His grey cloak streamed in the air, and Herr Mayor went away never to return.
Some days after I met him on the road. He bowed very low, and with a smiling face inquired after my husband. The double-faced fellow knew only too well I had not heard from him, but in common politeness I was fain to inquire also after his health. Herr Mayor was better, much better. In a week he would be back at the front, and if he happened to hear from my husband's regiment, he promised to send me the news.
And with many a bow Herr Mayor smiled himself away. His face was not ever smiling. The peasants were terrified at his way of carrying out requisitions. On the other hand, it was rumoured that he believed himself sprang from the thigh of Jupiter—I beg your pardon—of Wotan, and spoke to no one.
The family did not fail to exercise its flippancy at my expense. They asked for the recipe of my philtres to charm Prussians; they urged me to write a treatise on the art of training Germans, and prophesied a fine future for me as a tamer of tigers.
I did not mind being scoffed at. Too many cares claimed my attention. Besides, Barbu and Crafleux had just appeared in our orbit. But I am anticipating. Our chief anxiety was commonplace enough. The food problem was hard to solve. Fortunately, in spite of direful predictions, bread did not run short at the beginning of the war. Milk we had every day. Though Mme. Lantoye had been robbed of several cows, and though children were provided for first, she always gave us some. We had almost forgotten the taste of meat. Butter and cheese, hard to discover, were extravagantly dear, and eggs were as scarce as in Paris at the end of the siege. We had laid by a small provision of rice and macaroni, articles of food no more to be found in the shops; but we had decided to keep this reserve for extremities, in case, for instance, a bombardment kept us in the cellar. We all agreed to live from hand to mouth upon what we could come by. My reflections were profound when, after half a day's search, I found one egg, from which I had to concoct a dish for the whole family. You laugh? A proof that you lack imagination. With a single egg, as a base of operations, you can make pancakes, or apple-fritters, flower-fritters, or bread-fritters, or any fritters you like. By the way, I advise the use of nasturtiums. Rose leaves, on the other hand, are rather tasteless. But here is something better. You make some pastry, then beat up your one egg with a glass of milk, a few crumbs of bread, a bit of cheese, if you have any; then you pour the mixture on the pastry, put the whole in the oven, and when it is baked you will find a dish that will feed six women. Oh! we made no complaints; not yet, at least. Really when a menu consists of a potato fricassee to which laurel and thyme have given a zest, artichokes with melted butter and chervil—butter, replaced by grease, alas!—fresh salad, and juicy pears, who would not pronounce himself satisfied with such a meal? Marmontel, who loved good cheer, Marmontel in the Bastille, where he so highly appreciated the fare, Marmontel himself would have been delighted with it.
The want of light was the worst of our evils. Petroleum was no more to be had, and candles were hard to come by. Linseed oil and modest night-lights grudged us a glimmer by which we gloomily went to bed. Therefore as soon as the night fell the fiend of melancholy seized upon us. The dull light spread a gloom over the room we sat in, and from the black corners dark thoughts seemed to rise and grow upon us. So we would rather walk in the garden, or even look out of the window, when night fell, than sit at our work or our writing-table. How many hours have I spent leaning out of the window in a nightgown, and watching the shells burst. In September and October, just after the Germans' arrival, there were beautiful moonlit nights, worthy to be worshipped on bended knees; yet I felt an inclination to imitate Salammbô and cry to the moon with arms uplifted:
"O moon, I hate you. You are deceitful, unrelenting, and cold, and even the pale glimmer you send us you steal. There is nothing true but the warm and cheerful sunbeams, which give us light and life. You fling your silver arrows where you please, and throw what you choose into the shade. You slip your sly rays into closed rooms, through cracks and chinks; no secret escapes you. You favour illicit love, unpunished crimes, acts of violence, and foul deeds. All those things you feast upon, O moon! But your light is never so pleasant, your caress never so soft, as when you shine on a battlefield, on places where men kill one another. You take pleasure in the sight of dead bodies, shrivelled limbs, wide-open mouths, features distorted in the weird horror of death. You play on bloody weapons, on dark-mouthed cannon; you pass by the wounded, crying for help, by dying men whose death-rattle is unheard, and you smile yourself from the charnel-field, glad to leave the victims in the unfathomable shades of night."
Moon, I hate you! Everywhere and always you have looked on murderous battles, unbrotherly contests, man maddened against man. You saw the formidable army of Xerxes contend with the Greeks; you saw the Roman Empire quivering at the onslaught of the Barbarians. But can any sight you have ever witnessed be compared with that which you look down upon to-day? Europe in arms, cannon spreading death everywhere, thousands of men killed in the marshes of Poland, on the hills of Galicia, in France, on the plains of Flanders? Are you pleased, O moon?
Moon, I hate you!
To shun the moon, to shut out the sound of the guns, I close the wooden shutters, pull down the window, draw the curtains. The cannon are not silent. Chilled with cold and horror, I fling myself on my bed, bury my head in the pillows, creep under my blankets. The cannon still roars, and shakes my bed. I wake up, and the cannon roars louder than ever. To have lived, and have been sometimes careless and merry, we must have been as mad and as blind as the moon herself. But we cannot attain to the moon's insensibility, and that is why our laughter often turns to tears, and humour ends in a sob.