Antoinette Ogden

From the French of Alphonse Daudet.

I.

It was Christmas Eve in a great Bavarian town. A joyous crowd pushed its way through the streets white with snow, in the confusion of the fog, the rumble of carriages, and the clamor of bells, toward the booths, stalls, and cook-shops in the open air. Great fir-trees bedecked with dangling gewgaws were being carried about, grazing the ribbons and flowers of the booths and towering above the crowd like shadows of Thuringian forests,—a breath of Nature in the artificial life of winter.

It is twilight. The lingering lights of sunset, sending a crimson glow through the fog, can still be seen from the gardens beyond the Residence; and in the town the very air is so full of animation and festivity that every light which blinks through a window-pane seems to be dangling from a Christmas-tree. For this is not an ordinary Christmas. It is the year of our Lord 1870; and the birth of Christ is but an additional pretext for drinking the health of the illustrious Von der Than, and celebrating the triumph of Bavarian warriors. Christmas! Christmas! The Jews of the lower town themselves have joined in the general merriment. Here comes old Augustus Cahn, hurrying around the corner of "The Bunch of Blue Grapes." There is an unusual light in his ferret eyes. His little bushy pigtail was never known to wriggle so merrily. Over his sleeve, worn shiny by the rope handles of his wallet, he carries an honest basket, quite full, covered with a brown linen napkin, from under which peep the neck of a bottle and a twig of holly.

What the deuce is the old usurer up to? Can he too be celebrating Christmas? Has he assembled his friends and family to drink to the Vaterland? Impossible. Everybody knows that old Cahn has no Fatherland but his money-safe. Neither has he relatives nor friends; he has only creditors. His sons, or rather his partners, have been away for three months with the army. They are trading yonder behind the luggage-vans of the landwehr, selling brandy, buying clocks, ripping the knapsacks fallen by the wayside, and searching the pockets of the dead at night on the battle-field. Father Cahn, too old to follow his children, has remained in Bavaria, where he is doing a flourishing business with the French prisoners. He hovers about the quarters, loans money on watches, buys epaulets, medals, and money-orders. He ferrets his way through hospitals and ambulances, and creeps noiselessly to the bedside of the wounded, inquiring in his hideous jargon,—

"Aff you zumting to zell?"

And now he is trotting along hurriedly with his basket on his arm, because the military hospital closes at five, and because two Frenchmen are waiting for him there, in that great gloomy building behind the iron grating of narrow windows, where Christmas finds nothing to cheer its vigil but the pale lamps that burn at the bedside of the dying.

II.

These two Frenchmen are Salvette and Bernadou, two light-infantry men, two ProvenÇals from the same village, enlisted in the same battalion and wounded by the same shell. But Salvette has proved the hardier of the two; he is able now to get up and to take a few steps from his bed to the window. Bernadou, on the other hand, has no desire to recover. Behind the faded curtains of his hospital bed, he languishes and grows thinner day by day; and when he speaks of his home, he smiles that sad smile of invalids which contains more resignation than hope. He seems a little brighter to-day, however, as he recalls the celebration of Christmas, which in our beautiful land of Provence is like a bonfire lighted in the heart of winter. He thinks of the walk home after midnight Mass, of the bedecked and luminous churches, the dark and crowded village streets, then the long evening around the table, the three traditional torches, the aÏoli, the dish of snails, the pretty ceremony of the cacho fio,—the Yule log, which the grandfather parades through the house and sprinkles with mulled wine.

"Ah, my poor Salvette, what a dreary Christmas this will be! If we only had a few cents left, we could buy a little loaf of white bread and a bottle of light wine. It would be nice to sprinkle the Yule log with you once more before—" And his sunken eyes shine when he thinks of the wine and the white bread. But what is to be done? They have nothing left, the poor wretches,—no watches, no money. True, Salvette has a money-order for forty francs stored away in the lining of his vest. But that must be kept in reserve for the day of their release, or rather for the first halt at a French inn. It is sacred money, and cannot be touched. Still, poor Bernadou is so low, who can tell whether he will ever live through the journey home? And while it is still time, might it not be better to celebrate this Christmas together? Without saying a word of it to his comrade, Salvette rips his vest lining; and after a long struggle and a whispered discussion with Augustus Cahn, he slips into his hand this little scrap of stiff yellow paper smelling of powder and stained with blood, after which he assumes a look of deep mystery. He rubs his hands and laughs softly to himself as he glances over at Bernadou. As the darkness falls, he stands with his forehead against the window-pane, and stirs from his post only when he sees old Augustus Cahn turn the corner breathlessly, with a little basket on his arm.

III.

The solemn midnight, ringing from all the steeples of the great city, falls lugubriously on the insomnia of the wounded. The hospital is silent, lighted only by the night lamps that swing from the ceiling. Gaunt shadows float over the beds and the bare walls with a perpetual swaying, which seems like the oppressed breathing of the people lying there. Every now and then there are dreams which talk aloud, or nightmares that moan; while vague murmurs of steps and voices, blended in the sonorous chill of the night, rise from the street like sounds issuing from the portals of a cathedral. They are fraught with impressions of pious haste,—the mystery of a religious festival invading the hours of sleep and filling the darkness of the city with the soft glow of lanterns and the jewelled radiance of church windows.

"Are you asleep, Bernadou?"

On the little table by his friend's bed Salvette has laid a bottle of Lunel wine and a pretty round Christmas loaf with a twig of holly stuck in the top. The wounded man opens his eyes, dark and sunken with fever. In the uncertain light of the night lamps and the reflection of the long roofs, where the moon dazzles herself in the snow, this improvised Christmas supper strikes him as something fantastic.

"Come, wake up, countryman; let it not be said that two ProvenÇals let Christmas go by without sprinkling it with a draught of wine—" And Salvette raises him on his pillows with a mother's tenderness. He fills the glasses, cuts the bread. They drink and speak of Provence. Bernadou seems to be cheered by the reminiscences and the white wine. With that childishness which invalids seem to find again in the depths of their weakness he begs for a ProvenÇal carol. His comrade is only too happy.

"What shall it be,—'The Host' or 'The Three Kings' or 'Saint Joseph told me'?"

"No; I prefer 'The Shepherds.' That is the one we used to sing at home."

"Very well, then. Here goes, 'The Shepherds.'"

And in a low voice, with his head under the bed-curtains, Salvette begins to sing. At the last verse, when the shepherds have laid down their offering of fresh eggs and cheeses, and Saint Joseph speeds them with kind words,—

poor Bernadou slips back and falls heavily on his pillow.

His comrade, who believes that he has gone to sleep again, shakes him by the arm and calls him; but the wounded man remains motionless, and the twig of holly lying beside him looks like the green palm that is laid on the couch of the dead. Salvette has understood; he is slightly tipsy with the celebration and the shock of his sorrow; and with a voice full of tears he sings out, filling the silent dormitory with the joyous refrain of Provence,—