Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 22, 2025
We crossed the court, and in front of the tower-hall, opposite the guard-house, many peasants and city people were already standing, reading a placard. We went up the steps and entered the church, where more than twenty women, young and old, were kneeling on the pavement, in spite of the terrible cold. "Is it not as I said?" said Brainstein.
I looked, and saw Phalsbourg far beneath us; the barracks, the magazines, the steeple whence I had seen Catharine's home six weeks before, with old Brainstein all were in the gray distance, with the woods all around. I would have stopped a few moments, but the squad marched on, and I had to keep pace with them. We entered Metting.
Thinking thus, I arrived at the house of Brainstein, the bell-ringer, who lived at the corner of the little place, in an old, tumble-down barrack. His two sons were weavers, and in their old home the noise of the loom and the whistle of the shuttle was heard from morning till night. The grandmother, old and blind, slept in an armchair, on the back of which perched a magpie.
We descended the stairs under the great gate, and I went across the court to the house of Monsieur the Commandant Meunier, while Brainstein took the way to his house. At the corner of the Hotel de Ville, I saw a sight which I shall remember all my life.
At last we gained the street, and Father Brainstein said: "You have heard of the great Russian disaster, Monsieur Joseph?" "Yes, Father Brainstein; it is fearful!" "Ah!" said he, "there will be many a Mass said in the churches; every one will weep and pray for their children, the more that they are dead in a heathen land." "Certainly, certainly," I replied.
And I saw the kitchen, and imagined Catharine, in sabots, and woollen skirt, spinning at the corner of the hearth and thinking of me. I no longer felt the cold; I could not take my eyes from their cottage. Father Brainstein, who did not know what I was looking at, said: "Yes, yes, Monsieur Joseph: now all the roads are covered with people in spite of the snow.
It was a beautiful letter, and it told the truth too. The very idea of going away again made me ill. So we waited from day to day Aunt Grédel, Father Goulden, Catherine, and I, for the answer from the minister. I cannot describe the impatience I felt when the postman Brainstein, the son of the bell-ringer, came into the street.
And when I think of Louis XVIII., I hear the bells ring and I imagine Father Brainstein and his two big boys hanging to the ropes, and I hear Father Goulden laugh and say: "That, Joseph, is for Saint Magloire or Saint Polycarp." I cannot think of those days in any other way.
I came then to Brainstein's, and the old man, when he saw me, rose up, saying: "It is you, Monsieur Joseph." "Yes, Father Brainstein; I came in place of Monsieur Goulden, who is not well." "Very good; it is all the same."
I could hear him half a mile away, and then I could not go on with my work, but must lean out of the window and watch him as he went from house to house. When he would stay a little too long, I would say to myself, "What can he have to talk about so long? why don't he leave his letters and come away? he is a regular tattler, that Brainstein!" I was ready to pounce upon him.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking