ALL WERE DEAD, AS IT WERE ONE LONG CEMETERY.
HISTORICAL ROMANCES OF FRANCE
THE BLOCKADE OF PHALSBURG
AN EPISODE OF THE END OF THE EMPIRE
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH OF
ERCKMANN-CHATRIAN
ILLUSTRATED
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK::::::::::::::::::::::1911
COPYRIGHT, 1871, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER & CO.
COPYRIGHT, 1889, 1898
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
ILLUSTRATIONS
All were dead, as it were one long cemetery . . . . . Frontispiece
"Be so good as to come in, Mr. Sergeant"
I shuddered in my very soul and my hair bristled
Winter took him by the collar, and said: "I have you now!"
The sortie from the Tile-kiln
INTRODUCTORY NOTE
"The Blockade of Phalsburg" contains one of the happiest portraits inthe Erckmann-Chatrian gallery—that of the Jew Moses who tells thestory and who is always in character, however great the patriotic orromantic temptation to idealize him, and whose character isnevertheless portrayed with an almost affectionate appreciation of thesterling qualities underlying its somewhat usurious exterior.
The time is 1814, during the invasion of France by the allies after thedisastrous battle of Leipsic and the campaign described in "TheConscript." The dwellers in Phalsburg—a little walled town of two orthree thousand inhabitants in Lorraine—defend themselves with greatintrepidity and determination during the siege which lasts until thecapitulation of Paris. The daily life of the citizens and garrison,the various incidents of the blockade, the bombardment by night, thescarcity of food, the occasional sortie for foraging, all pass beforethe reader depicted with the authors' customary fidelity andlife-likeness, and form as perfect a picture of a siege as "TheConscript" does of a campaign.
THE BLOCKADE:
AN EPISODE OF
THE END OF THE EMPIRE
I
FATHER MOSES AND HIS FAMILY
Since you wish to know about the blockade of Phalsburg in 1814, I willtell you all about it, said Father Moses of the Jews' street.
I lived then in the little house on the corner, at the right of themarket. My business was selling iron by the pound, under the archbelow, and I lived above with my wife Sorlé (Sarah) and my littleSâfel, the child of my old age.
My two other boys, Itzig and Frômel, had