Monsieur Rose departed, and we finished our dinner in silence.
V.
On the eighth of January, a huge placard was posted on the town-hall, stating that the emperor would levy, after a senatus-consultus, as they said in those days, in the first place, one hundred and fifty thousand conscripts of 1813; then one hundred cohortes of the first call of 1812, who thought they had already escaped; then one hundred thousand conscripts of from 1809 to 1812, and so on to the end; so that every loophole was closed, and we would have a larger army than before the Russian expedition.
When Father Fouze, the glazier, came to us with this news, one morning, I almost fell through faintness, for I thought:
"Now they will take all, even fathers of families. I am lost!"
Monsieur Goulden poured some water on my neck; my arms hung useless by my side; I was pale as a corpse.
But I was not the only one upon whom the placard had such an effect: that year many young men refused to go; some broke their teeth off, so as not to be able to tear the cartridge; others blew off their thumbs with pistols, so as not to be able to hold a musket; others, again, fled to the woods; they proclaimed them "refractories," but they had not gens d'armes enough to capture them.
The mothers of families took courage to revolt after a manner, and to encourage their sons not to obey the gens d'armes. They aided them in every way; they cried out against the emperor, and the clergy of all denominations sustained them in so doing. The cup was at last full!
The very day of the proclamation I went to Quatre-Vents; but it was not now in the joy of my heart; it was as the most miserable of unhappy wretches, about to be bereft of love and life. I could scarcely walk, and when I reached there I did not know how to announce the evil tidings; but I saw at a glance that they knew all, for Catharine was weeping bitterly, and Aunt Grédel was pale with indignation.
"You shall not go," she cried. "What have we to do with wars? The priest himself told us it was at last too much, and that we ought to have peace! You shall not go! Do not cry, Catharine; I say he shall not go!"