Part 7

Fabrice had been at his post as sentinel at the bridge for barely half an hour when he saw six mounted chasseurs and three on foot approaching; he communicated the colonel's order to them.

"We shall come back," said four of the mounted chasseurs, and they crossed the bridge at a full trot.

Fabrice was then speaking with the other two. During the animated discussion that followed, the three men on foot crossed the bridge. One of the two mounted chasseurs who remained at last asked to see the order again, and took it away, saying:

"I am going to carry it to my comrades, who will not fail to return; hold them firm." And he set off at a gallop; his companion followed him. All this was done in the twinkling of an eye.

Fabrice, furious, called to one of the wounded soldiers, who appeared at one of the windows of the White Horse. This soldier, on whom Fabrice saw the stripes of a sergeant, came down and cried to him as he approached:

"Sabre in hand, then! You are on duty."

Fabrice obeyed, then said to him:

"They have carried off the order."

"They are still sore about yesterday's affair," the other replied with a gloomy air. "I am going to give you one of my pistols; if they force the guard again, fire it in the air, and I will come, or the colonel himself will appear."

Fabrice had very plainly seen a gesture of surprise on the part of the sergeant at the announcement of the order being taken; he understood that a personal insult had been offered him, and resolved well not to be made a fool of again.

Armed with the sergeant's saddle pistol, Fabrice had proudly resumed his post when he saw seven mounted hussars coming toward him: he had placed himself so as to block the bridge; he communicated the colonel's order to them; they seemed much put out by it; the boldest tried to pass. Fabrice, following the wise precept of his friend the sutler, who that morning before had told him one must thrust and not slash, lowered the point of his straight heavy sabre and made as if to give a thrust to him who would force the guard.

"Ah! the whelp wants to kill us!" cried the hussars, "as if we had not been killed enough yesterday!"

All drew their sabres at once and fell upon Fabrice; he thought himself dead; but he thought of the sergeant's surprise, and would not be despised anew. While retreating upon his bridge, he tried to give thrusts. He had such a comical look handling that straight heavy-cavalry sabre, much too heavy for him, that the hussars soon saw whom they had to deal with; they then sought not to wound him, but to cut his coat upon his body. Fabrice thus received three or four small sabre cuts on the arms. For his part, ever faithful to the cantinière's precept, he dealt hearty thrusts in plenty. Unhappily one of these thrusts wounded a hussar in the hand: furious at being touched by such a soldier, he replied with a full thrust which reached Fabrice high on the thigh. What made the blow tell was that our hero's horse, far from fleeing the fray, seemed to take pleasure in it and threw itself upon the assailants. These, seeing Fabrice's blood flow down his right arm, feared they had carried the game too far, and, pushing him toward the left parapet of the bridge, set off at a gallop. As soon as Fabrice had a moment's leisure he fired his pistol in the air to warn the colonel.

Four mounted hussars and two on foot, of the same regiment as the others, were coming toward the bridge and were still two hundred paces off when the pistol shot rang out: they were watching very attentively what passed on the bridge, and, imagining Fabrice had fired upon their comrades, the four on horseback bore down on him at a gallop with sabres raised; it was a veritable charge. Colonel Le Baron, warned by the pistol shot, opened the door of the inn and rushed onto the bridge at the moment the galloping hussars arrived there, and himself commanded them in the order to halt.

"There is no colonel here any more," cried one of them, and he spurred his horse.

The exasperated colonel broke off the remonstrance he was addressing to them, and, with his wounded right hand, seized the rein of that horse on the off side.

"Halt! bad soldier," he said to the hussar; "I know you, you are of Captain Henriet's company."

"Well then! let Captain himself give me the order! Captain Henriet was killed yesterday," he added with a sneer; "and go and get f..."

As he said these words he tried to force the passage and pushed the old colonel, who fell sitting on the bridge pavement. Fabrice, who was two paces farther on the bridge, but facing the inn side, spurred his horse, and while the breast of the assailant's horse threw down the colonel, who did not let go the off-side rein, Fabrice, indignant, gave the hussar a full thrust. Happily the hussar's horse, feeling itself pulled toward the ground by the bridle the colonel held, made a sideways movement, so that the long blade of Fabrice's heavy-cavalry sabre glided along the hussar's waistcoat and passed entirely beneath his eyes. Furious, the hussar turned and launched a blow with all his strength, which cut Fabrice's sleeve and entered deeply into his arm: our hero fell.

One of the dismounted hussars, seeing the two defenders of the bridge on the ground, seized the opportunity, sprang onto Fabrice's horse and tried to make off with it by launching it at a gallop on the bridge.

The sergeant, running from the inn, had seen his colonel fall, and believed him gravely wounded. He ran after Fabrice's horse and plunged the point of his sabre into the thief's loins; the man fell. The hussars, seeing no one on the bridge but the sergeant on foot, passed at a gallop and swiftly fled. He who was on foot fled into the countryside.

The sergeant approached the wounded. Fabrice had already risen; he suffered little, but lost much blood. The colonel rose more slowly; he was quite stunned by his fall, but had received no wound.

"I suffer," he said to the sergeant, "only from my old hand wound."

The hussar wounded by the sergeant was dying.

"The devil take him!" cried the colonel; but, he said to the sergeant and the two other horsemen who came running, "think of this young lad whom I have wrongly exposed. I am going to stay at the bridge myself to try to stop these madmen. Take the young lad to the inn and dress his arm; take one of my shirts."

CHAPTER V

All this adventure had not lasted a minute; Fabrice's wounds were nothing; they bound his arm with bands cut from the colonel's shirt. They wanted to make him a bed on the first floor of the inn:

"But while I am here well coddled on the first floor," Fabrice said to the sergeant, "my horse, which is in the stable, will be bored all alone and go off with another master."

"Not bad for a conscript!" said the sergeant.

And they settled Fabrice on fresh straw, in the very manger to which his horse was tied.

Then, as Fabrice felt very weak, the sergeant brought him a bowl of warm wine and made a little conversation with him. Some compliments included in this conversation sent our hero to the seventh heaven.

Fabrice woke only at daybreak the next morning; the horses were giving long neighs and making a frightful uproar; the stable was filling with smoke. At first Fabrice understood nothing of all this noise, and did not even know where he was; at last, half suffocated by the smoke, he had the idea that the house was burning; in the twinkling of an eye he was out of the stable and on horseback. He lifted his head; the smoke was issuing violently from the two windows above the stable and the roof was covered with black smoke that whirled. A hundred fugitives had arrived during the night at the White Horse inn; all cried out and swore. The five or six whom Fabrice could see close up seemed completely drunk; one of them wanted to stop him and cried to him:

"Where are you taking my horse?"

When Fabrice was a quarter of a league off, he turned his head; no one followed him, the house was in flames. Fabrice recognized the bridge, he thought of his wound and felt his arm bound with bands and very warm. "And the old colonel, what has become of him? He gave his shirt to dress my arm." Our hero that morning was of the coolest blood in the world; the quantity of blood he had lost had delivered him from all the romantic part of his character.

"To the right!" said he to himself, "and let's fly." He quietly set about following the course of the river which, after passing under the bridge, flowed to the right of the road. He recalled the good cantinière's advice. "What friendship!" said he to himself, "what an open character!"

After an hour's march he found himself very weak. "Ha! am I going to faint?" said he; "if I faint, they will steal my horse, and perhaps my clothes, and with the clothes the treasure." He no longer had the strength to guide his horse, and he tried to keep his balance, when a peasant, who was digging in a field beside the high road, saw his pallor and came to offer him a glass of beer and some bread.

"To see you so pale, I thought you were one of the wounded of the great battle!" said the peasant.

Never did help come more opportunely. At the moment Fabrice was chewing the black bread, his eyes were beginning to hurt when he looked ahead. When he was somewhat recovered, he thanked him.

"And where am I?" he asked.

The peasant told him that three quarters of a league farther on was the market town of Zonders, where he would be very well cared for. Fabrice arrived in this town, not quite knowing what he did, and thinking at each step only of not falling from his horse. He saw a large open door, he entered: it was the inn of the Horsefly. At once ran the good mistress of the house, an enormous woman; she called for help in a voice altered by pity. Two young girls helped Fabrice to dismount; hardly down from his horse, he fainted completely. A surgeon was called, he was bled. That day and the following ones, Fabrice did not quite know what was done to him; he slept almost without ceasing.

The thrust to the thigh threatened a considerable abscess. When he had his wits about him, he recommended that care be taken of his horse, and often repeated that he would pay well, which offended the good mistress of the inn and her daughters. He had been admirably cared for for a fortnight, and was beginning to recover some of his senses, when one evening he noticed his hostesses looked much troubled. Soon a German officer entered his room: they used for answering him a language he did not understand; but he saw well they spoke of him; he feigned sleep. Some time after, when he thought the officer might be out, he called his hostesses:

"Does not this officer come to write me on a list and make me a prisoner?"

The hostess admitted it with tears in her eyes.

"Well! there is money in my dolman!" he cried, raising himself on his bed; "buy me bourgeois clothes, and tonight I leave on my horse. You have already saved my life once in receiving me at the moment I was about to fall dying in the street; save it again by giving me the means to rejoin my mother."

At this moment the hostess's daughters began to melt in tears; they trembled for Fabrice; and as they barely understood French, they approached his bed to question him. They discussed in Flemish with their mother; but, every instant, tender eyes turned toward our hero; he believed he understood that his flight might seriously compromise them, but that they were willing to run the chance. He thanked them with effusion and joined hands. A Jew of the country supplied a complete outfit; but, when he brought it toward ten in the evening, these young ladies, comparing the coat with Fabrice's dolman, recognized that it must be taken in infinitely. At once they set to work; there was no time to lose. Fabrice indicated some napoleons hidden in his clothes, and begged his hostesses to sew them into the garments just bought. They had brought with the clothes a fine pair of new boots. Fabrice did not hesitate to beg these good girls to cut the boots hussar-fashion at the place he indicated to them, and they hid his little diamonds in the lining of the new boots.

By a singular effect of the loss of blood and the weakness that followed, Fabrice had almost entirely forgotten French; he addressed his hostesses in Italian, who spoke a Flemish patois, so that they understood each other almost solely by signs. When the young girls, moreover perfectly disinterested, saw the diamonds, their enthusiasm for him knew no bounds; they believed him a disguised prince. Aniken, the younger and most naive, kissed him without further ado. Fabrice, for his part, found them charming; and toward midnight, when the surgeon permitted him a little wine because of the road he was about to undertake, he almost felt like not leaving. "Where could I be better than here?" said he. However, toward two in the morning, he dressed. At the moment of leaving his room, the good hostess told him his horse had been taken by the officer who, some hours before, had come to visit the house.

"Ah! scoundrel!" cried Fabrice, swearing, "from a wounded man!"

He was not philosopher enough, this young Italian, to recall at what price he himself had bought that horse.

Aniken told him weeping that a horse had been hired for him; she wished he would not leave; the farewells were tender. Two tall young men, relatives of the good hostess, lifted Fabrice onto the saddle; during the road they supported him on horseback, while a third, who preceded the little convoy by some hundreds of paces, examined whether there was any suspicious patrol on the roads. After two hours' march, they stopped at a cousin's of the Horsefly hostess. Whatever Fabrice could say, the young men who accompanied him would never leave him; they claimed they knew the passages through the woods better than anyone.

"But tomorrow morning, when my flight is known, and you are not seen in the country, your absence will compromise you," said Fabrice.

They set out again. Happily, when day appeared, the plain was covered with a thick fog. Toward eight in the morning, they arrived near a small town. One of the young men detached himself to see if the post horses had been stolen. The postmaster had had time to make them disappear, and to recruit infamous nags with which he had stocked his stables. They went to seek two horses in the marshes where they were hidden, and, three hours later, Fabrice mounted a small, quite dilapidated cabriolet, but harnessed to two good post horses. He had regained strength. The moment of separation from the young men, relatives of the hostess, was of the utmost pathos; never, whatever amiable pretext Fabrice could find, would they accept money.

"In your state, sir, you have more need of it than we," these brave young men always answered.

At last they left with letters in which Fabrice, a little fortified by the agitation of the road, had tried to make known to his hostesses all he felt for them. Fabrice wrote with tears in his eyes, and there was certainly love in the letter addressed to little Aniken.

The rest of the journey had nothing but the ordinary. On arriving at Amiens he suffered much from the thrust he had received in the thigh; the country surgeon had not thought to lay open the wound, and despite bleedings an abscess had formed. During the fortnight Fabrice spent at the Amiens inn, kept by a complaisant and greedy family, the allies were invading France, and Fabrice became like another man, so many profound reflections did he make on the things that had just happened to him. He remained a child on but one point: what he had seen, was it a battle, and secondly, was this battle Waterloo? For the first time in his life he found pleasure in reading; he always hoped to find in the newspapers, or in the accounts of the battle, some description that would let him recognize the places he had traversed in the suite of Marshal Ney, and later with the other general. During his stay at Amiens, he wrote almost daily to his good friends of the Horsefly. As soon as he was cured, he came to Paris; he found at his former hotel twenty letters from his mother and aunt imploring him to return as soon as possible. A last letter from Countess Pietranera had a certain enigmatic turn that alarmed him greatly; this letter took from him all his tender reveries. He was of a character to whom a single word sufficed to easily foresee the greatest misfortunes; his imagination then charged itself with painting these misfortunes to him with the most horrible details.

"Take good care not to sign the letters you write to give news of yourself," the countess told him. "On your return you must not come straight to Lake Como: stop at Lugano, on Swiss territory." He was to arrive in this little town under the name of Cavi; he would find at the principal inn the countess's valet de chambre, who would indicate what must be done. His aunt ended with these words: "Hide by all possible means the folly you have committed, and above all keep on you no printed or written paper; in Switzerland you will be surrounded by the friends of Sainte-Marguerite 4. If I have enough money," said the countess, "I shall send someone to Geneva, to the Balance Hotel, and you will have details I cannot write and that yet you must know before arriving. But, for the love of God, not a day more in Paris; you would be recognized there by our spies." Fabrice's imagination set to figuring the strangest things, and he was incapable of any other pleasure than that of trying to guess what his aunt could have so strange to tell him. Twice, crossing France, he was stopped; but he knew how to free himself; he owed these disagreeables to his Italian passport and to that strange quality of barometer merchant, which agreed ill with his young face and his arm in a sling.

At last, in Geneva, he found a man belonging to the countess who told him on her part that he, Fabrice, had been denounced to the Milan police as having gone to carry to Napoleon propositions settled by a vast conspiracy organized in the former kingdom of Italy. If such had not been the aim of his journey, said the denunciation, why take a false name? His mother would try to prove what was true; that is to say:

1st, That he had never left Switzerland;

2nd, That he had left the castle suddenly following a quarrel with his eldest brother.

At this account Fabrice felt a sentiment of pride. "I should have been a sort of ambassador to Napoleon!" said he to himself; "I should have had the honor of speaking to that great man, would to God!" He remembered that his seventh ancestor, the grandson of him who arrived at Milan in the suite of Sforza, had the honor of having his head cut off by the enemies of the duke, who surprised him as he went into Switzerland to carry propositions to the praiseworthy cantons and recruit soldiers. He saw with the eyes of the soul the engraving relating to this fact, placed in the family genealogy. Fabrice, questioning this valet de chambre, found him outraged at a detail that at last escaped him, despite the express order to keep it from him, repeated several times by the countess. It was Ascagne, his eldest brother, who had denounced him to the Milan police. This cruel word gave our hero something like a fit of madness. From Geneva to go into Italy one passes by Lausanne; he wanted to set out on foot and at once, and thus make ten or twelve leagues, though the Geneva-Lausanne diligence was not to leave for two hours more. Before leaving Geneva, he picked a quarrel in one of the sad cafés of the country with a young man who, he said, was looking at him in a singular fashion. Nothing more true: the phlegmatic, reasonable young Genevan, thinking only of money, believed him mad; Fabrice on entering had cast furious glances on all sides, then overturned onto his trousers the cup of coffee served him. In this quarrel, Fabrice's first movement was quite of the sixteenth century: instead of speaking of a duel to the young Genevan, he drew his dagger and threw himself on him to pierce him with it. In this moment of passion Fabrice forgot all he had learned of the rules of honor, and returned to instinct, or, better said, to the memories of earliest childhood.

The intimate man of confidence he found at Lugano increased his fury by giving him new details. As Fabrice was loved at Grianta, no one would have pronounced his name, and without his brother's amiable proceeding, everyone would have pretended to believe he was at Milan, and never would the attention of that city's police have been drawn to his absence.

"No doubt the customs officers have your description," said his aunt's envoy; "and if we follow the high road, at the border of the Lombard-Venetian kingdom, you will be arrested."

Fabrice and his men knew the smallest paths of the mountain separating Lugano from Lake Como: they disguised themselves as hunters, that is to say as smugglers, and as they were three and of rather determined mien, the customs officers they met thought only of saluting them. Fabrice arranged to arrive at the castle only toward midnight; at that hour his father and all the powder-bearing valets de chambre had long been abed. He descended without trouble into the deep moat and penetrated the castle by the small window of a cellar: there he was expected by his mother and aunt; soon his sisters came running. Transports of tenderness and tears succeeded one another for a long time, and they were only beginning to speak reason when the first light of dawn came to warn these beings who believed themselves unhappy that time was flying.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”