XXXVII
Thus, George, after the loss of my situation and my property, earned by thirty years of labour, economy and faithful services; after the loss of our dear country, of our old parents and our friends, I had still one consolation: my daughter still remained to me, my good, courageous child, who smiled at me in spite of her anxiety, her grief, and her sufferings when she saw me too much cast down.
That is what overwhelms me when I think of it; I always reproach myself for having allowed her to see my grief, and for not having been able to keep down my anger against those who had reduced us to such a condition. It is easy to put a good face on the matter when you have everything you want; in need and in a strange country it is a different thing.
We lived as economically as possible. Marie-Rose looked after our little household, and I often sat for hours before the window, thinking of all that had occurred during the last few months, of the abominable order that had driven me from my country; I suddenly grew indignant, and raised my arms to heaven, uttering a wild cry.
Marie-Rose was more calm; our humiliation, our misery, and the national disasters hurt her as much and perhaps more than me, but she hid it from me. Only what she could not hide from me was that wretched cold, which gave me much anxiety. Far from improving as I had hoped, it grew worse—it seemed to me to get worse every day. At night, above all, when I heard through the deep silence that dry, hacking cough, that seemed to tear her chest asunder, I sat up in bed and listened, filled with terror.
Sometimes, however, this horrible cold seemed to get better, Marie-Rose would sleep soundly, and then I regained my courage; and thinking of the innumerable misfortunes that were extended over France, the great famine at Paris, the battlefields covered with corpses, the ambulances crowded with wounded, the conflagrations, the requisitions, the pillages, I said to myself that we had still a little fire to warm us, a little bread to nourish us. And then, so many strange things happened during the wars! Had we not formerly conquered all Europe, which did not prevent us from being vanquished in our turn? Might not the Germans have the same fate? All gamblers end by losing! Those ideas and many others I turned over in my mind; and Marie-Rose said, too:
"All is not over, father; all is not over! I had a dream last night. I saw Jean in a brigadier-forester's costume; we will soon have some good news!"
Alas! good news. Poor child! Yes, yes, you can dream happy dreams; you may see Jean wearing a brigadier's stripes, and smiling at you and giving you his arm to lead you, with a white wreath on your head, to the little chapel at Graufthal, where the priest waits to marry you. All would have happened thus, but there should be fewer rascals on earth, to turn aside the just things established by the Almighty. Whenever I think of that time, George, I seem to feel a hand tearing out my heart. I would like to stop, but as I promised you, I will go on to the end.
One day, when the fire was sparkling in the little stove, when Marie-Rose, very thin and thoughtful, was spinning, and when the old recollections of the forest house, with the beautiful spring, the calm, melancholy autumn, the songs of the blackbirds and thrushes, the murmur of the little river through the reeds, the voice of the old grandmother, that of poor Calas, the joyous barking of Ragot, and the lowing of our two handsome cows under the old willows, came stealing back to my memory; while I was forgetting myself in these things, and while the monotonous hum of the spinning wheel and the ticking of our old clock were filling our little room, all at once cries and songs broke out in the distance.
Marie-Rose listened with amazement; and I, abruptly torn from my pleasant dreams, started like a man who has been roused from sleep. The Germans were rejoicing so, some new calamity had befallen us. That was my first idea, and I was not mistaken.