French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART II Chapter I > > >
PART I
Chapter VIII
SEDAN AT LAST! THE EVE OF BATTLE
Jean became separated from Maurice in the scramble which took place on the Place de Torcy at the end of the Wadelincourt highway, and as he ran on he lost himself among the tramping crowd, and was unable to find his friend. This was really unlucky, for he had accepted Maurice’s offer to take him to his sister’s house, where they had arranged to have a rest, a refreshing nap in a comfortable bed. There was so much confusion, all the regiments being intermingled, without marching orders or even commanders, that the men were almost at liberty to do as they pleased. Thus Maurice and Jean had come to the conclusion that after enjoying a few hours’ sleep they would still have ample time to take their bearings and rejoin their comrades.
Quite scared, Jean found himself on the Torcy viaduct, overlooking extensive meadows which the governor had flooded with the waters of the river. Then, after passing through another gateway, he crossed the bridge over the Meuse, and, although the dawn was rising, it seemed to him as if night were coming back again, so darkly did the lofty houses overshadow the damp streets of this little town, cramped up within its ramparts. Jean did not even remember the name of Maurice’s brother-in-law; he only knew that the young fellow’s sister was named Henriette. Where should he go? Whom should he ask for? It was only the mechanical motion of the march that still kept him upright; he felt that he should fall if he ventured to stop. Like a drowning man, he could hear nothing save a confused buzzing, distinguish nothing save the continuous streaming of the flood of men and horses in the midst of which he was being carried along. Having partaken of some food at Remilly, it was now the need of sleep that caused him the most suffering; and, indeed, all around him weariness was conquering hunger. The shadowy flock of soldiers went stumbling hither and thither along the strange streets, and at every step some man or other sank down on the footway or on a doorstep, and remained there fast asleep.
Suddenly, however, on raising his eyes, Jean noticed an inscription: ‘Avenue de la Sous-Préfecture.’ At the farther end of this avenue there was a monument in a garden, and at a corner near him he perceived a cavalry soldier, a Chasseur d’Afrique, whom he fancied he recognised. Was it not that fellow Prosper, belonging to Remilly, whom he had seen with Maurice at Vouziers? The Chasseur had alighted from his horse, and the wretched, haggard animal was trembling in every limb, so famished that it had stretched out its neck to munch the woodwork of a van, standing beside the footway. The horses had received no rations for two days past, and were dying of exhaustion. Jean noticed that tears were falling from the eyes of the Chasseur d’Afrique, as he stood there beside his steed, whose big teeth were gnawing the wood with a rasping sound.
Jean passed on, and when, a few moments afterwards, he retraced his steps, in the idea that this Chasseur must know the address of Maurice’s relatives, he found him gone. Despair then took possession of the corporal, who wandered on from street to street till he again found himself at the Sub-Prefecture, whence he proceeded as far as the Place Turenne. Then, for a moment, he fancied himself saved, for in front of the town-hall, at the foot of the statue of Turenne, he espied Lieutenant Rochas with a few men of his company. Since he could not find his friend he would join the regiment again and have a nap under canvas. That, at all events, would be better than nothing. Captain Beaudoin not having turned up again—he had doubtless been carried away in some other direction—the lieutenant had endeavoured to get his men together, besides trying to ascertain on what spot the division was to encamp. On its way through the town, however, the company gradually diminished instead of increasing. One man, after making a furious gesture, strode into a tavern and was not seen again. Three others halted in front of a grocer’s shop, in compliance with the suggestion of some Zouaves, who had just tapped a little barrel of brandy there. Others, too, quite overcome, had fallen to the ground, and were lying prostrate in the gutters; whilst some, anxious to start off again, tried to pick themselves up, but fell back once more, utterly worn out and dazed. Chouteau and Loubet, after nudging one another, bolted up a dark passage, behind a fat woman who was carrying a loaf; and finally only Pache and Lapoulle, and some ten of their comrades, remained with the lieutenant.
When Jean came up, Rochas was standing beside the bronze statue of Turenne, making a great effort to remain erect and keep his eyes open. ‘Ah! so it’s you, corporal. Where are your men?’ he muttered, on recognising Jean.
Jean waved his hand as if to say that he did not know; but Pache, from whose eyes tears were starting, pointed to Lapoulle, and answered: ‘We are here; there are only we two left—may God take pity on us, it’s getting too dreadful.’
Lapoulle, the man with the terrible appetite, looked at Jean’s hands with a voracious expression. For some days past he had been disgusted to find them always empty. Possibly, in his sleepy state, he imagined that the corporal had been to fetch the rations. ‘Curse it!’ he growled, ‘so we’ve again got to tighten our belts.’
Whilst leaning against the railing which inclosed the statue, awaiting orders to sound the assembly, Gaude, the bugler, had gone to sleep, and slid to the ground, where he was now lying spread out on his back. One by one they all succumbed, and with their fists clenched, began to snore. Sergeant Sapin, his nose contracted and his thin little face extremely pale, was the only one whose eyes remained wide open, scanning the horizon of this strange town as though he could there read his impending fate. On his side, Lieutenant Rochas had given way to an irresistible desire to sit down, and, crouching on the pavement, he endeavoured to give an order: ‘Corporal,’ he said, ‘you must, you must——’ But his tongue, clogged by fatigue, refused its service, and all at once he also fell back, overwhelmed with weariness.
Thereupon Jean, afraid lest he should fall on the pavement like the others, went off, still obstinately bent on finding a bed. At one of the windows of the Golden Cross Hotel, on the other side of the Place, he had just espied General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, already in his shirt sleeves, and about to slip between a pair of clean white sheets. As that was the course which the generals adopted, what use was there in being zealous, in suffering any longer? And suddenly Jean felt overjoyed, for a name had come to him from the depths of his memory, the name of the cloth manufacturer who employed Maurice’s brother-in-law: Monsieur Delaherche!—yes, that was it. An old gentleman was passing at that moment: ‘Can you tell me where Monsieur Delaherche lives?’ Jean asked him.
‘In the Rue Maqua, almost at the corner of the Rue au Beurre. It’s a big, handsome house, with a carved front.’ The old man then passed on, but all at once he hastened back after Jean, exclaiming: ‘I say, you belong to the 106th. If you are looking for your regiment, it has left the town by way of the Château over there. I just met your colonel, Monsieur de Vineuil, whom I knew very well when he was in garrison at Mézières.’
Jean, however, set off again, making a furious gesture of annoyance. No, no, he wasn’t going to lie on the hard ground now that he was certain of finding Maurice. And yet, in the depths of his conscience, he was worried by a feeling of remorse, for in his mind’s eye he could see the colonel, tall and rigid, indefatigable despite his age, and always sleeping under canvas like his men. Busy with such thoughts as these, Jean began threading the High Street, and, having lost himself amid the increasing tumult that pervaded the town, he ended by applying to a little boy, who conducted him to the Rue Maqua.
It was here that one of Delaherche’s grand-uncles had, in the last century, built a monumental factory, which had now been the property of the family for a hundred and sixty years. Sedan counts several cloth manufactories, dating from the earlier years of Louis XV., as large as Louvres, and with regally majestic façades. That in the Rue Maqua had three storeys of lofty windows framed round with carving of a severe style; and, in the rear of the front building, there was a palatial courtyard shaded with old trees, gigantic elms dating from the foundation of the establishment. Three generations of Delaherches had amassed considerable fortunes there, and now it was the younger branch of the family that reigned, the father of Jules Delaherche, the present owner, having inherited the property from a cousin who had died childless. Jules’ father had increased the prosperity of the firm, but he was a man of easy morals, and had rendered his wife extremely unhappy. She, on becoming a widow, had feared lest her son should take to the same courses as his father, and after marrying him to a woman who was very devout and of very simple tastes, she had sought to maintain him in a dependent state as though he were a mere youth, and this till he was over fifty years of age. Life, however, sometimes has terrible revenges, and his wife having died, Delaherche, like a mere stripling, fell in love with a young widow of Charleville, pretty Madame Maginot, concerning whom there had been no little gossip, but whom he had ended by marrying during the previous autumn, despite all his mother’s remonstrances. Sedan, a very puritanical town, has always looked down severely on Charleville, the abode of gaiety and festivity. It should be said, however, that the marriage would never have taken place had Gilberte not been the niece of Colonel de Vineuil, who, so it seemed, was on the point of becoming a general. This relationship, the idea of allying himself to a military family, had greatly flattered the manufacturer’s feelings.
On the morning of August 30, having learnt that the army was near Mouzon, Delaherche, in company with Weiss, his book-keeper, had started on that excursion which old Fouchard had referred to in conversation with Maurice. Tall and stoutly built, with a ruddy complexion, a large nose and thick lips, the manufacturer was of an expansive nature, endowed with all the inquisitiveness of the French bourgeois, who likes nothing better than a brilliant military display. On learning from the chemist at Mouzon that the Emperor was at Baybel farm, he had climbed thither and had seen Napoleon, had almost spoken to him, had met, in fact, with quite an adventure, which he had not ceased talking about since his return to Sedan. But the homeward journey in the midst of the Beaumont panic, along the roads crowded with runaways, had been truly terrible. A score of times had the gig narrowly missed being upset in the wayside ditches; and delayed over and over again by constantly recurring obstacles, Delaherche and Weiss had only got back to Sedan at nightfall. The pleasure trip ended, indeed, in a most unpleasant fashion; the army, which the manufacturer had gone to see, marching along a couple of leagues away, drove him home again with the gallop of its retreat, and this unforeseen, tragical adventure so exercised his mind that on the road back he kept on repeating to his companion: ‘And to think that I fancied the army was marching on Verdun—that was why I didn’t want to miss the opportunity of seeing it. Well, I have seen it, and no mistake; and I fancy we shall see rather more of it at Sedan than will be altogether pleasant.’
Awakened at five o’clock the next morning by the loud commotion of the Seventh Corps streaming torrent-like through the town, he hastily dressed himself and went out; and the first person whom he met on the Place Turenne was none other than Captain Beaudoin. During the previous year, the captain had been one of the intimates of pretty Madame Maginot at Charleville; and she had introduced him to Delaherche prior to their marriage. According to the scandal-mongers, the captain, who was considered to be the lady’s favoured admirer, had retired through a feeling of delicacy, not wishing to stand between his inamorata and the manufacturer’s large fortune.
‘What! is it you?’ exclaimed Delaherche, as he encountered him on the Place. ‘Good heavens! What a state you are in!’
The captain, usually so correct and spruce in his get-up, was now indeed in a pitiable condition. Not only was his uniform sadly soiled, but his face and hands were black. He had arrived from Remilly in the company of some Turcos, and was exasperated at having lost his company, how he could not tell. Like all the others, he was dying of hunger and fatigue, but this caused him far less distress than the circumstance that he had been unable to change his linen since leaving Rheims.
‘Just fancy!’ he immediately whimpered, ‘my baggage got lost at Vouziers—lost by some idiots or other; some rascals whose heads I’d break if I could only get hold of them. And I’ve nothing left; not a handkerchief, not a pair of socks even. ‘Pon my honour, it’s enough to drive a man mad!’
Delaherche at once insisted on taking him home. But Beaudoin resisted. No, no, he no longer looked like a human being, and he did not wish to frighten people. The manufacturer then had to give him his word of honour that neither his mother nor his wife was up. Besides, he would supply him with water, soap and linen, in fact, everything he might require.
Seven o’clock was striking when Captain Beaudoin, after a wash and a brush, made his entry into the lofty, grey-panelled dining room, wearing one of Delaherche’s shirts under his uniform. Madame Delaherche senior was already there, for she invariably rose at dawn, despite her eight-and-seventy years. Her hair was quite white, and she had a long, thin face, with a slender, pointed nose, and a mouth that no longer smiled. She rose from her chair and showed herself extremely polite, inviting the captain to seat himself in front of one of the cups of café-au-lait that were already placed on the table. ‘But perhaps, monsieur,’ said she, ‘you would prefer some meat and wine after so much fatigue?’
He protested the contrary: ‘Many thanks, madame, but a little milk and some bread and butter will suit me best.’
At this moment a door was gaily opened, and Gilberte came in with her hand outstretched. Delaherche must have informed her that the captain was there, for as a rule she was never out of bed before ten o’clock. She was tall and seemingly strong and supple, with beautiful black hair, beautiful black eyes, a rosy complexion, and smiling mien; hers was a somewhat giddy nature no doubt, but evidently there was not a grain of malice in her composition. She wore a beige morning wrapper embroidered with purple silk, which had undoubtedly come from Paris. ‘Ah! captain,’ she said eagerly, as she shook hands with the young man, ‘how kind of you to have paid a visit to our poor little nook in the provinces.’ Then, the first to laugh at her own thoughtlessness, she added: ‘Ah! what a stupid I am! Of course you would rather not be at Sedan under such sad circumstances. But I am so pleased to see you again.’
Her eyes, indeed, were sparkling with pleasure, and Madame Delaherche, senior, who was doubtless acquainted with the Charleville tittle-tattle, gazed fixedly at both of them with a rigid air. The captain behaved very discreetly, however, as though simply retaining a pleasant recollection of an hospitable house where in past times he had been cordially welcomed.
They sat down to breakfast, and Delaherche immediately reverted to his excursion of the previous day, unable to resist the desire that possessed him to relate his adventures once more. ‘I saw the Emperor at Baybel,’ he began, and, thus started, nothing could stop him. First came a description of the farm, a large square building, with an inner court inclosed by iron railings, and perched on a hillock overlooking Mouzon, on the left of the road leading to Carignan. Then he reverted to the Twelfth Army Corps, through which he had passed whilst it was camping among the vines on the slopes. Superb troops were these, looking quite brilliant in the sunshine, and the sight of them had filled his heart with patriotic delight.
‘Well,’ he continued, ‘I was standing there, when all at once the Emperor came out of the farm—he had halted there to rest and breakfast. Although the sun was very hot, he wore an overcoat over his general’s uniform. There was a servant walking behind him with a camp stool. Ah! he didn’t look at all well, no, that he didn’t; he was quite bent, and walked as if in pain; his face was yellow, too—altogether he seemed very ill. But I wasn’t surprised at it, for when the chemist at Mouzon suggested to me that I ought go on to Baybel, he told me that one of the imperial aides-de-camp had just been to him for some medicine for——you understand what I mean——’ The presence of his mother and his wife prevented him from referring more explicitly to the dysentery from which the Emperor had been suffering since his departure from Le Chêne, and which had constantly compelled him to halt at the farms scattered along his route. ‘Well,’ continued Delaherche, ‘the servant opened the camp-stool at the end of a cornfield, near a plantation, and then the Emperor sat down. He sat there stock still, half crouching, like some petty cit warming his rheumatics in the sunshine. And those mournful eyes of his wandered all over the horizon—there was the Meuse flowing through the valley down below; wooded hills stretched far away in front of him; there were the crests of the woods of Dieulet on the left, and the green hills of Sommauthe rising up on the right. Several aides-de-camp and officers of high rank gathered round him, and a colonel of Dragoons—who, a little while before, had asked me for some information about the district—had just made me a sign not to go away, when, all at once——’
At this point Delaherche rose up, for he was coming to the dramatic part of his narrative, and wished to enforce his words with pantomime. ‘All at once,’ he continued, ‘I heard several loud reports, and, right in front of me, just in advance of the woods of Dieulet, I saw some shells describing curves in the air. ‘Pon my word it was just like fireworks let off in broad daylight. I heard a lot of exclamations among the Emperor’s party. Naturally they all seemed very anxious. The colonel of Dragoons whom I mentioned just now came running up to me again, and asked me if I could tell where the fighting was going on. I answered at once: “It’s at Beaumont; there’s not the least doubt about it.” Then he went back to the Emperor, on whose knees an aide-de-camp was unfolding a map. The Emperor, however, wouldn’t believe that the fighting was at Beaumont. But, of course, I could only repeat what I had said, especially as one could see the shells careering through the air, coming nearer and nearer, right along the road to Mouzon. Then, just as I see you, captain, I saw the Emperor turn his pale face towards me. Yes, he looked at me for a moment with those dim eyes of his, full of distrust and sadness. And then he let his head drop over his map once more, and didn’t move again.’
Delaherche, an ardent Bonapartist at the time of the Plebiscitum, had been willing to admit since the earlier reverses that the Empire had erred in various ways. But he still defended the dynasty and pitied Napoleon III., whom everybody deceived. According to him the people, who were really responsible for the disasters of France, were the deputies of the Republican Opposition, who had prevented the Legislature from voting the necessary men and credits.
‘And the Emperor went back to the farm?’ asked Captain Beaudoin.
‘Well, I really don’t know; I left him sitting on the camp-stool. It was midday, and the battle was coming nearer and nearer, and I had begun to feel anxious about getting home again. The only thing I can add is that a general to whom I pointed out Carignan some way off in the plain behind us, appeared thunderstruck when I told him that the Belgian frontier was only a few miles away. Ah! that poor Emperor, he has some nice generals, and no mistake.’
Whilst her husband was discoursing in this fashion, Gilberte, smiling, and as much at her ease as though she were still a widow in her drawing-room at Charleville, was busy attending to the captain’s requirements, passing him the toast, the butter, and whatever else he needed. She pressed him to accept a room and go to bed, but he declined this, and it was arranged that he should merely take a couple of hours’ rest on a sofa, in Delaherche’s study, before rejoining his regiment. Just as he was taking the sugar basin from Gilberte’s hands, old Madame Delaherche, who kept her eyes fixed on the young couple, distinctly saw them press each other’s finger-tips; and after that she no longer had any doubts.
Just then, however, a servant entered the room: ‘There’s a soldier downstairs, sir, who is asking for Monsieur Weiss’s address.’
Delaherche was not at all stuck-up; with a garrulous taste for popularity he was fond of chatting with the poor and the humble. ‘Weiss’s address?’ said he. ‘That’s funny—send the soldier here!’
Jean entered, so worn-out that he was fairly staggering. He started with surprise on perceiving his captain seated at table between two ladies, and drew back his hand, which he had already thrust forward in a mechanical way so that he might support himself by grasping a chair. Then he briefly answered the questions put to him by the manufacturer, who began playing the good-natured fellow, the soldier’s friend. In a few words Jean explained his intimacy with Maurice, and the reason why he wished to find him.
‘This is a corporal of my company,’ at last said the captain by way of curtailing the explanations, and in his turn he began to question Jean, wishing to ascertain what had become of the regiment. And when Jean related that the colonel, and such men as remained with him, had just been seen crossing the town for the purpose of camping on the northern side, Gilberte again spoke over hastily, with the vivacity of a pretty woman who seldom takes the trouble to reflect: ‘My uncle? Oh! why didn’t he come to breakfast here? We would have had a room got ready for him. Suppose we send for him?’
But Madame Delaherche, senior, waved her hand with a gesture of sovereign authority. The blood of the old burgesses of the frontier cities coursed in her veins; she was endowed with all the masculine virtues of rigid patriotism; and she only broke her uncompromising silence to exclaim: ‘Let Monsieur de Vineuil remain where he is; he is doing his duty.’
This made the others feel uncomfortable, and Delaherche carried the captain away into his study that he might rest, as arranged, upon the sofa there; whilst Gilberte, on her side, without heeding her mother-in-law’s lesson, went off like a bird shaking its wings, as blithe and as gay as ever, despite the storm. Meanwhile, the servant to whose care Jean had been committed conducted him across the yard of the factory, and through a maze of passages and staircases.
Weiss lived in the Rue des Voyards, but the house, which belonged to Delaherche, communicated in the rear with the monumental edifice in the Rue Maqua. The Rue des Voyards was then one of the most confined streets in Sedan, being, in fact, simply a narrow, damp lane, darkened by the high rampart which it skirted. The eaves of the lofty frontages almost touched one another, and the passages were as black as vaults, especially at the end where rose the high college wall. Weiss, however, occupying a third floor, rent and firing free, found himself quite comfortable there, especially as he was so near his office, whither he could betake himself in his slippers without having to appear in the streets. He was a happy man since he had married Henriette, whom he had long desired to make his wife at the time when he had known her at Le Chêne, at the house of her father, the tax collector, whose housewife she had been since she was six years old, having had to take the place of the mother who had died in giving her birth. Weiss, meantime, had obtained a situation at the local refinery, almost in a menial capacity, but he had gradually educated himself, and raised himself, by dint of hard work, to the position of accountant. Yet he only succeeded in realising his dream through the death of Henriette’s father and the folly of her brother Maurice, whose servant she had in some measure become, sacrificing herself in the hope of making a gentleman of him. Brought up like a little Cinderella, knowing how to read and write, but nothing more, she had just sold the old house and the furniture, without, however, realising sufficient to defray the cost of Maurice’s folly, when Weiss, the worthy fellow, came forward and offered her all he possessed, including his strong arms and his heart, and she had consented to marry him, touched to tears by his affection and—calm, virtuous, reasoning little woman that she was—penetrated with tender esteem for him, in default of passionate love. And now fortune was smiling on them, for Delaherche had talked of giving Weiss an interest in the business, and their happiness would be complete as soon as children were born to them.
‘Take care,’ said the servant to Jean; ‘the stairs are very steep.’
The corporal, indeed, was stumbling up the flights in profound darkness, but all at once a door was hastily flung open, and a ray of light streamed over the steps. Then he heard a gentle voice exclaiming, ‘It is he.’
‘Madame Weiss,’ called the servant, ‘here’s a soldier asking for you.’
A gay little laugh resounded, the laugh of one who is well pleased, and the gentle voice replied: ‘All right, I know who it is.’
Then as the corporal, stifling and ill at ease, stopped short on the landing, the voice continued: ‘Come in, Monsieur Jean. Maurice has been here a couple of hours, and we have been waiting for you so impatiently!’
Then, in the pale light of the room he entered, Jean saw Henriette, and at once noticed her striking likeness to Maurice, that extraordinary resemblance common between twins that seems to make each of them the other’s double. Her beautiful fair hair was of the light tint of ripe oats, and excepting that her mouth appeared somewhat large her features were small and delicate. She was, however, shorter than her brother, and still more slight and frail of build. But it was especially her grey eyes that distinguished her from Maurice—her calm, brave, grey eyes from which shone forth such another heroic soul as that of her grandfather, the hero of the Grand Army. She spoke but little, moved about noiselessly, and displayed such skilful, activity, such smiling gentleness, that she imparted a caress as it were to the atmosphere in which she lived.
‘Here, come in here, Monsieur Jean,’ she repeated. ‘Everything will be ready directly.’
He stammered a reply, unable to express his thanks in the emotion he felt at being welcomed in such a brotherly manner. Moreover, his eyelids were closing, and in the irresistible drowsiness that had seized hold of him, he saw her through a kind of film, a mist in which she appeared to be vaguely floating without touching the ground. Was this kindly young woman, who smiled at him with so much simplicity, merely a charming apparition then? For a moment he had his doubts on the subject. However, it certainly seemed to him that she took hold of his hand, and that he could feel hers, small and firm, loyal, like the hand of an old friend.
From that moment Jean lost all precise consciousness of what took place. They were in the dining-room, it seemed, there was meat and bread on the table, but he lacked the strength to carry the morsels to his mouth. A man was seated on a chair there, and at last he recognised Weiss, whom he had previously seen at Mulhausen. He failed to understand, however, what Weiss was saying with a sorrowful air and slow despondent gestures. As for Maurice, he was already asleep, lying motionless, like one dead, on a trestle-bedstead in front of the stove. And Henriette was busy with a divan, on which a mattress had already been thrown. She brought a bolster, a pillow, and blankets, and with ready skilful hands she spread out a pair of white sheets, beautiful sheets, white like snow.
Oh! those white sheets, those white sheets so ardently coveted! Jean had eyes for nothing else. He had not undressed and slept in a bed for six weeks, and he experienced a gluttonous craving, a childish impatience, an irresistible longing to slip in between all that whiteness and freshness, and lose himself in the midst of it. And, as soon as he had been left alone, a few seconds sufficed him to undress; in a trice he was in his shirt, barefooted, and popped into bed and satisfied his desire, grunting the while like a contented animal. The pale morning light was streaming into the room through the lofty window, and as, already half asleep, he partially reopened his eyes, there came to him another apparition of Henriette, less distinct, more immaterial than the first. It seemed to him that she glided into the room on tip-toe, and placed a water decanter and a glass, which she had forgotten, on the table near him, and he fancied that she remained there for a few seconds looking at both of them, her brother and himself, with that quiet smile of hers, full of infinite kindness. Then she vanished, and Jean, overwhelmed, fell fast asleep between the white sheets.
Hours, years flowed past. Jean and Maurice no longer existed, not a dream broke upon their slumbers. They were unconscious of everything, even of the slight beating of their pulses. Ten years or ten minutes, whatever the lapse of time they could not count it; this was the revenge, as it were, of their jaded bodies, reaping satisfaction in the annihilation of their entire beings. Then, all at once, starting at the same moment, both of them awoke. Hallo! what was the matter, how long had they been asleep? The same pale light was streaming through the lofty window. They still felt extenuated, their joints had become stiffened, their limbs seemed more wearied, the bitter taste in their mouths was more pronounced than when they had gone to bed. Fortunately, they could only have slept an hour or so, and they were in no wise surprised to see Weiss seated in the same chair as before, and in the same despondent attitude, as though he had been waiting for them to awaken.
‘Dash it!’ stammered Jean. ‘All the same, we must get up, for we must join the regiment before noon.’ Then, with a slight cry of pain, he sprang on to the tiled floor, and began to dress.
‘Before noon?’ answered Weiss; ‘why, it’s seven o’clock; you’ve been sleeping for twelve hours or so.’
Seven o’clock: good heavens! They were thunderstruck. Jean, hastily dressing, wished to rush off at once, whilst Maurice, who was still in bed, complained dolefully that he could not move his legs. How should they find their comrades? The army must have gone off long ago, and they both became quite angry, complaining that they ought not to have been allowed to sleep so long.
‘Oh! you did just as well to stay in bed, for nothing has been done,’ replied Weiss, with a despondent gesture.
He had been scouring Sedan and the environs since the morning, and had returned home only a short time previously in despair at the inaction of the troops during this precious 31st of August, which had been entirely lost—consumed in inexplicable waiting. There was only one possible excuse for it all—the extreme weariness of the men, their absolute need of rest—but, granting that, it was difficult to understand why the retreat had not been resumed as soon as the troops had secured the necessary modicum of sleep.
‘For my part,’ resumed Weiss, ‘I don’t pretend to be an authority on these matters, but I instinctively feel, yes, I feel that the army is very badly situated here at Sedan. The Twelfth Corps is posted at Bazeilles, where there was a little fighting this morning, the First is ranged along the Givonne from La Moncelle to the wood of La Garenne, whilst the Seventh is camping on the plateau of Floing, and the Fifth, half destroyed, is heaped up under the very ramparts, on the side of the Château—and it frightens me to know that they are all ranged like that round the town, waiting for the Prussians. For my part I should have been off, and at once, in the direction of Mézières. I know the country; there’s no other possible line of retreat; you can’t go farther north or you’ll be thrown into Belgium—besides, come here—I want to show you something.’ Taking Jean by the hand he led him to the window. ‘Look over there, on the hill-tops,’ he added.
Dominating the ramparts and the neighbouring buildings, the window overlooked the valley of the Meuse on the southern side of Sedan. There was the river winding through the expanse of meadow land; Remilly rose up on the left, Pont-Maugis and Wadelincourt were just in front, and Frénois was on the right. There, too, were the hills, displaying their green slopes, first the Liry hill, then the Marfée, the Croix-Piau, all crowned with large woods. In the declining daylight the vast horizon was invested with infinite softness, a crystalline limpidity.
‘Can’t you see those black lines on the march along the hill-tops, over there, those black ants swarming past?’
Jean opened his eyes wide, whilst Maurice, kneeling on his bed, craned his neck forward. ‘Ah! yes,’ they both exclaimed, at the same moment, ‘There’s one line, there’s another, another—they are everywhere!’
‘Well,’ resumed Weiss, ‘those are the Prussians—I’ve been looking at them ever since the morning, and they pass and pass without cessation. If our soldiers are waiting for them you may be pretty sure that they are making all haste to arrive, and all the townsfolk have seen them the same as I have. It’s only our generals who seem to have become blind. A little while ago I was talking to a general who shrugged his shoulders and told me that Marshal MacMahon was positive that he only had some seventy thousand men to deal with. God grant that his information be correct!—But just look at them; look at them, the ground is covered with them and still and ever they swarm and swarm!’
At this moment Maurice threw himself back on his bed and burst into loud sobs. Henriette had just entered the room with the same smiling air that she had worn during the morning. But at sight of Maurice she felt alarmed, and hastily approached him. ‘What is the matter?’
He waved her back, however. ‘No, no, leave me, I have never brought you anything but sorrow. When I think that you used to deprive yourself of dresses, and that I was sent to college! Ah! a precious lot of good my education has done me! And then I almost dishonoured our name, and Heaven alone knows where I should be at the present time if you hadn’t bled yourself in every vein to repair my folly!’
She was again smiling in her peaceful way: ‘You certainly haven’t woke up in a good humour, my dear fellow,’ she replied. ‘You know very well that all that is blotted out, forgotten. Aren’t you now doing your duty as a Frenchman? I’m quite proud of you since you’ve enlisted; I assure you I am.’
She had turned towards Jean as though to summon him to her assistance. He was gazing at her, somewhat surprised to find that she did not look so pretty as he had thought her in the morning. She seemed slighter and paler now that he no longer saw her with the hallucinatory vision of his weariness. Her likeness to her brother remained very striking, however, although, at this moment, the difference in their natures was made plainly manifest; he, nervous like a woman, stricken with the disease of the period, a prey to the historical, social crisis of the race, capable of rising at one moment to the noblest enthusiasm, and of falling, the next, to the most abject despair; she, so small and slight, as unobtrusive as a Cinderella, with the air of a resigned little housewife, but albeit displaying an undaunted brow and brave eyes—in a word, the stuff that martyrs are made of.
‘Proud of me!’ Maurice exclaimed. ‘Well, there’s no reason why you should be proud of me. For a month past we have been flying the enemy like the cowards we are.’
‘Well,’ said Jean, in his sensible way; ‘we are not the only ones—we simply do as we are bidden.’
But now the crisis to which the young fellow was a prey burst forth with more violence than ever. ‘That’s just it, and I’ve had my fill of it. Isn’t it enough to make one shed tears of blood—these continual defeats, these idiotic generals, these soldiers who are stupidly led to the slaughter-house like flocks of animals? And now, here we are in a blind alley whence there’s no escape! You can see that the Prussians are coming up on all sides, and that we are about to be crushed—the army is lost! No, no; I shall stay here; I would rather be shot as a deserter. You can go away without me, Jean. No! I won’t go back to the regiment; I shall stay here!’
A fresh flood of tears stretched him on his pillow. This was one of those irresistible slackenings of the nerves sweeping everything away, one of those sudden collapses into despair bringing with it contempt for everybody, himself included, to which he was so subject. His sister, who knew him well, remained undisturbed. ‘It would be very wrong, my dear Maurice,’ said she, ‘to desert your post at the moment of danger.’
With a sudden start he sat up in bed: ‘Well, give me my gun, then. I’ll blow my brains out. Like that it will be sooner over.’ Then, stretching out his arm and pointing to Weiss, who sat there motionless and silent, he added: ‘There, he’s the only sensible one; yes, he alone saw clearly into all this—don’t you remember, Jean, what he said to me a month ago at Mulhausen?’
‘That’s true,’ the corporal replied; ‘this gentleman said we should be beaten.’
A vision of the scene rose up before him; that anxious night, the long waiting fraught with so much anguish, the mournful sky already pregnant with the disaster of Frœschweiler, whilst Weiss so quietly expressed his fears: Germany ready, better commanded, better armed, sustained by a great outburst of patriotism, and France scared, a prey to disorder, behind the times, perverted, having neither the commanders, nor the men, nor the arms she needed. And now the fearful prophecy was being fulfilled.
Weiss raised his trembling hands. An expression of intense grief had come over his good-natured face. ‘Ah! I assure you,’ he muttered, ‘it gives me no pleasure at all to find that I was in the right. I am a mere stupid; but all this was so clear and patent to those who knew anything at all. At the same time, however, even if we are beaten, we can still kill some of those baleful Prussians. That’s our consolation. I still think our men will leave their lives here, and I should like to see the Prussians leave theirs too; yes, I should like to see them lying in heaps, covering all the ground yonder!’
He had risen to his feet, and he pointed to the valley of the Meuse. Those large, short-sighted eyes of his which had prevented him from serving in the army were now illumined by a vivid flame. ‘Thunder!’ he exclaimed, ‘yes, I’d fight readily enough if I were my own master. I don’t know whether it’s because they are now in possession of my native province, the province where the Cossacks already did such frightful things years ago, but I can’t think of them or picture them in our country and our houses without feeling a furious longing to go and bleed a dozen of them! Ah! if I hadn’t been invalided, if I were only a soldier!’ Then after a short pause he added: ‘But, after all, who can tell what will happen?’
Hope inspired those last words, the need which even the least deceived experienced of believing that victory was still possible. And Maurice, already ashamed of his tears, listened to Weiss, clinging for comfort to this dream. After all, had it not been reported the previous day that Bazaine had reached Verdun? Fortune owed a miracle to that land of France which she had so long endowed with glory.
Henriette, who had long since relapsed into silence, left the room. When she returned she was in no wise surprised to find her brother dressed and ready to start. However, she insisted that he and Jean should eat something before they went, and they had to take their places at table. But the food seemed to choke them: they were still heavy after their long slumber, and were troubled with nausea. Jean, however, like a prudent man, divided a loaf and placed one half of it in Maurice’s knapsack and the other in his own. The daylight was now fast waning, and it was necessary they should start. Henriette, who had paused beside the window, was gazing at the Prussian troops as they crossed the Marfée hill—marching on and on without cessation, but growing more and more indistinct in the depths of the gathering darkness. All at once an involuntary plaint escaped her: ‘Oh! war, war, what a horrible thing it is!’
Thereupon Maurice, promptly taking his revenge, began to twit her. ‘What! my dear girl,’ said he, ‘it’s you who want us to fight, and yet you rail at war?’
She turned round, and, looking him in the face, replied, with that brave air of hers: ‘Yes, I execrate war. I consider it unjust and abominable. Perhaps it’s simply because I’m a woman. But all this killing horrifies me. Why can’t nations discuss matters quietly, and come to an understanding?’
Jean, the good fellow, nodded his head approvingly. To his illiterate mind nothing seemed easier than for everyone to agree after discussing things in a proper spirit. But Maurice, swayed by his scientific theories, reflected that war was necessary, that it was life itself, the law of the universe. Were not peace and justice the inventions of compassionate mankind, whereas impassive nature had from all time been the scene of perpetual strife? ‘Come to an understanding!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, some centuries hence. If all the nations no longer formed but one, it might be possible to conceive such a golden age, but, then, would not the end of war mean the end of humanity? I was idiotic, just now. One must fight, since such is the law of nature.’ At present he was smiling, and he repeated Weiss’s words: ‘After all, who can tell what will happen?’ Once more he was swayed by illusions; his nervous sensibility, so exaggerated that it was almost a disease, required that he should try to deceive himself. ‘By the bye,’ he remarked, gaily, ‘what about Cousin Gunther?’
‘Cousin Gunther,’ replied Henriette, ‘he belongs to the Prussian Guard. Is the Guard near here?’
Weiss made a gesture, implying that he could not tell, and the two soldiers imitated his example. They were unable to answer the question. Their generals even did not know what foes they had to contend against.
‘Well, let’s get off. I’ll show you the way,’ said Weiss, ‘I learned just now where the 106th is encamped.’ And then he informed his wife that he should not return that night, as he proposed sleeping at Bazeilles, where he had lately purchased a small house, adjoining some dyeworks belonging to M. Delaherche. He had just finished furnishing the place, with the intention of spending the remainder of the summer there, and had already stored various provisions in the cellar, a cask of wine, a couple of sacks of potatoes and other things, concerning which he now expressed anxiety. It was, indeed, certain that the house would be pillaged by marauders if it remained unoccupied, but this he would probably be able to avert by staying there that night. His wife looked at him fixedly whilst he was thus speaking. ‘Oh! don’t be alarmed,’ he added, with a smile, ‘I merely want to mount guard over our few sticks, and if the village should be attacked, if there should be the slightest danger, I’ll come back at once, I promise you.’
‘Go then,’ she said; ‘but mind you come back, or I shall certainly fetch you.’
On reaching the door she kissed Maurice tenderly, and holding out her hand to Jean pressed his for a few seconds in a friendly way. ‘I’m confiding my brother to you again,’ she said. ‘Yes, he has told me how kind you have been to him, and I like you very much.’
Jean felt so disturbed that he could find no words to answer her, but contented himself with returning the pressure of her small firm hand. And again did he experience the same impression as on his arrival—this fair-haired Henriette, so lightsome, smiling, and unobtrusive, seemed as it were to impart a caress to the atmosphere around her.
Down below they found themselves once more in Sedan, as dank and dark as in the morning. The twilight was already obscuring the narrow streets, where all was bustle and confusion. Most of the shops were closed, and the houses seemed bereft of life, but out of doors there was a perfect crush. They reached the Place de l’Hôtel de Ville, however, without any very great difficulty, and there they encountered M. Delaherche, strolling about like the sightseer he was. He appeared delighted on recognising Maurice, and at once related that he had just been conducting Captain Beaudoin towards Floing, where the regiment was encamped. And his accustomed satisfaction increased when he learnt that Weiss intended to sleep at Bazeilles, for he himself had resolved to spend the night at his dyeworks there, as, indeed, he had just been telling the captain. ‘We’ll go together, Weiss,’ said he. ‘But meantime let’s stroll just as far as the Sub-Prefecture; perhaps we shall get a glimpse of the Emperor.’
Napoleon III. was his one preoccupation since he had so narrowly missed speaking to him at Baybel, and he talked in such a strain that he ended by rousing the curiosity of the two soldiers, who decided to follow him. Only a few whispering groups were assembled on the Place de la Sous-Préfecture, but from time to time some scared officers dashed by. The mournful dimness was already darkening the trees, and one could hear the loud noise made by the Meuse as it flowed along at the foot of the houses on the right hand. Some of the assembled people were relating that the Emperor—who had only been induced with difficulty to leave Carignan at eleven o’clock the previous night—had positively refused to push on to Mézières, as he wished to remain on the scene of danger, so as not to demoralise the troops. Others asserted, however, that he was no longer at Sedan, that he had fled, leaving one of his lieutenants behind to personate him—an officer who had donned his uniform, and who was so remarkably like him that the entire army was deceived. Others, again, gave their word of honour that they had seen several vehicles, containing the imperial treasure (a hundred millions of francs in brand-new gold napoleons), drive into the grounds of the Sub-Prefecture. But the vehicles in question were simply those of the Emperor’s household, the char-à-bancs, the two calashes, and the twelve vans, the sight of which had so revolutionised the villages, Courcelles, Le Chêne and Raucourt, and the number of which rumour had so exaggerated that in the popular imagination they had become an immense train, obstructing the roads to such a degree that they arrested the progress of the entire army. And now, accursed and shameful, they, had at last stranded at Sedan, hidden from all eyes by the Sub-Prefect’s lilac bushes.
Whilst Delaherche, rising on tip-toe, was examining the ground-floor windows of the Sub-Prefect’s abode, an old woman—who stood near him—some poor journey-woman of the neighbourhood, with a bent frame and distorted hands consumed by toil, mumbled between her teeth: ‘An Emperor, well, I should like to get a squint at one, just to see what he’s like.’
At that very moment Delaherche, catching hold of Maurice’s arm, exclaimed: ‘There—that’s him—there, look, at the window on the left. Oh! there’s no mistake about it. I recognise him perfectly; I was so near him yesterday, you know. He has pulled back the curtain—yes—there—that pale face against the window-pane.’
The old woman heard these words, and stood there gazing. Close to the window-pane, as Delaherche had said, she could see a cadaverous-looking face with dim eyes, distorted features, and moustaches which seemed to have blanched in the throes of this last, long agony. Quite stupefied, the old woman immediately turned round and went off, making a gesture of superlative contempt: ‘That an Emperor? Ugh, the ugly beast!’
A Zouave stood near by, one of those disbanded soldiers who evinced no haste to join their regiments. He was brandishing his chassepot, swearing and expectorating threats, and all at once he exclaimed to a comrade: ‘Wait a second, I’ll put a bullet into his head.’
This made Delaherche quite indignant, and he intervened; but Napoleon had already disappeared. The loud rush of the Meuse was still resounding; a plaint of infinite sadness seemed to have sped by in the growing dimness. From afar off came the muttering of other scattered noises. Was it the echo of the terrible order, ‘March! march!’ shouted from Paris, the order that had impelled this man on and on, from halting-place to halting-place, dragging with him along the highways of defeat all the irony of his imperial escort, and now brought to a stand, confronted by the frightful disaster that he had foreseen and had come to meet. Ah! how many brave fellows were about to die through his fault, and how profoundly must he have been stirred in every corner of his being—he, the sick man, the sentimental dreamer, so silently and mournfully waiting for destiny!
Weiss and Delaherche accompanied the two soldiers as far as the plateau of Floing. ‘Farewell!’ said Maurice, as he embraced his brother-in-law.
‘No, no, till we meet again!’ gaily exclaimed the manufacturer.
Jean, with his keen scent, at once found the 106th, whose tents were pitched on the slope of the plateau, behind the cemetery. Night had now almost completely fallen, but one could still distinguish the dark, massy roofs of the town, beyond which were Balan and Bazeilles in the meadows that stretched as far as the range of hills from Remilly to Frénois; whilst on the left extended a black patch, the wood of La Garenne, and on the right, down below, glittered the Meuse, like a broad, pale ribbon. For a moment Maurice scanned the vast horizon as it faded away in the darkness.
‘Ah! here’s the corporal!’ exclaimed Chouteau; ‘has he come back from rations?’
There was some little commotion. All day long the men had been rejoining their regiments, some of them quite alone, others in little parties, and amid such a scramble that the officers had even renounced asking for explanations. Indeed, they closed their eyes, only too glad to welcome those who chose to come back. Moreover, Captain Beaudoin had arrived but a short time previously, and it was only at two o’clock that Lieutenant Rochas had reached the camp, having with him merely a third of the men of his disbanded company. The latter, however, was now almost complete again. Some of the men were drunk, whilst others were still famished, not having managed to obtain even a scrap of bread; for there had again been no distribution of rations. Loubet had certainly endeavoured to cook some cabbages, pulled up out of a neighbouring garden, but he had neither salt nor lard to make the vegetables palatable, and the men’s stomachs were still groaning with hunger.
‘Come, corporal, what have you brought, you who are so artful?’ resumed Chouteau, in a bantering way; ‘oh! I don’t need anything myself; Loubet and I lunched in capital style at a lady’s.’
Anxious faces were turned towards Jean, the squad had been waiting for him—especially those unlucky fellows, Lapoulle and Pache—for they had not managed to get a bite, and they had relied on him, in the belief that if need were he could actually extract flour from mill stones. And Jean, moved to pity, filled with remorse at the thought that he had abandoned his men, divided between them the half-loaf which he had placed in his knapsack before leaving Weiss’s house. ‘Curse it! curse it!’ repeated Lapoulle, finding no other words to express the satisfaction with which he devoured the bread; whilst Pache mumbled a Pater and an Ave, so as to make sure that Heaven would send him his daily food again on the morrow.
Bugler Gaude had just blown a sonorous blast, the summons to the roll-call. There was no tattoo however; the camp at once sank into deep silence. And when Sergeant Sapin, with the thin, sickly face and the contracted nose, had found that his half-section was complete, he gently remarked: ‘Some of them will be missing to-morrow night.’ Then, noticing that Jean was looking at him, he added with an air of tranquil certainty, gazing the while into the darkness with dreamy eyes: ‘Oh! for my part I shall be killed to-morrow.’
It was nine o’clock. The night threatened to be very cold, for a great deal of mist had risen from the Meuse, hiding the stars from view. Maurice shivered as he lay beside Jean under a hedge, and suggested that it would perhaps be better for them to turn into the tent. Worn out, however, aching in every limb since their rest at Weiss’s, neither of them was able to get to sleep. They envied Lieutenant Rochas, who, disdaining any shelter and simply wrapped in a blanket, was snoring like a hero on the damp ground near them. Then, for a long time they fixed their attention on the little, flickering flame of a candle, burning in a large tent where the colonel and a few officers were sitting up. M. de Vineuil had seemed very anxious all the evening at not receiving any orders for the following day. He felt that his regiment was quite adrift, still far too much to the front, though he had already fallen back some distance, relinquishing the advanced position that he had taken up in the morning. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles had not shown himself; he was said to be ill in bed at the Golden Cross Hotel, and the colonel had at last decided to send an officer to warn him that the new position appeared a dangerous one; the Seventh Corps being so scattered, having far too long a line to defend, from the bend of the Meuse to the wood of La Garenne. The battle would certainly begin at dawn. They now had only seven or eight hours of that deep, black peacefulness before them. At last the candle in the colonel’s tent was extinguished, and at that moment Maurice was greatly surprised to see Captain Beaudoin pass by, furtively skirting the hedge, and vanishing in the direction of Sedan.
The night was becoming more and more dense, the mass of vapour that had ascended from the river obscured it with a gloomy fog. ‘Are you awake, Jean?’ asked Maurice.
Jean was sleeping, and Maurice was now quite alone. The idea of joining Lapoulle and the others in the tent was somehow repugnant to him, yet he envied them as he heard them snoring, in response, as it were, to Rochas. Then he reflected that if great captains sometimes sleep so soundly on the eve of battle it is simply because they are very tired. He could now only hear the breath of slumber, a widespread, gentle breathing, rising from all the vast camp plunged in darkness. Everything was obliterated from view; he was simply aware that the Fifth Corps must be encamped somewhere near them, under the ramparts, that the First was stretched from the wood of La Garenne to the village of La Moncelle, whilst the Twelfth occupied Bazeilles, on the other side of Sedan; and all were sleeping—from the depths of the darkness, more than a league away, from the first to the last tent passed the slow palpitation of slumber. Then, too, sounds were wafted to him at intervals from afar off, where all was so mysterious—sounds so light and distant that they seemed like a simple buzzing in the ears—the faint gallop of cavalry, the low, dull rumbling of guns, and especially the heavy tramping of men, the march along the hill-tops of the great, black, human swarm, the invasion and envelopment which even night itself had not been able to stay. And, over yonder, were there not flashes suddenly bursting on the darkness and then expiring, voices which shrieked forth here and there, increasing all the anguish that prevailed during that last night, in the fear-fraught waiting for the dawn?
With fumbling fingers Maurice sought Jean’s hand and clasped it. Then only did he feel reassured and fall asleep. Nothing now remained awake, save a steeple of Sedan, whose clock struck, one by one, the fateful hours.
END OF PART I.
< < < Chapter VII
PART II Chapter I > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
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