French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART II
Chapter VI
THE WHITE FLAG—THE HORRORS OF AN AMBULANCE
At last, up above on the lofty terrace, whither he had climbed to obtain some idea of the situation, Delaherche again became excited by impatience to know what was happening. He saw very well that the shells were passing over the town, and realised that the three or four, which had burst through some of the surrounding roofs, could merely be infrequent replies to the fire of the Palatinate fort, so slack and inefficacious. But he distinguished nothing of the battle, and experienced a pressing desire for information which was quickened by the dread that he might lose both fortune and life in the catastrophe. So he went down, leaving the telescope up there, levelled upon the German batteries.
Once below, however, the sight which the central garden of the factory presented momentarily arrested his steps. It was nearly one o’clock, and the wounded were crowding into the ambulance. There was already a deficiency of the regulation conveyances, both of the two and the four wheelers; and ammunition and forage waggons, vans for the transport of matériel, in fact, whatever vehicles it had been possible to requisition on the battlefield, now made their appearance. Eventually there even came tilted and other carts belonging to cultivators, taken from farms, and to which stray horses had been harnessed. And heaped together in all these vehicles were the men who had been picked up and summarily attended to by the field ambulance. Frightful was the unloading of these poor fellows, some greenly pallid, and others violet from congestion. Many of them had fainted, and others were raising shrill plaints. Some, who were struck with stupor, surrendered themselves to the attendants with a look of terror, whilst a few expired as soon as touched, unable to endure the slightest shaking. To such a degree was the ambulance being invaded that in another moment there would not remain a single unoccupied mattress in the spacious drying-hall, and Surgeon-Major Bouroche was accordingly ordering the attendants to utilise the large litter of straw which he had spread at one end of the structure. As yet, however, he and his assistants sufficed for the requisite operations. He had merely asked that a second table, with a mattress and some oilcloth, might be placed in the shed where he operated. Here an assistant swiftly applied a napkin dipped in chloroform to the patient’s nose, the narrow steel blades flashed before the eyes; the saws gave out a faint rasping sound, and the blood flowed in sudden spurts, instantly arrested. The wounded were brought in and carried away amid a rapid coming-and-going, time being scarcely allowed for wiping the oilcloth with a sponge. And at the farther end of the lawn, behind a clump of laburnums, it had been necessary to form a kind of charnel-place where the attendants disembarrassed themselves of the dead, and whither they also went to throw the amputated legs and arms, all the remnants of flesh and bones remaining on the tables.
Old Madame Delaherche and Gilberte, seated under one of the lofty trees, could no longer roll bands enough, and Bouroche, who passed by with his face flaming and his apron already crimson with blood, threw a packet of linen to Delaherche, exclaiming: ‘Here! do something, make yourself useful.’
‘Excuse me,’ protested the manufacturer, ‘but I must go out for news; we no longer know whether we are alive.’ And then, lightly touching his wife’s hair with his lips, ‘My poor Gilberte,’ he added, ‘to think that a shell might set everything on fire here. It’s frightful!’
She was very pale, and raising her head, glanced around her with a shudder. But that involuntary, invincible smile of hers speedily came back to her lips: ‘Yes, frightful!’ she said, ‘all those men whom they are cutting up. It’s a wonder that I can stay here without fainting.’
Old Madame Delaherche had looked at her son as he kissed his wife’s hair, and had made a gesture as though to push him aside, for she thought of that other man by whom that same hair must also have been kissed. Her old hands trembled, however, and she let them fall, murmuring: ‘How much suffering, good Lord! One forgets one’s own.’
Delaherche then went off, explaining that he should speedily return with positive information. As soon as he was in the Rue Maqua he was surprised at the number of soldiers who were already returning from the field without their weapons, and with their uniforms in shreds, soiled with dust. He could not, however, obtain any precise details from those whom he endeavoured to question. Some, who were quite stupefied, replied that they didn’t know; whilst others had such a deal to relate, and gesticulated so furiously, and talked so extravagantly, that they resembled madmen. He thereupon directed his steps once more towards the Sub-Prefecture, thinking to himself that all the news must flow thither. As he was crossing the Place du Collège, a couple of guns, doubtless the only remaining pieces of some battery, came up at a gallop, and stranded beside the footway. On reaching the High Street he had to acknowledge that the town was becoming quite crowded with fugitives. Three dismounted Hussars were sitting in a doorway, dividing a loaf of bread; two others were slowly leading their horses by the bridle, at a loss for a stable where they might tether them; officers, too, were running wildly hither and thither, looking as if they did not know where they were going. On the Place Turenne a sub-lieutenant advised Delaherche not to linger there, for the shells were falling very frequently, a splinter of one of them having just broken the railing around the statue of the great captain, the victor of the Palatinate. And, as Delaherche was swiftly gliding along the Rue de la Sous-Préfecture, he saw a couple of projectiles explode, with a frightful crash, on the bridge spanning the Meuse.
Reaching the Sub-Prefecture, he was standing in front of the porter’s lodge, seeking a pretext to ask for one of the aides-de-camp and question him, when a youthful voice called him by name: ‘Monsieur Delaherche! come in quick; it’s anything but pleasant outside.’
The speaker was Rose, his work-girl, whom he had not thought of. Thanks to her, however, every door would be opened to him. He entered the lodge and accepted a seat.
‘Just fancy,’ began Rose, ‘all this business has made mother quite ill; she’s in bed and can’t get up. So there’s only me, you see, for father is at the citadel, being a National Guard. A little while ago the Emperor again wanted to show his bravery, for he went out again and was able to get to the end of the street, as far as the bridge. But then a shell fell in front of him, and the horse of one of his equerries was killed. And so he came back again—not surprising, is it? What would you have him do?’
‘Then you know how we are situated—what do the officers say?’
She gave him a look of astonishment. Amid all these abominations, but little of which she understood, she bustled about assiduously, retaining her gay freshness, with her fine hair and her clear eyes, the eyes of the child she was. ‘No, I know nothing,’ she said; ‘at twelve o’clock I took up a letter for Marshal MacMahon. The Emperor was with him. They remained shut up together for nearly an hour, the marshal in bed, and the Emperor on a chair close to the mattress. I know that, because I saw them when the door was opened.’
‘What were they saying?’
She again looked at him, and could not help laughing.
‘Why, I don’t know,’ she answered. ‘How could I know? Nobody in the world knows what they said to one another.'[30]
That was true, and Delaherche made a gesture as though to apologise for his foolish question. Still the idea of that supreme conversation worried him; how interesting it must have been! What decision could they have come to?
‘And now,’ added Rose, ‘the Emperor has gone back into his private room, where he’s conferring with two generals who arrived just now from the battlefield.’ She paused and glanced towards the house-steps: ‘Look! here comes one of the generals—and look! here’s the other.’
Delaherche hastily stepped out of the lodge and recognised Generals Douay and Ducrot, whose horses were waiting. He watched them get into the saddle again and gallop off. After the abandonment of the plateau of Illy, each, on his own side, had hastened into the town to warn the Emperor that the battle was lost. They furnished him with precise details of the situation; the army and Sedan were now completely enveloped, and the disaster would prove frightful.
For a few minutes the Emperor walked up and down his room in silence, with the wavering step of a sick man. The only person there besides himself was an aide-de-camp, standing erect and silent near a door. And, with a disfigured face which was now twitching with a nervous tic, Napoleon kept pacing to and fro between the chimney-piece and the window. His back appeared to have become more bent, as though a world had fallen upon it; and his dim eyes, veiled by their heavy lids, bespoke the resignation of the fatalist who has played and lost his final game with Destiny. Each time, however, that he reached the window, set ajar, he gave a start which, for a second, made him pause; and during one of those brief halts he raised a trembling hand and muttered: ‘Oh! those guns, those guns! one has heard them ever since the morning.’
From that spot, indeed, the roaring of the batteries of the Marfée and Frénois hills reached the ear with extraordinary violence—it was a rolling thunder, which not merely rattled the window panes, but shook the very walls, a stubborn, incessant, exasperating uproar. And the Emperor must have reflected that the struggle was henceforth a hopeless one, that all resistance was becoming a crime. What could it avail, why should more blood be spilt, more limbs be shattered, more heads be carried off, more and more dead be ever and ever added to those already scattered across the country-side? Since they, the French, were vanquished, since it was all over, why continue the massacre any longer? Sufficient abomination and suffering already cried out aloud under the sun.
Once more did the Emperor reach the window, and again he began to tremble, with his hands raised: ‘Oh! those guns, those guns! Will they never stop?’
Perhaps the terrible thought of his responsibility was arising within him, with a vision of the thousands of bleeding corpses stretched upon the ground over yonder, through his fault. Perhaps, though, it was but the melting of his heart—the pitiful heart of a dreamer, of a man in reality good-natured and haunted by humanitarian notions. And albeit Fate had dealt him this frightful blow—which was crushing and sweeping away his fortune as though it were but a bit of straw—he yet found tears for others, was distracted that this useless butchery should still continue, and lacked the strength to endure it any longer. That villainous cannonade was now rending his breast, at each moment increasing his agony.
‘Oh! those guns, those guns! Make them stop firing at once—at once.’
And then this Emperor, who, having confided his powers to the Empress-Regent, no longer had any throne; this generalissimo, who, since he had surrendered the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine, no longer commanded, awoke once more to the exercise of his power—to the irresistible needment of being the master for the last time. Since his stay at Châlons he had kept in the background, had not given an order; content, in his resignation, to become nothing more than a nameless and cumbersome inutility, a troublesome parcel carried along among the baggage train of the troops. And it was only in the hour of defeat that the emperor again awoke within him; the first, the only order that he was yet to give, in the scared compassion of his heart, was to hoist the white flag upon the citadel to beg a truce.
‘Oh! those guns, those guns! Take a sheet, a table-cloth, no matter what! Run quickly, tell them to stop those guns!’
The aide-de-camp hastily left the room, and the Emperor continued his wavering march from the chimney-piece to the window, whilst the batteries kept on thundering, shaking the house from top to bottom.
Delaherche was still talking with Rose when a sergeant, on duty at the Sub-Prefecture, ran into the lodge: ‘Mademoiselle,’ said he, ‘we can’t find anything. I can’t see a servant anywhere. Do you happen to have any linen—a piece of white linen?’
‘Will a napkin do?’
‘No, no; that wouldn’t be large enough. Half a sheet would do.’
Rose, ever obliging, had already darted to the wardrobe. ‘I haven’t any half-sheets,’ said she. ‘A large piece of white linen—no, I don’t see anything that would suit you—Oh! would you like a table-cloth?’
‘A table-cloth? Nothing could be better; that’s exactly what we want.’ And as he turned to go he added: ‘We are going to make a white flag of it, and hoist it on the citadel, to ask for peace. Much obliged, mademoiselle.’
Delaherche gave a start of involuntary delight. At last, then, they were going to have quietness. It occurred to him, however, that his joy was unpatriotic, and he restrained it. Nevertheless his lightened heart beat quickly, and he eagerly watched a colonel and a captain, who, followed by the sergeant, were now coming out of the Sub-Prefecture with hasty steps. The colonel was carrying the table-cloth, rolled up, under his arm. It occurred to Delaherche to follow them, and he took leave of Rose, who was quite proud of having provided that cloth. Just then it struck two o’clock.
In front of the town-hall Delaherche was hustled by a stream of haggard soldiers coming from the Faubourg of La Cassine. He lost sight of the colonel, and thereupon renounced his intention of going to see the hoisting of the white flag. He would certainly not be allowed to enter the keep; and besides, on hearing some people say that shells were falling on the college, he was once more filled with anxiety. Perhaps his factory had caught fire during his absence. Thereupon he darted off again, possessed by a feverish desire to be on the move, which he endeavoured to satisfy by running through the streets. Groups of people barred his way, however; at each crossing there were fresh obstacles. It was only on reaching the Rue Maqua that he gave a sigh of relief, on finding that the monumental front of his house was intact, that neither a puff of smoke nor a spark of fire was to be seen. He went in and called out to his mother and his wife: ‘Things are going all right; they are hoisting the white flag, so the firing will soon be over.’
Then he stopped short, for the scene which the ambulance presented was really terrible. Not only was every mattress occupied in the spacious drying-room, the door of which was open, but there no longer remained any space even on the litter of straw spread out at one end of the building. More straw was now being laid between the beds: the wounded were being closely packed, one beside the other. There were already more than a couple of hundred of them, and others were still arriving. A white light streamed from the broad windows upon all this accumulation of human suffering. At times there arose some involuntary cry occasioned by too sudden a movement; and now and again the rattle of the death pangs was wafted through the moist atmosphere. From one end of the room there long resounded a continuous, gentle, almost musical wail. Then the silence became deeper, like a kind of resigned stupor, like the oppressive mournfulness of a death room, broken only by the steps and whispers of the attendants. The wounds, most of which had been hastily dressed on the battlefield, though some had remained bare, untended, were displayed in all their distressful horror, amid shreds of torn capotes and trousers. Feet were stretched out, still booted, but crushed and bleeding. Inert limbs dangled from knees and elbows which had been smashed as though by blows of a hammer. There were broken hands and hanging fingers, too, sustained by mere strips of skin. Most numerous, apparently, were the fractured legs and arms, stiffened by pain and as heavy as lead; but the disquieting wounds were especially those that had opened up the stomach, the chest, or the head. Blood was flowing from flanks that had been frightfully lacerated; bowels had become knotted under upraised skin; some men, through their loins being gashed and hacked, were twisted into frightfully distorted postures. Some lungs had been perforated through and through with so small a hole that no blood flowed; others had a gaping aperture whence life was ebbing in a red stream; and there were men, too, who suddenly became delirious and black, killed all at once by internal hæmorrhage. The heads had suffered yet more severely than the bodies; jaws had been smashed, teeth and tongue formed but a bloody mixture; eyes had been driven half out of their torn sockets; skulls had been split open, and cerebral substance was visible. All those whose brains or marrow had been touched by the projectiles lay like corpses, in the prostration of coma; whilst others, the fractured, the feverish ones, moved restlessly and begged for water in low, supplicating voices.
And in the shed close by, where the operations were performed, there were yet more horrors. In this first scramble, only the more urgent operations were proceeded with, those necessitated by the desperate condition of the wounded. Whenever there was any danger of hæmorrhage Bouroche immediately began to amputate. And, in the same way, when the projectiles were lodged in any dangerous part, the base of the neck, the region of the axilla, the origin of the thigh, the bend of the elbow, or the knee joint, he did not spend time in feeling for them and removing them. The wounds which he preferred to leave under observation, were simply dressed by the attendants in accordance with his instructions. For his own part he had already performed four amputations, spacing them out, resting himself, as it were, between these more serious operations by extracting a few bullets. And he was now beginning to feel tired. There were only two tables, his own and another, at which one of his assistants operated. A sheet had just been hung up between them, so that the men operated upon might not see one another. And, despite all the washing with sponges, the tables remained blood-red, whilst the pails, which were emptied a few paces off over a bed of China asters, those pails, whose clear water a glassful of blood sufficed to dye, seemed to be pails of pure blood—blood flung in a splashing, drenching shower over the flowers of the lawn. And, although the air freely circulated in the open shed, a nauseous stench now arose from the tables, linen and instruments there, mingling with a vague smell of chloroform.
Pitiful at heart, Delaherche was shuddering with compassion, when he felt interested at sight of a landau entering the porch. This carriage, the only vehicle, no doubt, that the men of the field ambulance had been able to find, was packed full of wounded. There were eight of them inside it, one atop of another; and when, in the last man who was lifted out, the manufacturer recognised Captain Beaudoin, he raised a cry of mingled terror and surprise: ‘Oh! my poor friend! Wait a moment, I will call my mother and my wife.’
They hastened to the spot, leaving a couple of servant-girls to continue making the linen-rollers. The attendants, who had taken the captain out of the carriage, carried him into the drying-room, and were about to lay him on some straw there, when, upon one of the mattresses, Delaherche perceived a soldier with ashy face and open eyes, who no longer stirred.
‘I say, that fellow’s dead!’ the manufacturer exclaimed.
‘So he is,’ muttered an attendant. ‘We’ll get rid of him and make room for that officer.’ Thereupon he and a comrade took up the corpse and carried it to the charnel-place behind the laburnums. There were already a dozen dead men lying there, stiffened in the last rattle, some with their feet stretched out as though distended by suffering, others all awry, twisted into atrocious postures. There were some showing only the whites of their eyes, and sneering, with their lips turned outwardly and displaying their white teeth; whilst several, upon whose drawn, elongated faces there lingered a fearfully mournful expression, were yet shedding big tears. One skinny, youthful little fellow, whose head had been split open, was convulsively pressing a woman’s portrait—a common, faded, blood-smeared photograph—to his heart. And, pell-mell, at the feet of the corpses, were piled the amputated legs and arms, everything that was cut away, hewn off on the operating tables—the parings of flesh and bone of a butcher’s shop, swept, as it were, into a corner.
Gilberte had shuddered at sight of Captain Beaudoin. Good God! how pale he was, lying on that mattress there, his face quite white under the filth that soiled it. And she was frozen with appalment, remembering that but a few hours previously he had been full of life. She fell upon her knees: ‘What a misfortune, my friend! But it’s nothing dangerous, is it?’
She had pulled out her handkerchief in a mechanical fashion, and wiped his face with it, unable to tolerate him in that dirty state, grimed with earth, gunpowder, and sweat. It seemed to her also that by cleansing him a little, she gave him some relief: ‘It is not dangerous, is it? It’s only your leg.’
Emerging from a kind of somnolence the captain painfully opened his eyes, and, recognising his friends, he tried to smile at them: ‘Yes, only my leg; I did not even feel the blow, I thought I had slipped and was falling.’ He had to pause, for he could only speak with difficulty: ‘Oh! I’m so thirsty,’ he added, ‘so thirsty.’
Thereupon, old Madame Delaherche, who was leaning over him on the other side of the mattress, went off in all haste to fetch a glass and a decanter of water with which a small quantity of cognac had been mixed. And when the captain had eagerly drained the glass, she had to divide what remained in the decanter among the wounded near by; every hand was outstretched, and ardent voices supplicated her. A Zouave, for whom there was none left, began to sob.
Delaherche, meantime, was seeking an opportunity to speak to the major, in order that the captain might receive prompt attention. Bouroche had just come in with his bloody apron, his broad perspiring face and flaming leonine mane; and, as he passed along, the men raised themselves up and tried to stop him, each burning with a desire to secure the next turn, anxious to be succoured and to learn his fate.
‘Me, monsieur le major, me!’ they called. Faltering, prayerful voices pursued him, and fumbling fingers clutched at his clothes. Without listening to anyone, however, quite absorbed, breathing hard with fatigue, he decided how he would proceed with his work. He talked aloud, counted the men with his finger, numbered and classified them: this one, that one, and that other one; numbers one, two, and three; a jaw, an arm, and a thigh. Meantime, an assistant surgeon who accompanied him listened attentively, so that he might remember which men were to be brought, and in what order, into the operating shed.
‘Major,’ said Delaherche, ‘there’s a captain here, Captain Beaudoin——’
‘What! Beaudoin here!’ interrupted Bouroche; ‘poor devil!’
He posted himself in front of the wounded officer, and no doubt realised the gravity of the case at a glance, for without even stooping to examine the damaged leg he immediately added: ‘All right! he shall be brought to me at once, as soon as I’ve performed the operation which is being prepared.’
Thereupon he went back into the outhouse, followed by Delaherche, who did not want to lose sight of him for fear lest he should forget his promise.
The disarticulation of a shoulder-joint in accordance with Lisfranc’s[31] method was this time in question, a pretty operation as surgeons say, something elegant and prompt, lasting barely forty seconds from first to last. The patient was already being chloroformed, whilst an assistant caught hold of his shoulder with both hands; the fingers under the arm-pit, the thumbs up above. Thereupon Bouroche, who was armed with a large, long knife, called out, ‘Set him up,’ grasped the deltoid, transfixed the arm and severed the muscle; then stepping back, he detached the articulation at one stroke, and the arm fell, amputated in three movements. The assistant had immediately stopped the axillary artery with his thumbs. ‘Lay him down again,’ said Bouroche, laughing involuntarily as he proceeded with the ligation, for the operation had only taken him five-and-thirty seconds. All that now remained was to press the shreds of flesh down upon the wound like a shoulder strap. Altogether it was a pretty piece of work, notably on account of the danger, for, by the axillary artery, a man may lose all his blood in three minutes; besides which, the life of a patient under the influence of chloroform is invariably imperilled when he is raised from a recumbent to a sitting posture.
Frozen with horror. Delaherche had turned to go, but before he could do so the arm was already lying on the table. The man who had been amputated, a sturdy young peasant, emerged from his torpor and saw an attendant carrying his arm away, to throw it behind the laburnums. He hastily glanced at his shoulder, and, on seeing the bleeding stump, flew into a violent rage: ‘Good heavens! that’s a nice thing you’ve done!’
Bouroche, who was terribly tired, did not at first reply; but at last in a good-natured way he said: ‘I did it for the best, I didn’t want you to kick the bucket, my boy. Besides, I asked you beforehand if you’d have it off, and you said “yes.”‘
‘I said “yes”? I said “yes”? Did I know what you meant?’ Then, as his anger fell, he began shedding bitter tears, and gasped: ‘What shall I ever be able to do with myself now?’
He was carried back to the litter of straw; the oilcloth and the table were violently washed; and the pailfuls of red water which were again flung across the lawn made the white bed of China asters quite bloody.
Delaherche, however, felt astonished at still hearing the cannonade. Why did it not stop? Rose’s table-cloth must now be hoisted over the citadel. And yet it seemed as if the fire of the Prussian batteries were increasing in intensity. Such was the uproar, that one could no longer hear oneself; the commotion shook the least nervous from head to foot, amid growing anguish. These shocks which tore away the heart were suited neither to amputators nor amputated. They upset, fevered the entire ambulance to the point of exasperation.
‘But it was all finished; so why do they keep on firing?’ exclaimed Delaherche, listening anxiously, and imagining every second that the shot he heard would be the last.
Then, as he turned to remind Bouroche of the captain, he was astonished to find the surgeon lying on his stomach atop of a truss of straw, with both arms bared to the shoulders and plunged in a couple of pails full of icy water. In this fashion was the major refreshing himself, for he was both physically and morally worn out, crushed, overwhelmed by immense sadness and distress, experiencing one of those momentary agonies of the practitioner who realises his powerlessness. Bouroche, albeit, was a sturdy fellow, hard-skinned and stout-hearted. But the thought ‘what avails it?’ had flashed across his mind, and filled him with sorrow. He had been suddenly paralysed by the consciousness that he would never be able to accomplish everything; that it was not given to him to do so. So of what use was it all, since Death was bound to prove the stronger?
Two attendants came up, with Captain Beaudoin on a stretcher. ‘Here’s the captain, major,’ Delaherche ventured to say.
Bouroche opened his eyes, took his arms out of the pails, shook them, and wiped them in the straw. Then, raising himself on his knees: ‘Yes, dash it!’ said he; ‘come, come, the day is by no means over.’
He was already getting up, shaking his lion-like head and tawny hair; set erect again by habit and imperious discipline. Gilberte and Madame Delaherche had followed the stretcher, and when the captain had been laid on the oilcloth-covered mattress, they still lingered there, standing just a few paces away.
‘Good! it’s above the right ankle,’ said Bouroche, who talked a good deal by way of occupying the minds of his patients. ‘That’s not so bad. Wounds there can be cured—I’ll examine it.’
It was evident, however, that Beaudoin’s state of torpor preoccupied him. On looking at the provisional dressing—a simple band tightened and secured to the trousers by a bayonet sheath—he began growling between his teeth, asking what fool was responsible for that. Suddenly, however, he became silent again. The truth had just dawned upon him. During the transport, no doubt—in the landau packed full of wounded—the bandage had loosened and slipped, ceasing to compress the wound, so that an abundant loss of blood had ensued.
Guessing this, Bouroche—by way of venting his feelings—flew into a violent rage with an attendant who was helping him. ‘You —— dawdler; make haste with that cutting,’ he shouted.
The captain’s trousers and drawers, shoe and sock were thereupon cut open. First the leg, then the foot appeared; their wan nudity stained with blood. And above the ankle there was a frightful hole, into which a splinter of a shell had driven a shred of red cloth. A swelling of lacerated flesh, a protuberance of the muscle emerged in a pulpous state from the wound.
Gilberte had to lean against one of the posts supporting the roof of the shed. Ah! that flesh, that flesh so soft and white, now bleeding and mangled! Despite her horror, she could not turn her eyes away from it.
‘The devil!’ said Bouroche, ‘they’ve put you in a nice state!’
He felt the foot and found it cold; no beat of the pulse could be detected. His face had become very grave, and his lips were drawn down, as always happened when he found himself confronted by a disquieting case. ‘The devil!’ he repeated, ‘that foot’s bad.’
Roused from his somnolence by anxiety, the captain looked at him, waiting; and ended by saying: ‘Do you think so, major?’
Although amputation might be a matter of necessity, Bouroche’s system was never to ask a wounded man point-blank for the customary authorisation. He preferred that the sufferer should, of his own accord, resign himself to the operation. ‘A bad foot,’ he muttered, as if he were thinking aloud; ‘we can’t save it.’
‘Come, major, to the point,’ resumed Beaudoin, nervously; ‘what do you think of it?’
‘I think you are a brave man, captain, and that you are going to let me do what must be done.’
Beaudoin’s paling eyes were dimmed by a kind of ruddy smoke. He had understood. However, despite the insupportable fear that was throttling him, he replied simply, like a gallant man: ‘Do it, major.’
The preparations did not take long. The assistant, who had already dipped the napkin in chloroform, immediately applied it to the patient’s nose. Then, at the moment when the slight agitation preceding anæsthesia manifested itself, two attendants slid the captain along the mattress so that his legs might project beyond it; and, whilst one of them held up the left leg, an assistant-surgeon, seizing hold of the right one, grasped it tightly with both hands, at the origin of the thigh, for the purpose of compressing the artery.
On seeing Bouroche approach with his narrow blade, Gilberte felt she could endure no more: ‘No, no, it’s too dreadful!’
She felt faint, and leant upon the arm which Madame Delaherche held out to prevent her from falling.
‘Why do you stop, then?’
However, they both remained there; averting their heads, it is true, not wishing to see any more, and standing motionless and trembling, pressed close to one another, despite the little affection there was between them.
At no other time that day did the cannon thunder so loudly as it thundered now. It was three o’clock, and Delaherche, disappointed, exasperated, declared the uproar to be incomprehensible. Far from ceasing their fire, the German batteries were redoubling it. Why? What could be taking place? It was a hellish bombardment; the ground shook, the very atmosphere seemed on fire. The belt of artillery encircling Sedan, the eight hundred guns of the German armies, were firing simultaneously, ravaging all the surrounding fields with continuous thunderbolts; and a couple of hours of this converging fire directed centreward from all the encompassing heights would suffice to burn and pulverise the town. The situation was serious, for shells were again beginning to fall on the houses. The detonations were heard more and more frequently. One shell burst in the Rue des Voyards. Another chipped a corner off the high factory chimney, and some fragments of brick and cement fell just outside the operating-shed.
Bouroche raised his eyes, and growled: ‘Do they want to finish off our wounded? That row is insupportable.’
In the meantime an attendant had caught hold of the captain’s wounded leg by the foot, and by a rapid circular incision the major now cut the skin below the knee, at a couple of inches from the point where he contemplated sawing the bone. Then, with the same narrow knife, which he did not exchange for another, since he wished to accomplish the operation as speedily as possible, he detached the skin, raising it up all round, much in the fashion in which one peels an orange. Just as he was about to sever the muscles, however, an attendant approached him and whispered in his ear: ‘Number two has dropped off.’
So frightful was the din that the major could not hear. ‘Speak louder, will you? My ears are tingling with that cursed cannonade.’
‘Number two has dropped off.’
‘Who’s number two?’
‘The arm.’
‘Oh! all right! Well, you’ll bring me number three—the jaw.’
Then, with extraordinary skill, he at one stroke severed the muscles to the bone. He bared the tibia and the fibula, and, as a support, passed the three-tail compress between them. Then, with a single kerf of the saw, he lopped them off, the foot remaining in the hands of the attendant who was holding it.
But little blood flowed, thanks to the pressure which the assistant was maintaining higher up, around the thigh; and the ligation of the three arteries was swiftly accomplished. Nevertheless, the major shook his head; and when his assistant had taken his hands away, he examined his work, and, certain that his patient could not as yet hear him, muttered: ‘It’s a nuisance; no blood comes from the little arteries.’
Then, with a wave of the hand, he completed his diagnosis. Another poor devil done for! Again upon his perspiring face appeared that expression of immense fatigue and sadness, that despair summed up in the words: ‘Of what use is it?’ And, indeed, what did his labour avail since he did not succeed in saving four out of ten? However, he wiped his forehead, and having turned down the flesh of the captain’s stump, he began to sew the three sutures.
Gilberte had just turned round, Delaherche having told her that it was finished, and that she could look. However, she caught sight of the captain’s foot as the attendant carried it off into the garden. The charnel-place was now becoming more and more crowded; two more corpses were lying there, one with the mouth wide open and black, looking as though it were still howling; the other shrunk by an abominable agony, reduced to the size of a puny, deformed child. The annoyance was that the pile of remnants was now stretching into the path near by. The attendant hesitated for a moment as to where he might fitly deposit the captain’s foot, but at last he made up his mind to throw it on the heap.
‘Well, it’s all finished,’ said the major to Beaudoin, who was being roused; ‘you’re out of danger.’
The captain’s, however, was not that gladsome awakening which follows upon successful operations. He slightly raised himself, but fell back stammering in a feeble voice: ‘Thanks, major. I would rather it were all over.’
However, he could feel the smart of the spirit dressing. And just as the stretcher was being brought near, so that he might be carried back to his mattress, a terrible detonation shook the entire factory; a shell had burst behind the shed, in the little yard where the pump was. Several window-panes were smashed to pieces, and thick smoke poured into the ambulance. In the drying-room, panic raised the wounded up on their straw pallets, and all cried out in terror, and all were eager to flee.
Delaherche rushed off in distraction to ascertain the extent of the damage. Were they now going to demolish his house, set it on fire? What could be happening? Why did they keep on firing when the Emperor wanted them to stop?
‘D——n! bestir yourselves!’ shouted Bouroche to his attendants, whom terror rooted to the spot. ‘Wash the table; go and fetch me number three!’
The table was washed, and once again the pailfuls of red water were flung across the lawn. The bed of China asters had become a bloody hash—the chopped stalks and flowers were swimming in blood. And now, by way of relaxation, the major, having had number three brought to him, began searching for a bullet which, after shattering the inferior maxilla, must have lodged itself under the tongue. A deal of blood was flowing, and made his fingers quite sticky.
Captain Beaudoin was again lying on his mattress in the drying-room. Gilberte and her mother-in-law had followed the stretcher, and Delaherche himself came to chat for a moment, despite his agitation. ‘Keep quiet and rest yourself, captain,’ said he; ‘we will have a room got ready, you shall stay with us.’
Amid his prostration, however, the captain awoke to a short interval of lucidity. ‘No,’ said he, ‘I really think I am going to die.’ And he gazed at the three of them, with dilated eyes full of the fear of death.
‘Oh! what are you saying, captain?’ murmured Gilberte, forcing herself to smile, though she felt quite frozen. ‘You will be up again in a month’s time.’
He shook his head, however; and now he looked at her alone, with immense regret for life in his eyes, quailing at the thought that he must go off like that, before his time, and without having exhausted the delights of existence.
‘I’m going to die, I’m going to die. Ah! it’s awful.’
Then all at once his glance fell on his soiled, torn uniform and black hands, and it made him uncomfortable to find himself in such a horrid state in the presence of ladies. He felt ashamed, too, of his self-abandonment; and the thought that he was wanting in smartness restored to him a deal of bravery. ‘Well,’ he managed to resume, in a gay voice, ‘if I am to die, I should at least like to die with my hands clean. Would you have the kindness, madame, to dip a towel in some water and give it me?’
Gilberte darted off, and on returning with the towel, insisted upon cleaning his hands for him. From that moment he displayed very great courage, desirous as he was that his end might be that of a well-bred man. Delaherche encouraged him, and assisted his wife in arranging him in a becoming manner. And in presence of this dying man, on seeing husband and wife so assiduous in their attentions, old Madame Delaherche felt her rancour pass away. Once more would she keep silent, she who knew and had sworn to tell her son everything. But why plunge the house in affliction, since death was carrying away the sin?
The end came almost immediately. Captain Beaudoin, growing weaker and weaker, again fell into a state of prostration. An icy sweat streamed from his forehead and his neck. For a moment he reopened his eyes, and fumbled as though he were seeking a blanket, and drawing it up close to his chin, with a gentle, stubborn pull of his twisted hands: ‘Oh! I am so cold, so very cold.’
And he passed away, expired without a sob, his calm, wasted face retaining an expression of infinite sadness.
Delaherche did not allow the corpse to be carried to the charnel-place, but saw to its being deposited in a coach-house; and he then tried to induce Gilberte, who was sobbing, quite upset, to go back into the house. She declared, however, that she should feel too frightened if she remained alone, and that she preferred staying with her mother-in-law amid the bustle of the ambulance, which diverted her thoughts. She was already running off to give some water to a Chasseur d’Afrique delirious with fever, and to help dress the hand of a little Linesman, a recruit of twenty, who had come on foot from the battlefield. One of his thumbs had been carried away; and as he was a good-looking, comical fellow, who jested about his wound with the heedless air of a Parisian wag, she ended by getting quite lively in his company.
The cannonade seemed to have become still more violent whilst the captain was dying; a second shell had fallen in the garden, cutting down one of the centenarian trees. Moreover, a conflagration of considerable magnitude had broken out in the Faubourg of La Cassine, and some terror-stricken people cried out that all Sedan was burning. It would be the end of everything if this bombardment were to continue for any length of time with such fearful violence.
‘It’s incomprehensible. I’m going back!’ exclaimed Delaherche, at last, quite beside himself.
‘Where to?’ asked Bouroche.
‘Why, to the Sub-Prefecture, to ascertain whether the Emperor’s playing the fool with us when he talks of hoisting the white flag.’
For a few seconds the major remained dumbfounded by this idea of the white flag, defeat, and capitulation, which broke upon him amid his powerlessness to save the poor mangled fellows who were being brought to him in such numbers. He made a gesture of furious despair. ‘Well, go to the devil!’ he shouted; ‘we are none the less done for.’
Once outside, Delaherche experienced far greater difficulty than before in making his way through the groups of people, which were now much larger. The streets were every minute filling with the stream of disbanded soldiers. He questioned several of the officers he met, but none of them had seen the white flag upon the citadel. At last, however, a colonel declared that he had espied it there for an instant; it had been taken down almost as soon as hoisted. That seemed to explain everything; either the Germans had not perceived it, or else, seeing it appear and disappear, they had realised that the last agony was at hand, and had thereupon redoubled their fire. Indeed, a story was already circulating of a general who, at sight of the flag, had flown into a mad rage, had rushed upon it, and torn it down with his own hands, breaking the staff and trampling the linen under foot. And thus the Prussian batteries were still firing; the projectiles rained upon the roofs and the streets, houses were burning, and a woman had just had her head smashed, at the corner of the Place Turenne.
On reaching the Sub-Prefecture, Delaherche did not find Rose in the lodge. Every door of the house was now open; the rout was beginning. He entered and went upstairs, meeting only a few scared people, none of whom inquired his business. Whilst he was hesitating on the first-floor landing, he came upon the young girl.
‘Oh, Monsieur Delaherche, matters are getting much worse,’ said she. ‘There, make haste and look if you want to see the Emperor.’
A door on the left hand stood ajar, and, through the opening, one could perceive Napoleon III. who had resumed his wavering march from the chimney-piece to the window. He tramped up and down without a pause, despite his intolerable sufferings.
An aide-de-camp had just entered the room—it was he who had carelessly left the door ajar—and the Emperor was heard asking in a voice enervated by wretchedness: ‘But why are they still firing, monsieur, when I have had the white flag hoisted?’
Still did he experience the same unbearable torment at sound of that cannonade which never ceased, but on the contrary increased in violence every minute. It struck him in the heart each time that he drew near to the window. Still more blood, still more human lives destroyed through his fault! Each minute added more corpses to the pile, to no purpose whatever. And, commiserative dreamer that he was, his whole being revolted at the thought of this slaughter; and a dozen times already he had put the same despairing question to those who entered the room: ‘But why are they still firing when I have had the white flag hoisted?’
Delaherche did not manage to catch the muttered answer of the aide-de-camp. Besides, the Emperor had not paused in his walk. Faint though he felt each time that he reached the window, he yielded to the needment of returning thither. His pallor had increased, his long-drawn, mournful face, but imperfectly cleansed of the paint with which it had been brightened that morning, plainly told his agony.
At that moment a vivacious little man, in a dusty uniform, whom Delaherche recognised as General Lebrun, crossed the landing and pushed the door open, without waiting to be announced. And the Emperor’s anxious voice could immediately be distinguished, once more asking: ‘But why, general, why are they still firing when I have had the white flag hoisted?’
The aide-de-camp came out of the room and shut the door behind him, so that Delaherche could not even hear the general’s answer. All was blank again.
‘Ah!’ repeated Rose, ‘things are getting bad, I can tell it by the gentlemen’s faces. It’s like my table-cloth, which I shall never see again; some say it has been torn up. After all, it’s the Emperor whom I pity the most, for he’s in a worse state even than the marshal. He would be far better in his bed than in that room, where he’s wearing himself out with walking.’
She was quite affected, and her pretty, fair face expressed sincere compassion; for which very reason Delaherche, whose Bonapartist fervour had been sensibly cooling during the last two days, considered her rather foolish. He lingered with her downstairs, however, whilst watching for General Lebrun’s departure. And when the general came down he followed him.
General Lebrun had explained to the Emperor that if he desired to ask for an armistice, a letter signed by the commander-in-chief of the French forces must be transmitted to the commander-in-chief of the German armies. He had then offered to write the letter in question and to start in search of General de Wimpffen, by whom it should be signed. And now he was carrying this letter away, and his only fear was that he might be unable to find Wimpffen, for he did not know on what part of the field he was. The crush by this time had become so great that he was compelled to walk his horse through Sedan, thus enabling Delaherche to follow him as far as the Ménil gate.
Once on the highway, however, General Lebrun put his horse at a gallop, and as he was approaching Balan, he was lucky enough to perceive General de Wimpffen. A few minutes previously the latter had written to the Emperor: ‘Sire, come and place yourself at the head of your troops; they will esteem it an honour to open you a passage through the enemy’s lines.’ Accordingly, at the first word of a truce he flew into a furious passion. No, no! he would sign nothing; he meant to fight. It was then half-past three o’clock, and shortly afterwards came the last onslaught, that heroic, despairing attempt to pierce through the Bavarians by marching yet once more upon Bazeilles. To restore the spirits of the soldiers, lies were circulated along the streets of Sedan and across the surrounding fields. ‘Bazaine is coming up! Bazaine is coming up!’ was the cry. It was a dream that many had indulged in since the morning, thinking, each time that the Germans unmasked a fresh battery, that the guns they heard were those of the army of Metz.
Some twelve hundred men were got together, disbanded soldiers of all arms, from every corps; and along the road, swept by the enemy’s projectiles, the little column dashed with glorious gallantry, at the double-quick. It was superb at first; the men who fell did not arrest the dash of the others, and some five hundred yards were covered with a perfect fury of courage. But the ranks were speedily thinned, and the bravest at last fell back. What could be done indeed against such overwhelming numbers? This effort was but the mad temerity of a commander who refused to be beaten. And at last General de Wimpffen found himself alone with General Lebrun, on that road to Balan and Bazeilles, which they finally had to abandon. No course now remained but to retreat under the walls of Sedan.
As soon as he had lost sight of the general, Delaherche returned in all haste to the factory, possessed by one idea, that of again climbing to his observatory, and thence watching the course of events. He was delayed for a moment, however, as he reached the house, for in the porch he came upon Colonel de Vineuil, who, lying in a half-fainting state on some hay, in a market-gardener’s tilted cart, was just then arriving with his bloody boot. The colonel had stubbornly persisted in trying to rally the remnants of his regiment until the moment when he had fallen from his horse. He was at once carried to a room on the first floor, and Bouroche, hastening to him, and finding he had only a split in the ankle, contented himself with dressing the wound, after extracting the pieces of boot-leather that had lodged in it. Then, over tasked and exasperated, he rushed downstairs again, shouting that he would rather cut off one of his legs than continue working in that dirty fashion, without the proper supplies or the necessary assistants. And indeed the ambulance people no longer knew where to place the wounded; they had been obliged to lay some of them in the grass on the lawn. There were two rows of them there already, waiting and wailing in the open air, under the shells which continued raining upon Sedan. Since noon more than four hundred men had been brought to this one ambulance, and in vain had Bouroche asked for surgeons—the only person sent to him was a young doctor of the town. It was impossible for him to suffice for everything; he probed, cut, sawed, and sewed, quite beside himself, sorely distressed to find that far more work kept on arriving than he could possibly cope with. Gilberte, intoxicated with horror, sickened by the sight of so much blood and so many tears, now remained upstairs with her uncle, the colonel, whilst old Madame Delaherche stayed below, bringing water to the feverish ones, and wiping the clammy faces of those who were in the throes of death.
On reaching the terrace up above, Delaherche had at once endeavoured to form some idea of the situation. The town had suffered less than he had thought; there was only one conflagration, throwing up a column of dense black smoke in the Faubourg of La Cassine. At present the Palatinate fort had ceased firing, for want, no doubt, of ammunition; and only the guns of the Paris gate continued discharging a few shots, at long intervals. What, however, immediately interested him, was to find that the white flag had again been hoisted on the keep; but, probably, it could not be seen from the battlefield, for the firing continued, as intense as ever. Some neighbouring roofs prevented him from seeing the Balan road, so that he could not watch the movements of the troops there. However, on applying his eye to the telescope, which had remained in position, he again perceived the German staff on the same spot where he had noticed it at noon. The master—the tiny tin soldier, no taller than half of one’s little finger, in whom he fancied he could recognise the King of Prussia—was still standing in his dark uniform in advance of the other officers, most of whom, scintillating with embroidery, were lying upon the grass. Among them were foreign officers, aides-de-camp, generals, court marshals, princes and princelets, all provided with field-glasses, with which, since early morning, they had been surveying the agony of the French army, as though they were at a theatre. And now the formidable drama was drawing to a close.
From that wooded height of La Marfée King William had just beheld the junction of his troops. It was accomplished; the Third Army, under the orders of the Crown Prince, his son, which had proceeded by way of St. Menges and Fleigneux, was taking possession of the plateau of Illy, whilst the Fourth Army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Saxony, reached the meeting place by way of Daigny and Givonne, after turning the wood of La Garenne. Thus the Eleventh and Fifth German Corps joined hands with the Twelfth Corps and the Prussian Guard. And the supreme effort made to break the circle at the very moment when it was closing up, that useless but glorious charge of General Margueritte’s division, had wrung an admiring exclamation from the King: ‘Ah! the brave fellows!’ Now the mathematical, inexorable encompassment was completed, the vice-chops had met; and at a glance the King could survey the immense wall of men and guns enveloping the vanquished army. On the north the grasp pressed closer and closer home, throwing the fugitives back into Sedan under the redoubling fire of the batteries which fringed the horizon all around in an unbroken line. On the south Bazeilles, conquered, empty, and mournful, was burning away, throwing up whirling clouds of spark-laden smoke; whilst the Bavarians, now masters of Balan, were levelling their guns at three hundred yards from the gates of Sedan itself. And the other batteries, those on the left bank at Pont-Maugis, Noyers, Frénois, and Wadelincourt, which for nearly twelve hours had been firing without a pause, were now thundering yet more loudly, completing the impassable belt of flames, even under the King’s feet.
Somewhat tired, however, King William laid his field-glass aside for a moment, and continued examining the scene without its help. The sun was descending obliquely towards the woods, sinking to rest in a sky of unspotted purity; it gilded the whole vast stretch of country, bathed it in so limpid a light that the smallest objects acquired remarkable distinctness. The King could distinguish the houses of Sedan, with their little, black window bars, the ramparts and the fortress, all the complicated defensive works, clearly and sharply outlined. Then all around, scattered amid the fields, were the villages, fresh-coloured and shiny as with varnish, like the farmhouses one finds in boxes of toys. On the left was Donchery, at the edge of the level plain; on the right were Douzy and Carignan in the meadows. It seemed as though one could count the trees of the Forest of the Ardennes, whose sea of verdure stretched away to the frontier. In the crisp light, the lazily winding Meuse looked like a river of pure gold, and the fearful blood-smeared battle, seen from this height, under the sun’s farewell rays, became as it were a delicate piece of painting. Some corpses of cavalry soldiers, and dead horses with their bellies ripped open, scattered bright touches over the plateau of Floing. Towards the right, in the direction of Givonne the eye was amused by the scrambles of the retreat, the vortex of running, falling black specks; whilst on the peninsula of Iges, on the left, a Bavarian battery, whose guns looked no bigger than lucifer matches, was served with such clock-work regularity, that it seemed like some piece of mechanism, carefully put together. And all this was victory—victory surpassing hope, overwhelming; and the King felt no remorse whatever as he looked down upon all those tiny corpses, those thousands of men occupying less space than the dust of the roads, that immense valley where neither the conflagrations of Bazeilles, the massacres of Illy nor the anguish of Sedan could prevent impassive nature from remaining beauteous in this, the serene close of a lovely day.
All at once, however, Delaherche perceived a French general, clad in a blue tunic and mounted on a black horse, who was ascending the slopes of La Marfée preceded by a Hussar carrying a flag of truce. It was General Reille, charged by the Emperor to deliver this letter to the King of Prussia:—
‘Sir, my Brother,—Not having been able to die in the midst of my troops, it only remains for me to place my sword in your Majesty’s hands.—I am your Majesty’s good Brother,
‘Napoleon.’
In his eagerness to stop the slaughter, since he was no longer the master, the Emperor delivered himself up, hoping that he might thereby soften the victor. And Delaherche saw General Reille, who was unarmed and carried merely a riding-whip, rein in his horse at ten paces from the King, alight, and then step forward and deliver the letter. The sun was sinking in a far-spreading, roseate glow; the King seated himself on a chair, rested his arm on the back of another one held by a secretary, and replied that he accepted the sword, pending the despatch of an officer, empowered to treat for the capitulation.
< < < Chapter V
Chapter VII > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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