"There," said he, giving me the paper, "that is the exact truth. I might add that your departure will kill her also, but that would be nothing to the commander; if this does not touch his heart, the rest would be useless also."
I went then to the commander's quarters, which were in the old government house, in the Rue du College. The humiliation of addressing supplications to rascals whom I detested was not the least of my sorrows; that I, an old French forester, an old servant of the state, gray-headed and on the point of retiring on a pension, should stoop to implore compassion from enemies as hard-hearted, as proud of their victories, gained by sheer force of numbers, as they were! However, for the grandmother, for the widow of old Burat, I could bear everything.
A tall rogue, in uniform, and with red whiskers, made me wait a long time in the vestibule; they were at breakfast, and only about one o'clock was I allowed to go up stairs. Up there another sentinel stopped me, and then, having received permission to enter a rather large room, opening on the garden of the Arsenal, I knocked at the commander's door, who told me to come in. I saw a large, red-faced man, who was walking to and fro, smoothing down the sleeves of his uniform and puffing out his cheeks in an ill-natured way. I told him humbly of my position, and gave him my certificates, which he did not even take the trouble to read, but flung them on the table.
"That has nothing at all to do with it," said he sharply; "you are described as a dangerous person, a determined enemy of the Germans. You prevented your men from entering our service; your son-in-law has gone to join the bandits of Gambetta. You boasted openly in a restaurant of having refused the offers of the Oberförster of Zornstadt; that is four times more than is necessary to deserve being turned out of doors."
I spoke of the grandmother's condition.
"Well! leave her in her bed," said he; "the order of the Kreissdirector is for you alone."
Then, without listening to me any longer, he went into a side room, calling a servant, and closed the door behind him. I went down stairs again, feeling utterly crushed; my last hope was gone; I had no other resource; I had to leave; I had to announce this bad news to my daughter, to the grandmother! I knew what would be the result of it; and, with hanging head, I went through that German doorway, the bridge, the sentinels, without seeing anything. On the glacis, at Biechelberg, all along the road through the woods and through the valley, I was as if mad with despair; I talked to myself, I cried out, looking at the trees and raising my hand toward heaven.
"Now the curse is upon us! Now pity, the disgrace of crime, the remorse of conscience are abolished! Nothing is left now but strength. Let them exterminate us, let them cut our throats! Let the rascals strangle the old woman in her bed; let them hang my daughter before the door, and as for me, let them chop me into pieces! That would be better. That would be less barbarous than to tear us from each other's arms; to force the son to abandon his mother on her death-bed!"
And I continued on my road, stumbling along. The forests, the ravines, the rocks seemed to me full of those old brigands, of those Pandoras of whom I had heard tell in my childhood; I thought I heard them singing round their fires, as they shared the plunder; all the old miseries of the time before the great revolution came back to me. The distant trumpet of the Prussians in the city that sounded its three wild notes to the echoes, seemed to me to arouse those old villains who had been reduced to dust centuries before.
XXXII