"BATTLE OF THE ROCKS"
For three days they had been entirely without food on the Falkenstein, and Divès had given no signs of life. How often, during those long days of agony, did the mountaineers turn their eyes toward Phalsbourg!—how often had they listened, fancying they could hear the smuggler's step, while the vague murmur of the wind alone filled the space!
The nineteenth day since the arrival of the partisans on the Falkenstein was passed amidst all the tortures of hunger. They no longer spoke; they remained crouched on the earth, with pinched faces, and lost in endless reveries. Sometimes they watched each other with sparkling eyes, as though about to devour one another, then relapsed into sullen calm.
Occasionally Yégof's raven, flying from crag to crag, would approach this place of misfortune. Then old Materne would take aim with his rifle, but the ill-omened bird would immediately take flight with dismal croakings, and the old hunter's arm fell helpless by his side. And as though the exhaustion of hunger was not enough to fill the measure of so much misery, the poor creatures only opened their mouths to accuse and menace one another.
"Do not touch me," cried Hexe-Baizel, in a shrill voice to those who looked at her—"do not look at me, or I will bite you!"
Louise was delirious; her great blue eyes, instead of living objects, saw only shadows flit across the plateau, touching the tops of the bushes, and resting on the old tower.
"Here is food!" she said. Then the others became enraged with the poor child, crying out with fury, that she was mocking them, and bidding her beware.
Jérome alone remained perfectly calm; but the great quantity of snow he had swallowed to appease the pangs of ravenous hunger, had inundated his whole body and bony face with a cold sweat. To appease the cravings of his stomach, Doctor Lorquin had bound a handkerchief round his loins, and tightened it more and more. He was seated with his back against the tower, and his eyes closed, though he now and then opened them to say, "We have reached the first—the second—the third stage. One more day, and all will be over!"
He then began to declaim about the Druids, Odin, Brahma, Pythagoras, quoting Latin and Greek, and announcing the near transformation of the people of Harberg into wolves, foxes, and animals of all sorts. "For myself," he exclaimed, "I will be a lion! I will eat fifteen pounds of beef every day!"
Then renewing his discourse:—"No, I will be a man. I will preach peace, brotherhood, justice. Ah, my friends, we suffer for our own faults. What have we done with the other side of the Rhine for the last ten years? With what right did we set up masters over those peoples? Why did we not exchange our ideas, our sentiments, the produce of our arts and of our industry with theirs? Why did we not approach them like brothers, in place of wishing to subject them to us? We should have been well received. What must they not have suffered, those unhappy people, during those ten years of violence and rapine! Now they are avenged, and it is just! May the malediction of heaven fall on the miserable wretches who get up divisions among peoples in order to oppress them!"