All this Hullin heard and saw in less than a minute, for the whole town seemed to have turned out. Strange, serious, and comic scenes followed close upon each other without interruption.
Some National Guards were dragging a twenty-four pounder in the direction of the arsenal. These brave fellows had a steep ascent to climb, and their strength was nearly exhausted. "Hoy!—all together! A thousand thunders! Put your shoulder to it! Forward!" Thus shouting all together, and pushing with all their strength at the wheels, the great cannon, stretching out its long, bronze neck over its immense carriage, which rose above everything, rolled slowly over the pavement, trembling beneath its weight.
Hullin was in such a state of delight that he was no longer like the same man. His martial instincts—the recollection of the camp, the march, the fire, and the battle—all returned at full speed; his eye sparkled, his heart beat quicker, and already ideas of defence, entrenchments, death-struggles, whirled rapidly through his brain.
"Upon my word!" said he to himself, "all this looks well! I have made sabots enough in my life-time; and since I have a chance of shouldering a musket again, well and good!—so much the better; we will show the Prussians and Austrians that we have not forgotten our old trade."
So reasoned the brave man, carried away by warlike recollections; but his joy was not of long duration.
In the square in front of the church were stationed fifteen or twenty carts filled with the wounded that kept arriving from Leipzig and Hanau. These unfortunates—pale, wan, with fast glazing eye; some whose limbs had been already amputated, others whose wounds had not been even dressed—were patiently awaiting death. Beside them stood some old, worn-out horses, munching their meagre allowance; while their drivers, poor devils taken into employ at Alsace, wrapped in their ragged cloaks, were sleeping, with their hats pulled over their brows, and their arms folded across their breasts, on the steps of the church. It made one shudder to see these wretched groups of human beings, in their large gray coats, as they lay jumbled together upon the bloody straw; one supporting his broken arm upon his knees; another with his head bandaged with an old handkerchief; a third, already dead, serving as a seat for the living—his blackened hands hanging over the side of the cart. Hullin stood rooted to the ground in the presence of this dismal spectacle. He could not turn his eyes aside. It is in the power of great human griefs to fascinate us thus; we have a morbid wish to see how men perish—how they face death: the best of us are not free from this frightful curiosity. It seems as if eternity was revealing its secrets to us.
There, too, near the shafts of the first cart, to the right of the file, were squatted two carbineers in sky-blue tunics—two real Colossuses, whose iron frames were bowed beneath the pressure of hardship. They might have been taken for two caryatides, crushed beneath the weight of an enormous mass. One with thick red moustaches, and hollow cheeks, gazed around with lustreless eyes, as if just awakening from a frightful dream. The other, bent double, his shoulder torn by a grape-shot wound, was gradually growing weaker and weaker, at times raising himself up with a start, and talking low, as if dreaming. Behind lay, stretched in couples, infantry soldiers, most of them struck by a ball, and with a broken arm or leg. They seemed to endure their fate with more firmness than the giants. These unfortunates did not speak a word, with the exception of a few among the youngest, who passionately cried for water and bread. And in one of the carts, a plaintive voice, the voice of a conscript, was heard calling, "Mother! mother!"—whilst some of the older ones smiled gloomily, as much as to say: "Your mother!—oh! yes, she will be sure to come!" This was what their looks said; perhaps, in reality, they were past thinking of anything.
From time to time a sort of shudder ran through this sad assemblage of human beings. That was when several of the wounded half raised themselves, and instantly fell back again, as if Death, at that precise moment, had been going his rounds among them.
Then all was silent again!