Then I understood his meaning, and answered: "Perhaps they return by Mayence or some other route. It cannot be possible otherwise!"
But he only shook his head, and said: "Those whom you have not seen return are dead, as hundreds and hundreds of thousands more will die, if the good God does not take pity on us, for the emperor loves only war. He has already spilt more blood to give his brothers crowns than our Revolution cost to win the rights of man."
Then we set about our work again; but the reflections of Monsieur Goulden gave me some terrible subjects for thought.
It was true that I was a little lame in the left leg; but how many others with defects of body had received their orders to march notwithstanding!
These ideas kept running through my head, and when I thought long over them, I grew very melancholy. They seemed terrible to me, not only because I had no love for war, but because I was going to marry Catharine of Quatre-Vents. We had been in some sort reared together. Nowhere could be found a girl so fresh and laughing. She was fair-haired, with beautiful blue eyes, rosy cheeks, and teeth white as milk. She was approaching eighteen; I was nineteen, and Aunt Margrédel seemed pleased to see me coming early every Sunday morning to breakfast and dine with them.
It was I who took her to high Mass and vespers; and on holidays she never left my arm, and refused to dance with the other youths of the village. Everybody knew that we would some day be married; but, if I should be so unfortunate as to be drawn in the conscription, there was an end of matters. I wished that I was a thousand times more lame; for at the time of which I speak they had first taken the unmarried men, then the married men who had no children, then those with one child; and I constantly asked myself, "Are lame fellows of more consequence than fathers of families? Could they not put me in the cavalry?" The idea made me so unhappy that I already thought of fleeing.
But in 1812, at the beginning of the Russian war, my fear increased. From February until the end of May, every day we saw pass regiments after regiments—dragoons, cuirassiers, carbineers, hussars, lancers of all colors, artillery, caissons, ambulances, wagons, provisions, rolling on for ever, like the waters of a river. All flowed through the French gate, crossed the Place d'Armes, and streamed out at the German gate.
At last, on the 10th of May, in the year 1812, in the early morning, the guns of the arsenal announced the coming of the master of all. I was yet sleeping when the first shot shook the little panes of my window till they rattled like a drum, and Monsieur Goulden, with a lighted candle, opened my door, saying, "Rise up, he is here!"
We opened the window. Through the night I saw a hundred dragoons, of whom many bore torches, entering at a gallop; they shook the earth as they passed; their lights glanced along the house-fronts like dancing flames, and from every window we heard the shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!"