"Courage! my friends, courage! We can make two journeys more before night, and you will have deserved well of your country."
A new spectacle presented itself within the walls. All were absorbed in the work of defence. Every gate was open. Men, women, and children labored, ran, or helped to carry powder and shot. Occasionally, groups of three, four, or half a dozen would collect to hear the news.
"Neighbors," one would say, "a courier has arrived at full speed. He entered by the French gate."
"Then he announces the coming of the National Guard from Nancy."
"You are right. Sixteen-pound shot are wanting, as well as canister. They are breaking up the stoves to supply its place."
Some of the citizens, in their shirt-sleeves, were barricading their windows with heavy beams and mattresses; others were rolling tubs of water before their doors. Their enthusiasm excited Hullin's admiration.
"Good!" he cried, "good! The allies will be well received here!"
Opposite the college, the squeaking voice of the sergeant, Harmantier, was shrieking:
"Be it known that the casemates will be opened, to the end that each man may bring a mattress and two blankets; and moreover, that messieurs the commissioners are about to commence their round of inspection to see that each inhabitant has three months' provisions in his house, which he must show: Given this twentieth day of December, one thousand eight hundred and thirteen. Jean Pierre Meunier, Governor."
Strange scenes, both serious and comic, succeeded every minute.
Hullin was no longer the same man. Memories of the march, the bivouac, the rattle of musketry, the charge, the shout of victory, came rushing upon him. His eyes sparkled and his heart beat fast, and the thoughts of the glory to be gained in a brave defence, a struggle to the death with a haughty enemy, filled his brain.
"Good faith!" said he to himself, "all goes well! I have made clogs enough in my life, and if the time has come to shoulder the musket once more, so much the better. We will show these Prussians and Austrians that we have not forgotten the roll of the charge!"
Thus mused the brave old man, but his exultation was not of long duration.
Before the church, on the Place d'Armes, were fifteen or twenty wagons full of wounded, arriving from Leipsic and Hanau. Many poor fellows, pale, emaciated, with eyes half-closed and glassy, or rolling in agony, some with arms and legs already amputated, some with wounds not yet even bandaged, lay awaiting death. Near by, a few worn-out horses were eating their scanty provender, while their drivers, poor peasants pressed into service in Alsace, wrapped in their long, ragged cloaks, slept, in spite of cold, on the steps of the church. It was terrible to see the men, wrapped in their gray overcoats, heaped upon bloody straw; one holding his broken arm upon his knee; another binding his head with an old handkerchief; a third already dead, serving as a seat for the living. Hullin stood transfixed. He could not withdraw his eyes from the scene. Human misery in its intensest forms fascinates us. We would see how men die--how they face death; and the best among us are not free from this horrible curiosity. It seems to us as if eternity were about to disclose its secrets.