HISTORICAL ROMANCES OF FRANCE THE INVASION OF FRANCE IN 1814

CHAPTER I

THE OLD SHOEMAKER AND HIS DAUGHTER

If you would wish to know the history of the great invasion of 1814,
such as it was related to me by the old hunter Frantz du Hengst, you
must transport yourself to the village of Charmes, in the Vosges.
About thirty small houses, covered with shingles and dark-green
houseleeks, stand in rows along the banks of the Sarre: you can see the
gables carpeted with ivy and withered honeysuckles, for winter is
approaching; the beehives closed with corks of straw, the small
gardens, the palings, the hedges which separate them one from the other.

To the left, on a high mountain, arise the ruins of the ancient château
of Falkenstein, destroyed two hundred years ago by the Swedes. It is
now only a mass of stones and brambles; an old "timber-way," with its
worn-out steps, ascends to it through the pine-trees. To the right, on
the side of the hill, one can perceive the farm of Bois-de-Chênes--a
large building, with granaries, stables, and sheds, the flat roof
loaded with great stones, in order to resist the north wind. A few
cows are grazing in the heather, a few goats on the rocks.

Everything is calm and silent.

Some children, in gray stuff trousers, their heads and feet bare, are
warming themselves around their little fires on the outskirts of the
woods; the spiral lines of blue smoke fade away in the air, great white
clouds remain immovable above the valley; behind these clouds arise the
arid peaks of the Grosmann and Donon.

You must know that the end house of the village, whose square roof is
pierced by two loophole windows, and whose low door opens on the muddy
street, belonged, in 1813, to Jean-Claude Hullin, one of the old
volunteers of '92, but now a shoemaker in the village of Charmes, and
who was held in much consideration by the mountaineers. Hullin was a
short stout man, with gray eyes, large lips, a short nose, and thick
eyebrows. He was of a jovial, kind disposition, and did not know how
to refuse anything to his daughter Louise, a child whom he had picked
up among some miserable gypsies--farriers and tin-sellers--without
house or dwelling-place, who go from village to village mending pots
and pans, melting the ladles, and patching up cracked utensils. He
considered her as his own daughter, and never seemed to remember she
came of a strange race.