to Mayen- thal! About noon they came in sight of M. Thomassin's country house at the end of the valley. A great number of vehicles had already left the tracks of their wheels down the long white avenue. The tall chimneys of the works were smoking as usual ; but the dwelling-house, with all its extensive ranges of outbuildings, looked lonely; only the dogs, at the sound of the horses' bells, began to bark. M. Claude, an old servant who did duty as butler, appeared at the door as the char-a-bancs stopped a few yards from the porch. " I wish to see M. Thomassin immediately," cried Maitre Gaspard, leaping down and shaking the dust from his clothes. M. Claude had recognised him as a frequent visitor, and said, as he ran off " Li a minute, monsieur only a minute." Presently he reappeared, saying " Will M. le Maire have the goodness to step this way ?" At the same time he gave orders to take out the horses, and politely invited Faxland into the kitchen, 214 The Secret of Reaction. which the old hussar seemed to consider quite as a matter of course. Then Maitre Gaspard crossed the hall, and hearing on his left the buzz of many voices, he saw in the vesti- bule and antechamber a great number of hats, both round and three-cornered, and o^ cloaks hanging on the wall. He was listening when the door at the oottom opened, and M. Thomassin himself, in a long travelling cape, and wearing a long, wearied, and anxious countenance, met him, and held out his haud to him. " Ah ! M. le Maire, I was sure you would come to me in this very serious aspect of affairs." " Yes, monsieur le depute," replied M. Gaspard, un- covering ; " as soon as I heard it I came to know what I was to do." " Well, come in, then," said M. Thomassin, walking before him into a long room, at the other end of which a large fire was blazing on the hearth. Many people were there, sitting or standing round a table covered with newspapers. There were ladies and gentlemen; there were black coats and long clerical coats. As soon as the door opened, all eyes turned to see who was the new arrival. Maitre Gaspard, at the first glance, observed that there was a visible alarm in every countenance ; they all looked anxious, preoccupied with their own thoughts, and watching one another with trembling. " Gentlemen and ladies, I have the honour," said the deputy, with much gravity, " to introduce to you M. Gaspard Fix, Mayor of Tiefenbach, a safe man, one of ourselves, and sharing our views exactly." Immediately four or five voices asked excitedly The Secret of Reaction. 215 " Well, M. le Maire, what is going on in your parts ? How has the news been received ?" He stood gazing upon those panic-stricken faces, with his broad-brimmed hat in his hands. There sat or stood Madame Eeine Thoniassin, the mistress of tho house ; M. the sous-prefet Thibert, M. le prefet Mathis, M. the vicar of Vieille-Ville, M. Jacob, the cure of his own village, young men nioustached and decorated, and all the big hats of the neighbourhood, driven into a heap by the scare they were in, just like frightened partridges in a bush. M. Gaspard, a peasant of the old stock, a man of independent spirit, felt a movement of pity come over him. " They are terribly frightened," he thought, " and yet they have more to spare than I have." Madame Eeine Thoniassin having repeated with a voice, trembling with fear " Pray do speak, monsieur le maire ! What are they doing in your neighbourhood ? What is the state of people's minds ?" He coughed and answered " To-day, not much ; but to-morrow dreadful things may be expected." " Dreadful things ! Do you really think so ?" " Yes, the bad news is spreading everywhere. All the rascals are getting together in the public-houses ; they are plotting and conspiring together; they are all astir, they are swarming like bees ; they are all on the look-out for honest men's goods that don't belong to them." Seeing the effect his speech was producing, he be- came bolder, and added 216 The Secret of Reaction. " The worst of it is that they have no religion ; they all want a slice of the cake, and are all crying ' Vive la Bepublique !' I saw all this clearly enough as I was coming along." " Are they crying ' Vive la Eepublique !' monsieur le maire ?" asked several agitated voices at once. "Yes, of course they are! What else would you have them cry ? They have always been taught from the pulpit that the Eepublic meant the right to go into the woods and cut down trees, to knock down the keepers who informed against them, to go and worry the Jews who have fleeced them. The cures have told them this so often that they firmly believe it now. Old soldiers are crying, ' Vive 1'Empereur !' They believe the Emperor is coming back with_his Mamelukes. We can be sure of nothing. I can only hope that to- morrow or the next day the men from the Dagsberg mountains won't fall upon us, as old men tell us .they did in '891 hope they will not." This speech so excited the terrors of his hearers, that ladies and gentlemen were crying to each other in all directions ' There, you hear that, Monsieur Thomassin ? Mon- sieur Maleroy, do you hear ? Didn't we tell you so ? We knew it all !" Messieurs the cures talked in whispers of getting away into Switzerland, and the fine young gentlemen in decorations seemed in no less haste to be away from these impending disasters. M. Gaspard himself stood calm and collected, listen- ing to these remarks, and surprised at the confusion that prevailed. " My dear," stammered Monsieur Thomassin to his The Secret of Reaction: wife, " nothing is ready, we cannot go yet. We must take time to reflect. We cannot decide in such a violent hurry." All the others were chattering and gesticulating without being able to make each other understand their meaning. At last, Madame Eeine having approached Maitre Gaspard, asked him " Monsieur le maire, do you see anything else to be done ?" " What do you mean, madame ?" "To fly." Maitre Gaspard fell back a couple of paces. His big round face was purple. " ISTo, no, madame," he cried in a rude voice. " Why should I fly ? What ! run away and leave my house, my fields, my meadows, my fields of hemp everything that I have been working so hard for these forty years one sou after another ! Oh, oh, gentlemen and ladies, at what a rate you are going ! It is plain enough that what you have got never cost you much labour. No, no ! Gaspard Fix is not made of the stuff that runs away !" And his candid speech having put some of these people to the blush, he added slowly, with his hands uplifted, his hat in one and his suspended stick in tho other " My good friends, we can die no more than once. In Rome we must do as Romans do ! If we must howl with the wolves, let us howl with the wolves, and shout with the rest ' Vive la Rcpublique !' Sooner than let my property go and run away like Louis Philippe, I will shout louder than anybody louder than all the 218 The Secret of Reaction. rest put together. The men that run away are always in the wrong ; people say ' Oh, if their consciences had not been bad the scoundrels would never have made off.' " Then consternation appeared in every haggard face. But, just then, the gentleman who had been addressed as " M. de Maleroy," a little old foxy -looking fellow, who had never moved from his place duiing all this excitement, rising now from his place, went and stood with his back to the fire, and said decisively " M. le Maire has hit the right nail on the head ; it is the people who fly who are always in the wrong. We must howl along with the wolves. You are quite right, monsieur le maire, very right." And as the company began to resume their seats, he, after besmutching his nose with snuff, went on " Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we must cry ' Vive la Republique !' louder than anybody. What would happen next, if we were to fly into neighbouring countries ? Of course, the Repiiblic would treat us as enemies ; they would revive the laws against ' suspected persons,' as they did against the old noblesse of France in '92 ; we should be summoned to return on very short notice, failing which our property would be con- fiscated to the nation, divided into small lots, and it would be sold to those who could defend it against its rightful owners. Europe would never interfere ; Europe regards us already as usurpers, and we should be reduced to utter misery, without the ghost of a chance of a Conde, or a Noailles, or a Richelieu to repair our disasters. Such is the account of what would happen *D us after we had been a short time in Germany, in Russia, or in England! M. le Maire has given us The Secret of Reaction. 219 discreet counsel. Let us all cry ' Vive la Bepublique !' And above all," added he, turning to the prefet, " don't let any of our functionaries send in their resignations ; such an act would be contemptible. Let us all keep our places ! Among all the faults we have been guilty of at least we have not committed that of educating the people ; thanks to their ignorance, we continue to be necessary and indispensable. It is impossible to admi- nister the law, to collect taxes, to try offenders, to legislate without prefets, tax-collectors, magistrates, deputies, and generals. You must have gone through certain studies to fill these offices, and fortunately the common people don't know so much as the alphabet. It is in the sacred ignorance of the masses that our safety lies, and always will lie ; our first duty is to keep them there. Now, if we run away, what is to prevent the Republicans from passing decrees to make elementary education gratuitous and compulsory? Nothing can hinder it. It is the first thing they would do, you may be sure of that ; and they woxtld never rest till they had put the people in a position to exercise, with some sort of wisdom, the franchise they will have granted them. Then the Republic might defy any attack, the governing power of the bourgeoisie would be destroyed, and the democracy would triumph ! Let us all stand by one another to resist such a catas- trophe ; let us face the storm, it will soon be over ! All our friends, preserving their situations, will find them- selves in a position to calm, to direct, and after a while entirely to quell the evil instincts of the mob. The clergy will back us ; their interests are one with ours. United action is essential to attain a favourable result in the end. Therefore let us stand fast, I repeat, and 220 The Secret of Reaction raise the cry ' Vive la Republique !' ' Vive universal suffrage!' ' Vive liberty, equality, and fraternity !' Our friends, scattered for a short space, will soon reunite, reform the administration, the police, the army, foolishly humbled by the Republicans of Paris. Believe in my long experience. In four or five months we shall be on the offensive again !" At that moment the folding doors were thrown open, and Maitre Guspard saw a magnificent dejeuner served up in the adjoining room, for even in the midst of the extraordinary confusion in people's minds, there was no departure from the usual habits of the family. "Business by-and-by," said H. Thomassin, in a livelier tone ; " things are not looking so bad after all." The ladies looked easier, but the careful and thrifty old peasant, M. Gaspard, remarked that this was not a time to eat dainties ; his business was to return to Tiefenbach, and have an eye upon his goods ; there- fore when M. Thomassin entreated him to stay and take some breakfast with the company, he answered aloud " Oh, monsieur le depute, it is too much honour. I am in a hurry to get home. What do I want but just a glass of wine and a bit of meat standing? I will go quietly down into the kitchen that will be a better place for me." The company coloured at hearing these coarse senti- ments, and he, guessing their thoughts, added " At a time like the present it is best to be on good terms with everybody ; you must be ' hail, fellow ! well met!' with every one ; who can tell what to-morrow may bring forth ? Perhaps I shall want my servant to run The Secret of Reaction. 221 bis life into danger for me, and no doubt ho will be pleased to drink a glass with his master." And without waiting for a reply, he bowed to M. Thomassin and the company and withdrew, think- ing to himself, " These people have right ideas, but they sadly want courage." M. de Maleroy, pointing at him as he went out, said " Look at that man : he came out of the mud and clay that the people are made of ; his father wheeled a barrow for his living ; he has no education, and yet he is already a politician. By that specimen you may judge what remarkable men would arise from the ranks of the people, if, unhappily for us, they were taught. We should never be able to stand against them. The least we could do would be to share along with them places, honour, and power, and all the benefits which the monopoly of knowledge secures to ourselves. Let us act accordingly." And giving his arm to Madame Thomassin, he passed into the dining-room, between the heavy hangings of silk ; the rest followed him in pairs. During this time Maitre Guspard was entering the kitchen, where the fires in the stoves were burning brightly, lighting up with ruddy hues the saucepans, the kettles, and the great dresser loaded with fish and rich viands. He discovered Faxland in a cosy corner, his legs stretched out under a massive oak table with half-a-dozen empty bottles before him, and the ruins of an enormous venison pasty. Three or four servants were keeping him company, discussing politics together, and the old hussar was confidently predicting the return of the Emperor, when the sudden appearance of the niaire threw a little dismay amongst them. 222 The Secret of Reaction. " Monsieur lo maire !" they cried, rising respectfully. But Monsieur Gaspard, with a jovial air, cried out to them " Eemain seated ! don't disturb yourselves. I hope you are comfortable ! I have only just come in to take a glass of wine with you and eat a crust of bread before I start." Then they all sat down again, and Faxland thought " The master is a good fellow after all ! He might have stayed with the swells upstairs, but he liked us better." The major-domo Claude, quite ashamed, ran for a chair for . le Maire, but Maitre Gaspard remained standing ; he poured out a glass for himself, and said merrily, after having emptied it " Come now, this is the very best Burgundy ! some of the deputy's wine. You get all you want here ! Ha ! ha ! ha !" And they all laughed in chorus. Then, without any further ceremony, he cut himself a huge slice out of the pasty, which he ate with an ex- cellent appetite, examining at the same time the fine kitchen with admiration, and saying " Here is a first-rate kitchen ! I never saw a finer one." The company, notwithstanding all the good wino they had imbibed, made no answer, for they felt a little constraint. Maitre Gaspard walked up and down ; he once more filled his glass, and at last said to his old hussar " Come on, Faxland, it is time for us to start if we mean to get home before night." " I am going. I will put the horses in aminute,'in ', The Secret of Reaction. 223 cried Faxland, running out to obey his master's orders. No doubt he had help in getting the horses out of the stable, for five minutes after Maitre Gaspard had gone out the conveyance was ready, and the old soldier in his seat ; and the master behind him with his cloak carefully drawn round his shoulders. M. Claude, from the top of the steps of the porch, was wishing him a safe and pleasant journey, and off they started at a very rapid pace, clearing out of the gate at a smart gallop. Faxland, whose sight was always the clearer when he had drunk plenty, whipped his horses to keep up the pace ; the heaps of broken stone, the tall fir-trees, the mossy rocks overhanging the road, the long lanes cut up with deep ruts, all vanished behind them at an extraordinary rate. From time to time the old veteran tried to raise his old cry of " Vive 1'Empereur !" but he had got rid of his voice in the morning, and had none left to shout now, so that his attempts resulted in nothing but a croak like a raven's. Five o'clock came, and darkness with it ; the" low houses, half-concealed in the snow, were lighting up, one or two at a time, as they entered Tiefenbach. In spite of the cold that was benumbing his feet, Maitre Gaspard did not forget his promise to his colleague. " Halt !" he cried out as they reached Frionnet's. The conveyance stopped, and in a moment the little officer came out of his passage, his fox-skin cap drawn closely over ^his poll. He came near limping, and with a smile in his red beard. " Well ?" said he in a whisper. 224 The Secret of Reaction. Maitre Gaspard stopped to speak in his eat " Howl along with, the wolves cry louder than any- body ' Vive la Republique !' " " Ah ! ah !" answered Frionnet in the same low voice, and with eyes twinkling with intelligence ; " I under- stand once we " " Exactly so !" interrupted Maitre Gaspard ; " but it is dreadfully cold. I cannot feel iny feet ; conic in this evening, and I will tell you all about it. Now then, Faxland !" Next day, Maitre Gaspard, in his official scarf, was proclaiming the provisional government from the steps of the niairie of Tiefenbach ; Gouleaux and Frionnet and all his friends shouting " Vive la Republique !" a good deal louder than Doctor Hornus. Monsieur le cure was blessing the tree of liberty ; and after a few days more it was heard that all France had done the same from one end to the other. All the Legitimists, all the Orlcanists, all the Bonapartists had rallied round the Republic, under the title of " Republicans of the morrow." Everybody professed loudly that they were combining for the improvement of the condition of the people, for their moral condition, for their education. Oh! it was quite affecting, all this unanimity ! Well, the results of the farce are but too well known: Civil war, exile without a trial, executions by volleys of musketry, political corruption, the invasion, Alsace and Lorraine torn from the living body of the mother country ! no need to mention the milliards of indemnity, and all the rest of it. But the reactionnaires have all kept their snug berths. Thanks to the privileges of education they enjoy, they The Secret of Reaction. 225 reckon upon handing them down from father to son for ever. And yet did not the last war come upon them and find them blind and incapable in the administration, in the chambers, in the foreign courts, and in the field ? They commanded us; upon them falls the blame of our defeats. Unhappy men ! Had they but taught the people knowledge, what geniuses might have sprung from that yet virgin mass the French nation, in the depths of which have lain dormant for ages inexhaustible riches of power ! The Prussians would have met with their match, and their master too, in them ! The secret of the success of reaction lies in the ignorance of the people. This is the true cause of all our misfortunes ! And this is the field over which egotists and Jesuits will fight their last battle. Farewell now till better times ! VILLAGE TALK ABOUT 1814. VILLAGE TALK ABOUT 1814. HE pass of the Zinzell, in the Vosges, extends from Dosenheim, in Alsace, to Wechem, in Lorraine. There is not a fairer, greener spot in the world. Oak, beech, and fir ; ivy and honeysuckles hanging from the rocks; the mountain- ash with its crimson clusters, and the tall, slender white stems of the birch, rising among the precipices all these rich varieties of woodland scenery lie spread in endless profusion the whole length of this defile of eighteen miles in extent. Morning and evening thrushes and jays, blackbirds and titmice, sing to one another and merrily flutter under the leafy arches and amongst the columned trunks as in an immense aviary. And the Zinzell flows peace- fully down this lovely vale. 230 Village Talk about 1814. You would think that nothing could ever disturb this calm, and that the forest dwellings in the hollows had never been frequented by any but their peaceful inmates, the old keeper and his dogs, the housewife, who is up there busy hanging out her clothes to dry upon the hedges around the little garden, the chil- dren watching their goats upon the rocks ; the angler, with his lines or his nets, slowly wending his way amongst the decaying willows that fringe the peaceful stream. You would declare it impossible that there should have been anything but unbroken peace in this remote vale since the world began. And yet it is through this open gate in the middle of the Vosges that the northern hordes have ever penetrated to ravage and pillage our ill-fated country, from the Tribocks down to Bismarck's Prussians. In the autumn of 1848 the dike at the water-mill at Kritzmiihle, about the middle of the pass, having been burst through after the heavy rains, I was sent for tc repair it. The water, in falling down into the deep ravine, had carried a mass of ruin with it consisting of earth and timber. Arrangements had to be made with the inhabitants on the banks of the river above and below the scene of the disaster ; the meadows had to be ti'enched, rocks to be removed, new materials fetched. It took me six weeks to find and engage workmen and to begin the work. Every evening I used to go and rest at Ykel's. Amongst the cottages that made a ragged fringe around the ruined convent stood an old dilapidated house, with a barn, a stable, and a cart-shed. Right under this shed there are nets hanging from the beams Village Talk about 1814. 231 and drying, fowls asleep with their heads under their wings, and rabbits running about in the shade. The house is entered by the kitchen ; at the right is the wooden staircase ; on the left the low inn parlour is so crowded with its long table, its benches, its cupboard, its stove, and its big armchair, that one hardly knows how to move in it. Every evening after my return, and after having sent home the workmen, I used to find at my end of the table my plate and its pewter cover facing an immense dish either of fricasseed chicken or squirrel, or of fried trout, by the side of which stood the bottle of white wine and the great loaf. I lived like a lord. All the rest, father, mother, and children, besides the pretty cook Charlotte, had potatoes in their jackets and curds and whey. No doubt the children would have been glad to have tasted the trout or the squirrel ; every .time they sat down they would twist themselves round upon their seats and peep slily at niy plate, rubbing their moist little noses with their sleeves. I used to invite them to come, but Father Ykel stopped them with a " Halt !" promising that they should have squirrel and trout when they could catch them themselves. It grieved me, but the old fellow was in earnest, and was not to be shaken from his resolution. Therefore we ate our meal in silence. The fire crackled in the stove, the forks went up and down, the smoky lamp lighted up faces young and old, grave and gay, eyes dim with age or sparkling with the light of youth. It also threw its dull light upon the skeins of flax hanging from the ceiling to dry, and the great lean hound sitting on his haunches, his nose pointed straight 232 Village Talk about 1814. at my plate, looking out for bones which he always caught flying, and crushed in a couple of snaps. Outside there was no other noise besides the flow of the river ; the darkness was so deep under the shade of the cliffs and crags, that not even the glancing of a light could be noticed upon the pools of water after rain. Not a soul passed by. Nobody went out for his own pleasure, and when our meal was over, the cloth removed, and we were begin- ning to feel sleepy, a distant clatter of clogs was heard over the stony roads. It was the old smuggler, Jean Hurel, a one-armed man, coming in with his goatskin cap and his iron-pointed stick. The poor fellow had lost his arm in an encounter with the custom-house officers ; but this was an old story. He sat down in a corner and filled his pipe while Charlotte was bringing him a flask of spirits. A few minutes after there came Fix, a tall fellow, in a short jacket and trousers of coarse blue stuff, a red beard, and his wide-brimmed hat flattened upon the back of his head. It was rumoured that he bore a bad character with the gendarmerie, because he used to sell game at all the inns in Saverne, Haguenau, and Sarrebourg ; he had been watched by them for thirty years without success. The whole brood of his children, brought up beneath the shadow of the rocks, red-haired, sharp, and bold, like himself, followed the same trade, and their mother helped them. They were worse than a den of foxes. Fix took his place quietly, and took off his two or three glasses of eau-de-vie, dreaming all the Avhile of what none could tell. Sometimes other folks came too. Jerome the school Village Talk about 1814. 233 master, a tall, big-boned old man, very much bent, and with a melancholy look ; then there were woodcutters, Jean Claude Machette, Nicolas Eochart, Laurent Bastien, men witL venerable-look b> heads, grave, thoughtful, and severe, but who at the same time enjoyed only in- different reputations, as it was known that they were accustomed to sell the young fir-trees to the hop- growers of Alsace, and bundles of green wood to every- body who wished to buy. These men maintained that wood, game, and fish belonged to everybody who could lay hands on them. They were men of few words, being naturally dreamy, and for a quarter of an hour together one heard no sound but Mother Catherine's wheel. But one evening when the rain was pouring down in torrents, and the wind was roaring among the rocks, Ykel, awaking from his meditation, cried " It was just such a night as this when the allied armies passed through. They were inarching to Wcchem, with their horses, their waggons, and theii guns ; the officers were shouting on the road, ' This way ! this way ! this way !' for you could not see farther than the tip of your nose ; the pinewood torches were going out one after another ; they would all have been lost in the wood. What a wind and what a rain there were !" " Yes," said the one-armed man, after a short pause, and drawing the lamp to him to light his lamp ; " but it had been snowing for a fortnight, and the melting snow was swelling the river." After this reflection he relapsed into silence, with his nose in the air, and puffing smoke up to the ceiling ; and as the conversation seemed likely to drop, I asked S>34 Village Talk about 1814. " You remember that, do you, Hurel? yet it is a good while since 1814 !" " Do I remember the allies ?" said he, with a knowing wink. " Indeed I do ! for they cost me dear enough. I was just then at Sarrebruck with my cart full of smuggled goods coffee, sugar, tobacco ; I was watch- ing for a good opportunity to cross their last line. At that time trade was good : sugar was three livres ten sous, and West India produce was priceless. "Our last regiments were arriving from Cobleiitz. They had watched the line of the Khine until the first of January ; a company here, a company there, on the islands in the mists and the fogs. " The enemy, the Saxons, Bavarians, Russians, and Prussians were mustering strong at Frankfort. All at once we are surprised with news that the Austrians have passed through Switzerland and are already turn- ing the flanks of the Vosges. That very day we could hear from Sarrebruck the cannon at Mayence ; the allies were putting themselves in movement from every quarter to march past us ; our forces were falling back upon the Sarre. " Oh, if you had but seen those long files of men on foot and on horseback, most of them sick or wounded, coming down upon us covered half-way up with mud, shouting, swearing, bawling out for bread, for eau-de- vie, for everything ! And the Sarre was rolling by a tremendous flood, full of floating masses of ice; and the firing came nearer and nearer. " Our soldiers in retiring before the enemy had blown up the bridge between Saint-Jean and Sarrebruck ; they had sunk every boat to prevent the Kaiserlicks. from passing the river. Village Talk about 1814. 235 " That was a capital idea ! " But at the moment when the enemy's skirmishers were beginning to appear on the other side of the river, our general began to storm and to imprecate ; he had just made out with his field- glass a boat which had been forgotten in a little bay under a clump of willows. We had no artillery to destroy it. If the Kaiserlicks found it out, nothing would prevent them from crossing the Sarre in the night-time to fall upon us like hungry wolves in our bivouacs. " What was to be done to get at it ? " A lieutenant of the 6th light, named Bretonville, and three old soldiers devote their lives they rush into the stream. " I was looking on with my arms crossed. One of the men disappears under the ice. He is floating down towards Treves ! Another's strength fails, and he struggles for life ; ho turns over. Good night ! The last was returning, and they were fishing him out with poles. The lieutenant alone was crossing the stream. " Then I said to myself, ' Hurel, if those scoundrels get across here they will plunder your cart. Show that you are a Frenchman !' At that time I had both my arms. I took off my shoes, my blouse, my jacket, and off I went ! The cold in that icy water was benumbing. You could hardly believe how cold it was ! Looking before me I could see nothing but flakes and floating sheets of ice lapping over each other like tiles upon a roof ; the cold wind was enough to blind you, and the current was terribly strong. " Darkness was coming on, and I could hardly see, when I heard, five or six arm's lengths before me, a 236 Village Talk about 1814. voice saying, ' Courage, courage !' and I saw the lieu- tenant, with his hand upon the boat, pale and ghastly like death ; he had no power left to climb into it. I gave him a lift with my shoulder, and then he helped me in, and we made all haste to lay hold of the oars and return. " The soldiers of the 6th were crying out , ' Vive Lieutenant Breton ville !' Of course the Kaiserlicks, who could see us carrying off their boat, began firing at us from the windows ; the balls whizzed and splashed all around us ; but we were sheltered along the banks of the river, kept up a rapid fire, and prevented the Germans from leaving their houses. " On arriving at our side of the river I was as stiff and as hard as ice. I snatched up my shoes, my blouse, and my jacket, and rushed off half naked to the Mouton d'Or, where old Meriane lent me some dry clothes. It took a good glass of spirits to set me up again. Outside the firing was kept up far into the night. " About ten o'clock, after having dried and warmed myself, just as I was going out to put my horse in and to start off on my journey, old Meriaue ran up to tell me that the custom-house officers had seized upon my cart and my goods. I had been informed against ! " The only thing left for me to do now was to make off by cross-roads and byways, leaving everything behind, cart, horse, goods, and all, for, of course, those fellows would have been only too glad to get me, too, into their clutches and sentence me to pay tremendous fines ! So I started off, as you may think, very sad. I was ruined, and had nothing left but my house, my cow, a pig, my wife and five children ! " When I arrived at the Graufthal the Cossacks, tho 1 And then he helped me in." Campaign in Kabylia.] [rage 236. Village Talk about 1814. 237 Wurtemburgers, and all that abominable lot were filling the whole valley. They had entered it by Dosenheim, and if the commandant Meunier, at Phals- boarg, had but had fifteen hundred men at his back, he might have kept them all at bay and swept them off with artillery like chaff before the wind. But ho had no one. Old Paradis, a few gunners, Desniarets, who had fought in Egypt, the barber Desplanches, and fifteen or a score more of good fellows were all he had to man his guns. They made little sorties to pick up the cattle out of the neighbourhood, and rushed back again in a hurry. Luckily old Eochart had driven away my cow with others, under the rocks of the Bande Noire, or I should have lost everything. Should I not, Eochart ?" "Yes," said the woodcutter, "our fathers saved the cattle belonging to the commune ; but for all that people perished by hundreds, in the following February and March, with cold, hunger, and the disease that followed upon the tracks of the Kaiserlicks, along with the packs of wolves that also followed them close to devour the dead that were not buried deep enough. It was in conse- quence, too, of this miserable state of things that the children born in the following years Avere a weak and dwarfish race. " And during the year of scarcity the cemetery behind the church had to be enlarged, for all the old people were perishing through their sufferings. We had nothing left. The Germans had carried off everything they could lay their hands upon, even to the door-locks and the hinges of the window-sashes. The beasts were dying for want of provender. We boiled nettles and even thistles for vegetables ; when you have no cattlo 238 Village Talk about 1814. you have no manure, and then weeds get the upper hand of you, and you must live upon them. "And with our sufferings the taxes increased, to restore the emigres their property. The forest laws became harder and more severe. The poor dared not even gather the dead leaves for their bedding, nor the acorns, nor the beech-mast ; you would have thought that our legitimate kings wanted to extirpate the poor, and that they were leagued with the allies to ruin us entirely. The only things in vogue now were religious processions, expiations, pilgrimages, and miracles. All the cures worked miracles now ; all the saints in stone, plaster, and wood dropped tears for our sins and for our great rebellion of twenty-five years. The women, who have no common sense, were all running off to see these spectacles ; mine, too, wanted to go, but she remembers to this day what she got when she returned home again. Of course the missionaries preached abstinence and fasting to poor wretches all skin and bone ; they, with faces glistening with health and shining with fatness, rebuked us for our gluttony. "Well, we did see and hear strange things under the Bourbons." There was silence then for a few minutes, while the company reflected upon those unhappy times. Out of doors the rain redoubled, dashing against the small windows with a strange pattering ; and the wind plunging down the pass between rocks and woods howled and roared fearfully. " Were there many, then, of those Kaiserlicks, to drive us so far ?" I asked of Hurel. He, raising his hand, replied " Many ! They were by thousands and tens of thou- sands ! armed with lances, sabres, huge pistols hanging Village Talk about 1814. 239 at the saddle-bow, and wearing bearskin caps ; others were on foot, carrying muskets that required no ram- rod ; the cartridge fell into its place by knocking the butt-end on the ground. There were men in blue, men in white uniforms, men in grey and in green, in shakoes and flat caps. I cannot tell you how they were all armed and dressed. There," said he, pointing down the valley, " they were passing in such dense crowds that at last they began to fall over each other, and their officers made them lie down by the side of the road and in the meadows, all the way from Dosenheim to Wechem, so that you could not have moved a step without treading on some one, for a distance of three leagues. "And those poor creatures could not understand each other's languages ; they were like animals of all kinds, mewling, barking, bleating, neighing, and braying, without being able to understand one another. But there is no doubt that their kings knew each other's meaning which was to move them against us. They knew nothing about it ; they went on where tljpy were kicked to ; they moved wherever the whip drove them. I should never have thought there were so many people in the world. Where did they all come from ? where could they all come from ? that is what I want to know." " Yes," said Fix ; " but they left a good many behind at Brienne, at La Eothiere, at Champaubert, and at Montniirail ! If you had been in the 34th regiment of the line you would have seen them lying in heaps of all colours in the snow and in the mud, and all along the roads. By Jove ! we had to march in those days ! Now we were down upon one lot, then upon another, going twelve or fifteen leagues in a day. If King 240 Village Talk about 1814. Joseph had not run off along with the Empress and the King of Eome, and if Paris had not surrendered, we might have caught them all like fish in a net." " No, no !" remarked the old schoolmaster, shaking his head ; " all those battles were of no use whatever ; we had lost them beforehand ; traitors had sold us " These words surprised me. "What traitors are you alluding to, Maitre Jerome ?" said I. " Why, the Royalists, of course ! There have been no others in our country since '89." And as I gazed on him with surprise, he went on " Was it not Dumouriez who aimed at leading round the Army of the North against the Convention, and to proclaim Louis Philippe d'Orleans King of France? wasn't he a Royalist ?" he replied, fixing upon me his eyes dim with emotion ; " and the emigres who marched in front of Brunswick in Champagne, and before Wurrn- ser in Alsace, weren't they Eoyalists ? And I suppose Pichegsu was a Eoyalist when he treated with the Prince of Conde to restore the legitimate king, in consideration of the title of Constable, and of millions for himself and his family ? And Moreau, the great Moreau ! had he not been converted to Royalism by his wife before assuming the command of the Russian army before Dresden ? and that abominable Bourmont, who caused the failure of our campaign in Belgium by informing Blucher of the approach of the French army, he too was a Royalist, a ivhite as we used to say at that time. And haven't the Bourbons rewarded him hand- somely for his splendid conduct ? " All those Frenchmen who have borne arms against France, all those who have invited the enemy within our Village Talk about 1814. 241 borders since '89, and have opened him our gates, have been Eoyalists ! Everybody knows that. The Boyalists place the king above the patrie, because when a king is over them they are masters ; they hold posts, honour, gold, privileges, everything ! They are all kings in their own towns or villages. If by chance there came a patriotic king who set a higher estimation upon the interests of the nation than upon those of nobles and priests, the Eoyalists would be the first to take up arms against him ; they would call him a Jacobin ! You ought to know these things better than I can tell you, since you are an engineer and you have studied." So said the old schoolmaster; and the rest agreed with him. I kneAv not what to object. At last, just as I was going to set them talking about 1815, the entry of the two Emperors and the King of Prussia, Jerome interrupted me by knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the edge of the table. " It is all very well for you, monsieur, to talk at your ease until to-morrow morning ; but it is quite another thing with us ; we have to get home. Do listen to tne rain how it is pouring down. Now, Fix, Eochart, are you coming ?" He has risen upon his feet ; his bald head touches the rafters of the room. Hurel emptied his glass, Fix and Eochart did the same, and all four went out through the kitchen, whither old Ykel followed them with his lamp in his hand ; and as soon as the door was opened the trembling light fell upon the four mountaineers running through this deluge with arched backs and their hands pressing upon their broad-brimmed hat or cap. A gust of wind slammed the door, making the whole 242 Village Talk about 1814. building shake, and Ykel, returning with a broad grin upon his countenance, says " Ha ! ha ! ha ! Won't they catch it from their -wives when they get home ! Now, Catherine, it is our bed- time. If monsieur would like to sit up a little longer " " No, no, Monsieur Ykel, like yourself I am sleepy." " Well, take the lamp. We can find our bed very well without." I ascended the crazy old staircase. 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