The Wandering Jew, Book VIII.. by Eugene Sue (best big ereader txt) 📖
- Author: Eugene Sue
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"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
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