If the truth must be told, more than one brave mountaineer, the father of a family, when he saw that forest of bayonets which kept on advancing up the mountain, in spite of the shots that were poured on them, began to think that he might perhaps have done better to stay at home in his village than to thrust himself into such an affair. But as the proverb says: "The wine is drawn; it must be drunk!"
Riffi, the little tailor, bethought him of the prudent warning of his wife, Sapience: "Riffi, you will get lamed for life, and that will be a pretty job!"
He promised a superb offering to the chapel of St. Léon if he came back safe and sound from the war; but at the same time he resolved to make good use of his long gun.
Two hundred paces from the barricades the Germans halted and opened a running fire such as had never before been heard on the mountain: it was a regular buzz of shots; balls by hundreds hacked down the branches, made bits of ice leap up in all directions, came crashing down upon the rocks, to the right, to the left, before, behind. They came hissing and whistling through the air at times as thick as a flock of pigeons.
This did not prevent the mountaineers from keeping up their fire, but it could no longer be heard. All the mountain-side was wrapped in a bluish smoke which made it difficult to take aim.
At the end of about ten minutes, the roll of the drum was heard, and all that mass of men began to charge at the abattis, officers as well as others, shouting "Forvertz!"
The ground trembled beneath them.
Materne, drawing himself up to his full height, by the side of the trench, with a voice terrible in its emotion, cried, "Up! Up!"
It was time, for a good number of those Germans, almost all of them students of philosophy, law, or medicine, scarred in skirmishes at Munich, Jena, and elsewhere, and who fought against us because they had been promised that their liberties should be granted them after the downfall of Napoleon; all these intrepid young fellows began to crawl on all-fours over the ice, and attempted to leap into the entrenchments.
But as fast as they climbed up the sides of the mountains, they were stunned with the butt-ends of the guns, and fell back among their ranks like hail.