The Wandering Jew, Book VIII.. - Eugene Sue (trending books to read TXT) 📗

age to wield his father's sword."

 

"Napoleon II!" exclaimed the old man, looking at his son with surprise

and extreme anxiety; "the king of Rome!"

 

"King? no; he is no longer king. Napoleon? no; he is no longer Napoleon.

They have given him some Austrian name, because the other frightened

them. Everything frightens them. Do you know what they are doing with the

son of the Emperor?" resumed the marshal, with painful excitement. "They

are torturing him--killing him by inches!"

 

"Who told you this?"

 

"Somebody who knows, whose words are but too true. Yes; the son of the

Emperor struggles with all his strength against a premature death. With

his eyes turned towards France, he waits--he waits--and no one comes--no

one--out of all the men that his father made as great as they once were

little, not one thinks of that crowned child, whom they are stifling,

till he dies."

 

"But you think of him?"

 

"Yes; but I had first to learn--oh! there is no doubt of it, for I have

not derived all my information from the same source--I had first to learn

the cruel fate of this youth, to whom I also swore allegiance; for one

day, as I have told you, the Emperor, proud and loving father as he was,

showed him to me in his cradle, and said: 'My old friend, you will be to

the son what you have been to the father; who loves us, loves our

France.'"

 

"Yes, I know it. Many times you have repeated those words to me, and,

like yourself, I have been moved by them."

 

"Well, father! suppose, informed of the sufferings of the son of the

Emperor, I had seen--with the positive certainty that I was not

deceived--a letter from a person of high rank in the court of Vienna,

offering to a man that was still faithful to the Emperor's memory, the

means of communicating with the king of Rome, and perhaps of saving him

from his tormentors--"

 

"What next?" said the workman, looking fixedly at his son. "Suppose

Napoleon II. once at liberty--"

 

"What next?" exclaimed the marshal. Then he added, in a suppressed voice:

"Do you think, father, that France is insensible to the humiliations she

endures? Do you think that the memory of the Emperor is extinct? No, no;

it is, above all, in the days of our country's degredation, that she

whispers that sacred name. How would it be, then, were that name to rise

glorious on the frontier, reviving in his son? Do you not think that the

heart of all France would beat for him?"

 

"This implies a conspiracy--against the present government--with Napoleon

for a watchword," said the workman. "This is very serious."

 

"I told you, father, that I was very unhappy; judge if it be not so,"

cried the marshal. "Not only I ask myself, if I ought to abandon my

children and you, to run the risk of so daring an enterprise, but I ask

myself if I am not bound to the present government, which, in

acknowledging my rank and title, if it bestowed no favor, at least did me

an act of justice. How shall I decide?--abandon all that I love, or

remain insensible to the tortures of Emperor--of that Emperor to the son

of the whom I owe everything--to whom I have sworn fidelity, both to

himself and child? Shall I lose this only opportunity, perhaps, of saving

him, or shall I conspire in his favor? Tell me, if I exaggerate what I

owe to the memory of the Emperor? Decide for me, father! During a whole

sleepless night, I strove to discover, in the midst of this chaos, the

line prescribed by honor; but I only wandered from indecision to

indecision. You alone, father--you alone, I repeat, can direct me."

 

After remaining for some moments in deep thought, the old man was about

to answer, when some person, running across the little garden, opened the

door hastily, and entered the room in which were the marshal and his

father. It was Olivier, the young workman, who had been able to effect

his escape from the village in which the Wolves had assembled.

 

"M. Simon! M. Simon!" cried he, pale, and panting for breath. "They are

here--close at hand. They have come to attack the factory."

 

"Who?" cried the old man, rising hastily.

 

"The Wolves, quarrymen, and stone-cutters, joined on the road by a crowd

of people from the neighborhood, and vagabonds from town. Do you not hear

them? They are shouting, 'Death to the Devourers!'"

 

The clamor was indeed approaching, and grew more and more distinct.

 

"It is the same noise that I heard just now," said the marshal, rising in

his turn.

 

"There are more than two hundred of them, M. Simon," said Olivier; "they

are armed with clubs and stones, and unfortunately the greater part of

our workmen are in Paris. We are not above forty here in all; the women

and children are already flying to their chambers, screaming for terror.

Do you not hear them?"

 

The ceiling shook beneath the tread of many hasty feet.

 

"Will this attack be a serious one?" said the marshal to his father, who

appeared more and more dejected.

 

"Very serious," said the old man; "there is nothing more fierce than

these combats between different unions; and everything has been done

lately to excite the people of the neighborhood against the factory."

 

"If you are so inferior in number," said the marshal, "you must begin by

barricading all the doors--and then--"

 

He was unable to conclude. A burst of ferocious cries shook the windows

of the room, and seemed so near and loud, that the marshal, his father,

and the young workman, rushed out into the little garden, which was

bounded on one side by a wall that separated it from the fields. Suddenly

whilst the shouts redoubled in violence, a shower of large stones,

intended to break the windows of the house, smashed some of the panes on

the first story, struck against the wall, and fell into the garden, all

around the marshal and his father. By a fatal chance, one of these large

stones struck the old man on the head. He staggered, bent forward, and

fell bleeding into the arms of Marshal Simon, just as arose from without,

with increased fury, the savage cries of, "Death to the Devourers!"

 

CHAPTER IV. (THE WOLVES AND THE DEVOURERS.)

 

It was a frightful thing to view the approach of the lawless crowd, whose

first act of hostility had been so fatal to Marshal Simon's father. One

wing of the Common Dwelling-house, which joined the garden-wall on that

side, was next to the fields. It was there that the Wolves began their

attack. The precipitation of their march, the halt they had made at two

public-houses on the road, their ardent impatience for the approaching

struggle, had inflamed these men to a high pitch of savage excitement.

Having discharged their first shower of stones, most of the assailants

stooped down to look for more ammunition. Some of them, to do so with

greater ease, held their bludgeons between their teeth; others had placed

them against the wall; here and there, groups had formed tumultuously

round the principal leaders of the band; the most neatly dressed of these

men wore frocks, with caps, whilst others were almost in rags, for, as we

have already said, many of the hangers-on at the barriers, and people

without any profession, had joined the troop of the Wolves, whether

welcome or not. Some hideous women, with tattered garments, who always

seem to follow in the track of such people, accompanied them on this

occasion, and, by their cries and fury, inflamed still more the general

excitement. One of them, tall, robust, with purple complexion, blood shot

eyes, and toothless jaws, had a handkerchief over her head, from beneath

which escaped her yellow, frowsy hair. Over her ragged gown, she wore an

old plaid shawl, crossed over her bosom, and tied behind her back. This

hag seemed possessed with a demon. She had tucked up her half-torn

sleeves; in one hand she brandished a stick, in the other she grasped a

huge stone; her companions called her Ciboule (scullion).

 

This horrible hag exclaimed, in a hoarse voice: "I'll bite the women of

the factory; I'll make them bleed."

 

The ferocious words were received with applause by her companions, and

with savage cries of "Ciboule forever!" which excited her to frenzy.

 

Amongst the other leaders, was a small, dry pale man, with the face of a

ferret, and a black beard all round the chin; he wore a scarlet Greek

cap, and beneath his long blouse, perfectly new, appeared a pair of neat

cloth trousers, strapped over thin boots. This man was evidently of a

different condition of life from that of the other persons in the troop;

it was he, in particular, who ascribed the most irritating and insulting

language to the workmen of the factory, with regard to the inhabitants of

the neighborhood. He howled a great deal, but he carried neither stick

nor stone. A full-faced, fresh-colored man, with a formidable bass voice,

like a chorister's, asked him: "Will you not have a shot at those impious

dogs, who might bring down the Cholera on the country, as the curate told

us?"

 

"I will have a better shot than you," said the little man, with a

singular, sinister smile.

 

"And with what, I'd like to see?"

 

"Probably, with this," said the little man, stooping to pick up a large

stone; but, as he bent, a well-filled though light bag, which he appeared

to carry under his blouse, fell to the ground.

 

"Look, you are losing both bag and baggage," said the other; "it does not

seem very heavy."

 

"They are samples of wool," answered the man with the ferret's face, as

he hastily picked up the bag, and replaced it under his blouse; then he

added: "Attention! the big blaster is going to speak."

 

And, in fact, he who exercised the most complete ascendency over this

irritated crowd was the terrible quarryman. His gigantic form towered so

much above the multitude, that his great head, bound in its ragged

handkerchief, and his Herculean shoulders, covered with a fallow goat

skin, were always visible above the level of that dark and swarming

crowd, only relieved here and there by a few women's caps, like so many

white points. Seeing to what a degree of exasperation the minds of the

crowd had reached, the small number of honest, but misguided workmen, who

had allowed themselves to be drawn into this dangerous enterprise, under

the pretext of a quarrel between rival unions, now fearing for the

consequences of the struggle, tried, but too late, to abandon the main

body. Pressed close, and as it were, girt in with the more hostile

groups, dreading to pass for cowards, or to expose themselves to the bad

treatment of the majority, they were forced to wait for a more favorable

moment to effect their escape. To the savage cheers, which had

accompanied the first discharge of stones, succeeded a deep silence

commanded by the stentorian voice of the quarryman.

 

"The Wolves have howled," he exclaimed; "let us wait and see how the

Devourers will answer, and when they will begin the fight."

 

"We must draw them out of their factory, and fight them on neutral

ground," said the little man with the ferret's face, who appeared to be

the thieves' advocate; "otherwise there would be trespass."

 

"What do we care about trespass?" cried the horrible hag, Ciboule; "in or

out, I will tear the chits of the factory."

 

"Yes, yes," cried other hideous creatures, as ragged as Ciboule herself;

"we must not leave all to the men."

 

"We must have our fun, too!"

 

"The women of the factory say that all the women of the neighborhood are

drunken drabs," cried the little man with the ferret's face.

 

"Good! we'll pay them for it."

 

"The women shall have their share."

 

"That's our business."

 

"They like to sing in their Common House," cried Ciboule; "we will make

them sing the wrong side of their mouths, in the key of 'Oh, dear me!'"

 

This pleasantry was received with shouts, hootings, and furious stamping

of feet, to