French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
< < < Chapter IV
Chapter VI > > >
PART III
Chapter V
GOLIATH THE SPY—AN AWFUL VENGEANCE
That icy December evening Silvine and Prosper were alone with Charlot in the large kitchen of the farmhouse, she sewing and he engaged in making himself a fine whip. It was seven o’clock; they had dined at six without waiting for old Fouchard, who must have been detained at Raucourt, where there was a scarcity of meat; and Henriette, whose turn it was that night to sit up watching at the ambulance, had just gone off after instructing Silvine to fill Jean’s stove with coals before she went to bed.
Out of doors the sky hung very blackly over the white snow. Not a sound came from the buried village, and in the room nothing could be heard save Prosper’s knife as he diligently cut rosettes and lozenges in the bark of the dog-wood whip-stock. At times he paused and looked at Charlot, who, overcome by drowsiness, was nodding his big fair head. When the child had at last fallen asleep it seemed as though the silence had become yet more intense. The mother had gently pushed the candle aside so that the light might not fall upon her little one’s eyelids; and, still plying her needle, she sank at last into a deep reverie.
Then it was that Prosper, after again hesitating, made up his mind to speak: ‘I say, Silvine, I’ve something to tell you. Yes, I was waiting to be alone with you to tell you about it.’
These words sufficed to render her anxious, and she raised her eyes.
‘This is what it is. Forgive me for distressing you, but it is best that you should be warned. Close by the church this morning, at Remilly, I saw Goliath just as I see you now, full in the face, so that there was no mistaking him.’
She became quite livid, her hands trembled, and she could only stammer a hollow plaint: ‘Oh! my God, my God!’
Prosper continued talking in his prudent way, relating what he had learnt during the day by questioning one and another of the villagers. Not one of them now entertained a doubt but that Goliath was a spy and had formerly taken up his abode in the district in order to become acquainted with its roads and resources, and the most trifling details of its inhabitants’ mode of life. Folks remembered his stay at old Fouchard’s farm, the abrupt fashion in which he had taken himself off, and the situations which he had afterwards held over towards Beaumont and Raucourt. And now he had come back again, holding an equivocal position at the Commandature of Sedan and once more scouring the surrounding villages, as though it were his business to denounce certain folks and tax others, and exercise a surveillance respecting the requisitions with which the inhabitants were being overwhelmed. That morning he had terrorised Remilly with respect to the delivery of some flour which was not being supplied with sufficient promptitude or in sufficient quantities.
‘Well, you are warned,’ repeated Prosper as he finished his narrative, ‘so you will know what to do when he comes here.’
She interrupted him with a cry of terror: ‘You think he will come here then?’
‘Well, it seems to me sure enough. Especially if he’s at all inquisitive, for he has never seen the little one, though he must know that he exists. And besides there’s you whom he may wish to see again.’
She silenced him with an entreating gesture. Charlot, awakened by the talking, had raised his head. With a vague expression in his eyes, as though he were emerging from a dream, he recalled an insulting phrase which some village joker had taught him, and with the grave air of the three-year-old urchin that he was, declared: ‘They’re pigs, the Prussians.’
At this his mother distractedly caught him in her arms and sat him on her lap. Ah! the poor little fellow, at once her joy and her despair whom she loved with her whole soul, but whom she could not look at without weeping, this son of hers whom to her grief she often heard called the Prussian by the youngsters of his own age who played with him on the road. She kissed him as if to drive his words back into his mouth. ‘Who taught you such naughty words? You mustn’t say them, my darling.’
With childish obstinacy, however, Charlot stifled a laugh and made all haste to repeat: ‘The Prussians are pigs!’
Then, on seeing his mother burst into tears, he also began to cry, winding his arms round her neck. Ah, Lord! what new misfortune was in store for her! Was it not sufficient that she had lost in Honoré the only hope of her life, the certainty of forgetting and of becoming happy once more? At present that other man must needs reappear to make her misery complete.
‘Come,’ she murmured, ‘come to by-by, my darling. Mother loves you very dearly all the same, for you don’t know that you grieve her.’
Then she went off, leaving Prosper for a moment alone. He, in order not to embarrass her by his glances, had pretended to be wholly absorbed in carving his whip-stock.
However, before putting Charlot to bed, Silvine habitually took him to say good-night to Jean, with whom he was great friends. That evening, as she entered the room candle in hand, she perceived the wounded man sitting up in bed with his eyes wide open. So he wasn’t asleep, then? Well, no, he had been ruminating on all sorts of matters, in the silence of that wintry night. And whilst she crammed the stove with coals, he played for a moment with Charlot who rolled about on the bed like a kitten. Jean was acquainted with Silvine’s story and had a friendly feeling for this brave, docile girl, so severely tried by misfortune, now in mourning for the only man she had ever loved, with no other consolation remaining to her than that little child whose birth had proved her everlasting torment. And thus, when, after closing the stove, she drew near to the bed to take Charlot in her arms again, Jean, detecting by the redness of her eyes that she had been weeping, began to question her. What was the matter, then? Had somebody been grieving her again? But she would not answer: later on, if it were worth while, she would perhaps tell him all about it. Ah! good Lord! had not her life now become a life of ceaseless grief?
She was on the point of taking Charlot away when all at once a sound of voices and footsteps was heard in the yard. Jean listened in surprise. ‘What’s up? It can’t be Fouchard coming back, I didn’t hear the cartwheels.’
Whilst lying in that lonely, distant room he had ended by acquiring a knowledge of all the inner life of the farm, the slightest sounds of which had become familiar to him. Still lending an ear, he promptly resumed: ‘Ah, yes, it’s those fellows, the Francs-tireurs of the Dieulet Woods, who have come for some grub.’
‘Quick, I must make haste to give them their bread,’ muttered Silvine as she went off again, leaving him in the darkness.
Fists were hammering loudly on the kitchen door, whilst Prosper, annoyed at finding himself alone, was hesitating and parleying. He hardly liked to open the door when the master was away, for fear of any damage that might be done, the responsibility of which would have been thrown upon his shoulders. Luckily, however, just at that moment, old Fouchard’s cart came down the sloping road, the clatter of the horse’s trot being deadened by the snow. And thus it was the old fellow himself who received the men.
‘Oh! all right, it’s you three. What have you brought me in that barrow?’
Sambuc, with his spare bandit figure quite lost in a blue woollen blouse considerably too large for him, did not even hear Fouchard, such was his exasperation with Prosper, that honest brother of his, as he put it, who had only just made up his mind to unlock the door.
‘I say,’ shouted the Franc-tireur, ‘do you take us for beggars that you leave us outside in such weather as this.’
Prosper, however, remained quite calm and shrugged his shoulders without answering a word; and whilst he went out to take the horse and cart to the stables it was again old Fouchard who intervened. ‘So you’ve brought me two dead sheep,’ said he, leaning over the barrow. ‘It’s lucky that it’s freezing, or they wouldn’t smell at all pleasant.’
At this, Cabasse and Ducat, Sambuc’s two lieutenants who accompanied him on all his expeditions, began protesting. ‘Oh!’ said the first with his loud-mouthed Provençal vivacity, ‘they haven’t been dead more than three days. They came from the Raffins farm, where there’s a lot of nasty illness among the animals.’
‘‘Procumbit humi bos,’ declaimed his comrade, the ex-process-server, who had lost caste through his immorality and who was addicted to quoting Latin.
Tossing his head, old Fouchard went on disparaging the merchandise, which, said he, was ‘altogether too far gone.’ However, on entering the kitchen with the three men, he ended by exclaiming: ‘Well, well, they’ll have to content themselves with it. It’s lucky that they haven’t a cutlet left at Raucourt. A man eats anything when he’s hungry, eh?’ And then, in reality quite delighted, he called to Silvine who was coming back after putting Charlot to bed: ‘Bring some glasses, we’ll drink a drop to Bismarck kicking the bucket.’
In this fashion did Fouchard keep up an intercourse with the Francs-tireurs of the Dieulet Woods who, for nearly three months now had been crawling out of their impenetrable thickets at nightfall, prowling along the roads, killing and rifling such Prussians as they were able to surprise, and falling back on the farms and levying contributions on the peasants whenever there was a scarcity of German ‘game.’ They were the terror of the villages, the more so as each time a convoy was attacked, each time a sentry was butchered, the German authorities avenged themselves on the neighbouring localities, accusing their inhabitants of connivance, fining them, carrying off their mayors as prisoners, and burning their homesteads. And if the peasants, despite all their longing to do so, failed to betray Sambuc and his band, it was simply through fear of being hit by a bullet at some turn of a pathway, in the event of the attempt to capture the Francs-tireurs resulting in failure.
Fouchard for his part had the extraordinary idea of doing business with these fellows. Beating the country as they did in all directions, the ditches as well as the cattle-sheds and sheep-cots, they had become his purveyors of diseased meat. Not an ox nor a sheep died within a radius of three leagues but they came at night to pick it up and take it to him. And he paid them in provisions, especially in bread, big batches of loaves which Silvine baked expressly for them. Moreover, although the old fellow scarcely liked the Francs-tireurs, he had a secret admiration for them, cunning rogues that they were, plying their calling without caring a rap for anybody; and, although he was realising a fortune by his dealings with the Prussians, he laughed inwardly, with the laugh of a savage, whenever he learnt that another of them had been found by the wayside with his throat cut.
‘To your health!’ said he, chinking glasses with the three men, and, after wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he added: ‘I say, what a row they’ve been making about those two Uhlans whom they found near Villecourt with their heads missing. You know that Villecourt has been burning since yesterday; it’s a sentence, as they say, that they’ve passed on the village to punish it for having harboured you. You must be prudent, mind; and don’t come back here for a time. Your bread shall be taken to you.’ Shrugging his shoulders, Sambuc began to sneer. Pooh! the Prussians might run as fast as they liked, they wouldn’t catch him! Then all at once he flew into a violent passion, and, thumping on the table, exclaimed: ‘Thunder! yes, it’s nice to get hold of the Uhlans, no doubt, but it’s the other chap that I’d like to say a word to—you know him, the spy, that fellow who worked for you——’
‘Goliath,’ said Fouchard.
Quite startled, Silvine, who had just taken up her work again, ceased sewing and listened.
‘That’s the man, Goliath! Ah! the brigand! he knows the Dieulet Woods as well as I know my pocket, and he’s quite capable of getting us caught one of these mornings. In fact, he bragged to-day at the Malta Cross that he’d settle our business for us within a week. The dirty rogue! it was certainly he who guided the Bavarians through the woods, on the day before the fight at Beaumont—wasn’t it, you fellows, eh?’
‘As sure as that’s a candle lighting us!’ declared Cabasse.
‘Per amica silentia lunæ,’ added Ducat, whose quotations were not always apposite.
With another thump of his fist, Sambuc made the table shake. ‘He is judged and condemned, the brigand! If you should happen to know where he’s going at any time, just warn me, and his head shall join those of the Uhlans in the Meuse—yes, thunder! I’ll answer for it!’
Silence fell. Silvine, who was very pale, gazed fixedly at the Francs-tireurs.
‘Well, well, these are not things to talk about,’ resumed Fouchard, prudently. ‘Here’s to your health, and good-evening!’
They finished emptying the second bottle. Silvine had already stowed the bread away in a sack; and Prosper, who had now returned from the stable, helped to hoist it on to the barrow in place of the two dead sheep. However, he turned his back without so much as answering when his brother and the others went off, disappearing with the barrow through the snow, and repeating: ‘Good-night, everyone—to the pleasure of meeting again.’
The very next day, whilst old Fouchard was sitting alone after breakfast, he saw Goliath himself walk in, tall and fat, with the same pink face and quiet smile as formerly. If the old man was startled by this sudden apparition, at all events he did not allow it to be seen, but sat there blinking, whilst the other stepped forward and gave him a fair and square shake of the hand. ‘Good day to you, father Fouchard!’
Not till then did the old fellow appear to recognise his visitor. ‘Hallo! is it you, my lad! Why, you’ve grown even bigger than you were. How fat you are!’
And thereupon he scanned him from head to foot. Clad in a kind of capote of thick blue cloth, with a cap of the same material on his head, Goliath had the prosperous appearance of a man well pleased with himself. He spoke without any foreign accent, in the drawling fashion of the peasants of the district: ‘Why, yes, it’s I, father Fouchard—I didn’t like to pass this way without bidding you good-day.’
The old man remained mistrustful. What was the real motive of this fellow’s visit? Had he heard of the Francs-tireurs coming to the farm on the previous evening? That was a point to be ascertained. At all events, however, since the scamp had presented himself in a polite fashion, the best policy was to give him an equally polite greeting.
‘Well, my lad, it’s very kind of you, I’m sure, and as you’ve come we’ll drink a glass together.’
He went in person to fetch a couple of glasses and a bottle of wine. The consumption of so much liquor made his heart fairly bleed; but then in business it was necessary to stand treat. And, now, much the same scene as that of the previous evening was enacted: they chinked glasses with similar gestures and similar words.
‘To your health, father Fouchard.’
‘Here’s to yours, my lad!’
They drank, and Goliath complacently tarried there, looking around him like a man who is well pleased to orate old times and things. However, he did not speak of the past, nor, for the matter of that, did he refer to the present. The conversation mainly turned on the severe cold weather, which would interfere with the work in the fields; though fortunately there was some good in the snow, for it killed the grubs. Scarcely did the spy indulge in an expression of vague chagrin with reference to the covert hatred, terror, and scorn with which he had been received in the other houses of Remilly. Every man has his country, hasn’t he? And it is only natural that he should serve it as he thinks fit. However, French people had funny ideas about certain things. Whilst he talked on in this strain the old man looked at him and listened to him; and on finding him so reasonable and so conciliatory, so placid, too, with his broad smiling face, he concluded that this honest fellow had certainly not come to the farm with any evil intentions.
‘And so you’re all alone to-day, father Fouchard?’ said Goliath at last.
‘Oh no—Silvine’s giving the cows their feed. Would you like to see her?’
Goliath began to laugh. ‘Well, yes. To tell you the plain truth, it was to see Silvine that I came.’
This answer raised a great load from old Fouchard’s mind. Springing from his chair, he called in a loud voice: ‘Silvine! Silvine! Here’s some one for you.’ And thereupon he went off, henceforth without any fears, since the girl was there to protect the house. When a man still hankers after a woman like that, after so many years, he is as good as done for.
When Silvine came in, she was in no wise surprised to find herself in presence of Goliath, who had retained his seat and looked at her with his good-natured smile, albeit he felt somewhat uncomfortable. She had been expecting him, and on crossing the threshold gave no sign of emotion save that she stopped short with a sudden stiffening of her entire frame. Charlot, who had run after her, threw himself among her skirts, astonished to see this man, whom he did not know.
There was a brief interval of silence, an embarrassment of a few seconds’ duration.
‘So that’s the little one?’ Goliath ended by asking in his conciliatory voice.
‘Yes,’ Silvine answered harshly.
The silence fell again. He had left Remilly prior to her accouchement, and, although he knew very well that there was a child, he now saw it for the first time. He therefore wished to explain his conduct, like a practical-minded man who is convinced that he has some good reasons to urge on his behalf. ‘Come, Silvine,’ said he, ‘I can understand very well that you have harboured a grudge against me. And yet it’s not altogether just. If I went off as I did, if I caused you all that grief, you ought to have bethought yourself that it was perhaps because I wasn’t my own master. When a man has superiors and is under orders he must obey them, mustn’t he? They might have ordered me on a journey a hundred leagues away on foot, and I should have gone. And naturally I couldn’t speak out. It pained my heart, and no mistake, to have to go off like that without a parting word. I won’t say that I was certain I should come back again; however, I always expected to do so, and you see, here I am——’
She had turned her head aside and was looking through the window at the snow in the courtyard, as though determined not to listen. Disturbed by her contempt, her stubborn silence, he paused in his explanations to exclaim: ‘Do you know you are prettier than ever?’
She did in fact look very beautiful, with her creamy pallor and those superb large eyes lighting up her face. Her heavy tresses of jet black hair crowned her head as with a diadem of eternal mourning.
‘Come,’ said Goliath, ‘be a little more amiable! You must know that I don’t want to harm you. If I didn’t still love you I shouldn’t have come back, of course not. But now that I’m here and everything is settling down we’ll be good friends again; we’ll make it all up, won’t we?’
She abruptly drew back and looked him full in the face: ‘Never!’
‘Why never? Aren’t you virtually my wife already, isn’t that child ours?’
Without taking her eyes off him, she slowly answered: ‘Listen; it is best to have done with it at once. You knew Honoré; I loved him, I never loved any one but him. And he is dead; you killed him over yonder. Never again will I be yours—never!’
She had raised her hand, and she swore her vow in a voice ringing with such bitter hatred that for a moment he remained quite amazed, merely muttering: ‘Yes, I knew it. Honoré is dead. He was a very nice fellow certainly, but it can’t be helped; others are dead too. Such is war. And, besides, it seemed to me that as he was dead there could be no further obstacle—for you must let me remind you, Silvine, I was not brutal with you——’
He did not finish his sentence, however; such a look of wild distracting agony appeared upon her face, to which she raised her hands as though to lacerate it.
‘Oh! it is that—yes, that which drives me mad!’ she exclaimed. ‘That I should have yielded when I did not love you! I cannot remember, I was so sad, so ill after Honoré’s departure, and you talked about him and appeared to like him. ‘Twas that perhaps which brought it to pass. O God! how many nights have I spent in weeping over my fault!—Yet he came back, and forgave me, and told me that if you Prussians did not kill him, he would marry me all the same, as soon as he got his discharge. And you think that after that I could consent to become yours? Ah, no! under the axe I should still answer no, no, never!’
This time Goliath became gloomy. He divined that her fierce resolution was a firm one. But, on the other hand, he considered himself to be the master, and if he did not as yet seek to impose his will by violent means, it was because he was naturally inclined to prudence, instinctively prone to artifice and patience. This big-fisted Colossus was not partial to blows. And accordingly he bethought himself of another means of forcing her to submit.
‘All right,’ said he, ‘since you won’t take me I shall take the little one.’
‘What do you mean?’
Charlot, momentarily forgotten, had remained among his mother’s skirts, making an effort not to burst out sobbing in the midst of the quarrel. Goliath, who had at last risen from his chair, drew near. ‘Eh! you are my little boy, aren’t you? A little Prussian, eh? Come, and let me take you away.’
But Silvine, quivering from head to foot, had already caught the child in her arms and was pressing him to her bosom: ‘He a Prussian? No, he’s French, born in France!’
‘French! Why look at him and look at me! He’s my very portrait. Is he at all like you?’
It was only then that she really saw that tall fair fellow in front of her, with his curly beard and hair, broad pink face, and big, blue eyes, glistening with the brilliancy of porcelain. And what he said was indeed true—the little one had the same yellow, curly crop of hair, the same fat cheeks, the same light eyes as himself; in a word, all the physical characteristics of the race dwelling over yonder. She herself felt that she was of a different nature, with her heavy locks of raven hair, which, in her disordered state, were slipping from her chignon over her shoulders.
‘I brought him into the world; he is mine!’ she resumed in a tone of fury; ‘he’s a French boy who will never know a word of your dirty German; yes, a French boy who will one day go and kill you all to avenge those of ours whom you have killed!’
Still clinging to his mother’s neck, Charlot had now begun to cry and call: ‘Mammy, mammy, I’m frightened, take me away!’
Thereupon Goliath, who doubtless did not wish to provoke a scandal, drew back and contented himself with declaring in a stern voice: ‘Listen carefully to what I’m going to tell you, Silvine. I know everything that goes on here. You receive the Francs-tireurs of the Dieulet Woods, your farm-hand’s brother, that fellow Sambuc, a brigand whom you supply with bread! And I know too that the farm-hand, that man Prosper, is a Chasseur d’Afrique, a deserter, who belongs to us; and I am also aware that you are hiding a wounded man, another soldier who on a word from me would be sent to a fortress in Germany. There! you see that I am well informed.’
Silent and terrified, she was attentively listening to him now, whilst Charlot, with his mouth close to her neck, repeated in his faltering, infantile voice: ‘Oh! mammy, mammy, take me away, I’m frightened!’
‘Well!’ resumed Goliath, ‘I’m certainly not malicious, and I’ve no liking for quarrels, as you must know, but I swear to you that I’ll have them all arrested, old Fouchard and the others, every one of them, if you don’t give me a favourable answer. And I will take the little one away and send him to Germany, to my mother, who will be very pleased to have him; for, since you want to break off everything, he belongs to me. So you hear me, eh? I shall only have to come and take him when there is nobody left here. I am the master, mind, and I do what I please. Come, what is your decision?’
She gave no answer, however; she was pressing the child yet more closely to her bosom, as though she feared that Goliath might there and then tear him away from her; and into her large eyes there came an expression of mingled terror and execration.
‘Well,’ he resumed, ‘I’ll allow you three days for reflection. I shall come for your answer on Monday evening; see that the window of your room, overlooking the orchard, is left open. If on Monday evening at seven o’clock I do not find it open, I will have all your folks arrested the very next day, and I’ll come back to fetch the little one. So till Monday, Silvine.’
He went off quietly, whilst she remained standing there, her head buzzing with such terrible, such monstrous ideas that it was as though she had suddenly become an idiot. And thus, throughout the whole day, a tempest warred within her. At first she instinctively thought of carrying her child away in her arms, of going off straight before her, no matter whither. But then, what would become of her when night fell; how would she be able to earn a living for him and for herself? Besides, the Prussians scouring the roads might arrest her and possibly bring her back. Then the idea occurred to her of speaking to Jean, of warning Prosper and even Fouchard, but again she hesitated and recoiled. Was she sure enough of their friendship to be certain that she would not be sacrificed to their tranquillity? No, no, she would say nothing to anybody; she alone would extricate herself from this danger, which she herself had created by the stubbornness of her refusal. But what scheme could she devise? in what manner could she prevent that misfortune? for all her native honesty revolted at the thought; she would never have forgiven herself if through her fault a catastrophe should fall on so many people, and especially on Jean, who showed himself so kind to little Charlot.
Hours elapsed, the following day went by, and yet she had not been able to devise any plan. She applied herself to her work as usual, swept the kitchen, attended to the cows, cooked the soupe. And hour by hour, amid her absolute silence—the frightful silence which she still stubbornly maintained—her hatred of Goliath ascended with increasing force to her brain and poisoned it. He was her sin, her damnation, the serpent who had tempted her to her fall. But for him she would have waited for Honoré, and Honoré would be still alive and she would be happy. In what an arrogant tone had he declared that he was the master? Forsooth it was true, there were no more gendarmes, no more judges to whom she could appeal for protection—might had become right. Oh! to be stronger than he was, to seize him when he came, he who talked of seizing others! She was now entirely bound up in her child, the flesh of her flesh; his chance father went for nothing, had indeed never counted. She was not a wife, and when she thought of that man only a feeling of anger inflamed her, the rancour of one who had been vanquished. Rather than surrender her child to him she would have killed the boy and herself afterwards. And she had told him plainly, she would have liked to have seen that child already grown to manhood and capable of defending her; and she pictured him in years to come, armed with a rifle, and riddling the bodies of all that hateful race over yonder. Yes, indeed, a Frenchman the more, a Frenchman to slay the Prussians!
However, only one day now remained to her, and she must come to a decision. An atrocious idea had at the very outset passed through her poor, ailing, disordered brain: she might warn the Francs-tireurs, give Sambuc the information he desired. But the idea remained fugitive and indeterminate, and she brushed it aside as being too monstrous even for examination; after all, was not that man her child’s father? She could not have him murdered. Then, however, the idea came back again, slowly enveloping her, growing, little by little, more and more importunate; and now it was imposing itself upon her with all the victorious strength of its simplicity and absoluteness. If Goliath were dead, Jean, Prosper, and Fouchard would have nothing more to fear. She herself would retain possession of Charlot, and nobody would ever again challenge her right to the child. And there was something else, too, something deep-rooted that ascended from the innermost recesses of her being: a needment to have done with it all, to efface the paternity of the child by suppressing its father, a savage joy at the thought that she would emerge from the issue with her transgression amputated as it were, and as the one parent, the sole possessor of the child, whom henceforth she would share with no man. All day long did she dwell upon this plan, no longer possessing the energy to repulse it, but ever and ever brought back to the details of the ambuscade that would be necessary, planning and arranging its most trifling incidents. So now, then, the idea had become a fixed one, an idea which once sown is bound to germinate, and which one ceases to discuss; and when at last she began to put this idea to execution, to obey this impulse of the inevitable, she proceeded on her course like one in a dream, carried along by another’s will, by a force which she had never felt within her before.
On the Sunday, old Fouchard, who felt uneasy, had sent word to the Francs-tireurs that their sack of loaves would be carried to the Boisville quarries, a very lonely spot, not much more than a mile away; and, as Prosper had other things to see to, he despatched Silvine thither with a barrow. Was not fate thus deciding the issue? She interpreted it, indeed, as a decree of Destiny, and spoke out, giving Sambuc an appointment for the following evening, in a clear, calm voice, as though she were not able to act otherwise. On the morrow there were further signs, positive proofs that people and even things had willed the crime. First, old Fouchard was abruptly summoned to Raucourt, and left word that they were to dine without him, for he foresaw that he would be unable to get back before eight o’clock. Then, too, Henriette, whose turn to sit up watching at the ambulance only came on Tuesdays, received notice, late in the day, that she must that evening take the place of the person on duty, who had fallen ill. Accordingly, as Jean never left his room, no matter what noise he heard, there only remained Prosper whose intervention was to be feared. He was certainly not in favour of combining with others to slaughter a solitary man. However, when he saw his brother and the latter’s two lieutenants arrive at the farm, the disgust with which these rascals inspired him became blended with his execration of the Prussians. He was certainly not going to interfere to save one of those dirty rogues, even though he might be sent to his account in a foul way, and he preferred to go to bed and bury his head under the clothes, so that he might not hear anything and might not be tempted to act like a soldier.
It was a quarter to seven, and Charlot seemed determined not to go to sleep, though as a rule his head fell upon the table as soon as he had eaten his soupe. ‘Come, go to by-by, my darling,’ repeated Silvine, who had carried him into Henriette’s room, ‘you see how comfortable you are on friend’s big bed.’
But the child, enlivened by this treat, tossed about and laughed to suffocation: ‘No, no, stay with me, mammy—play with me, mammy——’
Silvine evinced great patience and gentleness, tenderly caressing the child and repeating: ‘There, go to sleep, darling. Go to sleep to please mammy.’
And at last, with a laugh on his lips, the youngster fell asleep. She had not taken the trouble to undress him, and after wrapping him up warmly she went off without locking the door, knowing that as a rule he slept very soundly.
Never had Silvine felt so calm, so clear and alert of mind. She displayed a promptness of decision, and a lightness of motion as though she were detached from her body and were acting under the impulsion of that other being within her which she did not know. She had already let in Sambuc, together with Cabasse and Ducat, cautioning them to observe the greatest prudence; and she led them into her room and posted them on the right and left of the window, which she opened, notwithstanding the intense cold. It was a dark night; the room was but faintly illumined by the reflection of the snow. A death-like silence lay over the country-side; long minutes went by. At last, on detecting a light footfall which was approaching, Silvine went off into the kitchen, where she seated herself and waited, quite motionless, with her large eyes fixed upon the candle flame.
Then another long interval elapsed; Goliath prowled around the farm before he would risk approaching. He fancied, however, that he knew the young woman well, and had therefore ventured to come with merely a revolver in his belt. Nevertheless, an instinctive uneasiness warned him, and he at first pushed the window wide open, and thrust his head into the room, softly calling: ‘Silvine! Silvine!’
As he had found the window open it must be that she had thought the matter over and was disposed to consent. This greatly pleased him, though he would have preferred to have found her there to greet him and allay his uneasiness. But doubtless old Fouchard had summoned her away to finish some work. ‘Silvine! Silvine!’ he again called, slightly raising his voice.
Still no reply, not a sound. And thereupon he sprang over the window-sill and entered the room, intending to wait there for the girl; so bitter cold did he find it out of doors.
All at once there was a furious scuffle; the stamping and slipping of feet resounded amid stifled oaths and gurgling groans. Sambuc and the others had rushed upon Goliath, but although they were three to one they could not master the Colossus, whose strength was increased tenfold by his sense of peril. The cracking of joints, all the panting effort of gripping and straining, could be heard in the darkness. Fortunately the spy’s revolver had fallen. ‘The ropes, the ropes!’ stammered Cabasse in a choking voice, whilst Ducat passed Sambuc the coil of cord with which they had taken the precaution to provide themselves. Then came a savage operation, performed to the accompaniment of blows and kicks, Goliath’s legs tied together, to begin with; then his arms fastened to his sides, then his whole body bound in a fumbling, random fashion wherever his despairing efforts would allow, and with so much winding and knotting that at last he was as though caught in a net, the meshes of which cut into his flesh. He was still calling out and Ducat kept on repeating: ‘Hold your jaw!’ But all at once the cries ceased, for Cabasse had brutally gagged the prisoner with an old blue handkerchief which he tied behind his head. Then they at last drew breath and carried him like a parcel into the kitchen, where they laid him upon the large table beside the candle.
‘Ah! the dirty Prussian!’ swore Sambuc as he wiped his forehead. ‘What a lot of trouble he’s given! I say, Silvine, light another candle so that we may get a good squint at the pig.’
With dilated eyes and a white face, Silvine had risen to her feet. She said not a word, but lighted a candle and placed it on the other side of Goliath’s head, which appeared to view brilliantly illumined, as though between two funeral tapers. And at that moment Silvine’s eyes encountered those of her child’s father; he was supplicating her, frantic, seized with an intense dread; but she did not appear to understand him; she stepped back to the sideboard and remained standing there with a frigid, stubborn demeanour.
‘The beggar bit half my finger off!’ growled Cabasse, whose hand was bleeding. ‘I must do for him.’
He was already raising the revolver which he had picked up in Silvine’s room when Sambuc disarmed him: ‘No, no—no humbug, please! We are not brigands, we are judges. Do you hear, you dirty Prussian? We are going to try you; and you needn’t be alarmed, we respect the rights of the defence. Only, you won’t be allowed to defend yourself, for you’d simply deafen us if we took your muzzle off. By-and-by, though, I’ll provide you with a lawyer and a fine one too!’
He took three chairs, placed them in a row, and in this way formed what he called the tribunal, his own place in the centre, with his lieutenants flanking him on right and left. They all three sat down, and then he, Sambuc, stood up again and began speaking with a derisive drawl, which he gradually set aside till at last his voice swelled with vengeful anger.
‘I am here both as presiding judge and as public prosecutor,’ said he. ‘This is not quite as it should be perhaps, but there are not enough of us to manage otherwise, so I accuse you of having come to spy on us here in France, and of paying for the bread which you ate at our tables with the most filthy treachery. For you were the first cause of the disaster, you, the traitor, who after the fight at Nouart guided the Bavarians, at night time, through the Dieulet Woods as far as Beaumont. Only a man who had long lived in the district could have been so well acquainted with the smallest paths; and our minds are made up on the point; you were seen guiding the artillery along those awful forest pathways which the rain had turned into rivers of mud, and where the difficulties were so great that eight horses had to be harnessed to each gun. On looking at those roads to-day one can hardly credit it; one asks oneself how an army corps ever managed to pass along them. Had it not been for you and for your crime in coming to amuse yourself among us and then betraying us, the surprise of Beaumont wouldn’t have taken place, we shouldn’t have gone to Sedan, and perhaps we should then have ended by licking you. And I don’t speak of the disgusting calling which you are still plying, of your cheek in coming back here in triumph, denouncing and frightening the poor country people. You are the most ignoble blackguard there can be, and I ask that you be sentenced to the penalty of death!’
Silence prevailed. Sambuc had seated himself again; at last he said: ‘I appoint Ducat to defend you. He was a process-server once, and would have made his way in the world had he only been able to bridle his passions. You see that I deny you nothing and that we behave fairly.’
Goliath, unable to move a finger, turned his eyes upon his improvised defender. Nothing now appeared alive in him save his eyes, eyes burning with ardent supplication, under his livid brow, moist with the sweat of anguish, despite the cold.
‘Gentlemen,’ began Ducat, rising from his chair, ‘my client is certainly the most disgusting scoundrel there can be, and I would not undertake to defend him were it not that I have one point to urge in his favour, which is that all the people of his country are of precisely the same stamp. Look at him: you can tell by his eyes that he is greatly astonished at what I say. He has no perception of his crime. In France we only touch our spies with tongs, whereas over yonder spying is an honoured profession, a meritorious fashion of serving one’s country. I will even venture to say, gentlemen, that possibly they are not wrong. Our noble sentiments do us honour, but they have unfortunately brought us defeat. If I may so express myself, quos vult perdere Jupiter dementat—you will take that into account, gentlemen.’
Thereupon he sat down again whilst Sambuc resumed: ‘And you, Cabasse, have you anything to say for or against the prisoner?’
‘I have to say,’ shouted the Provençal, ‘that all this is a lot of unnecessary fuss about settling that beggar’s account. I have had no few worries in my time, but I don’t like trifling with legal matters, it brings bad luck. To death! to death with him!’
Sambuc solemnly rose to his feet again: ‘So that is the sentence which you both pronounce—death?’
‘Yes, yes, death!’
The chairs were pushed back and Sambuc approached Goliath, saying: ‘You are sentenced, you are about to die.’
The two candles were burning with tall flames, like death-bed tapers, on either side of Goliath’s distorted face. He was making such an effort to beg for mercy, to shriek forth the words which were stifling him, that the blue handkerchief over his mouth became saturated with foam; and it was a terrible sight indeed—that man reduced to silence, already as mute as a corpse, and about to die with all that torrent of explanations and prayers pent in his throat.
Cabasse cocked the revolver. ‘Shall I smash his skull?’ he asked.
‘Oh! no, no!’ shouted Sambuc, ‘he would be only too glad.’ And stepping up to Goliath he added: ‘You are not a soldier; you don’t deserve the honour of being despatched with a bullet. No, you shall die like the dirty hog of a spy that you are!’ Then turning round he said politely: ‘By your leave, Silvine, I should very much like to have a tub.’
Silvine had not once stirred during the trial-scene. With rigid features, she stood there waiting, her mind elsewhere, absorbed in the fixed idea that had been goading her on for two days past. And when she was asked for a tub she simply complied with the request, vanished for a moment into the adjacent store-house, and came back with the large tub in which she usually washed Charlot’s linen.
‘There, put it under the table, close to the edge,’ said Sambuc.
She placed it as requested, and as she was rising up her eyes again met Goliath’s. In the wretched man’s glance a final prayer for mercy was mingled with an expression of revolt—the revolt of one who would not die. But at that moment nothing womanly was left in her, nothing but her unswerving desire for that death which she awaited like deliverance. She again drew back to the sideboard and remained there.
Opening the table-drawer, Sambuc had just taken from it a large kitchen-knife, the one that was used for cutting bacon. ‘As you are a hog,’ said he, ‘I’m going to bleed you like a hog.’
He proceeded in a leisurely manner, discussing the slaughtering with Cabasse and Ducat in order that it might be accomplished in proper fashion. And a dispute even arose through Cabasse declaring that in his part of the country, Provence, pigs were bled hanging head-downwards, whereat Ducat expressed great indignation, holding this method to be both barbarous and inconvenient.
‘Bring him close to the edge of the table with his head well over the tub so as not to stain the floor.’
They drew him forward, and Sambuc then set about his task in a quiet, cleanly fashion. With one stroke of the large bacon knife he slit the wretched man’s throat crosswise, and the blood from the severed carotid at once began dripping into the tub with a gentle plashing like that of a fountain. He had made but a small incision, so that only a few drops spurted forth, impelled by the action of the heart. If, in this way, death came more slowly, none of its convulsions were seen, for the ropes were strong and the body remained quite motionless. There was not a start, not a groan. It was only by the dying man’s face that one could observe the progress of his agony—his face furrowed by fright, whence the blood departed drop by drop, leaving the skin quite colourless, as white as linen. And the eyes were emptying also. They became dim and at last their light departed from them.
‘I say, Silvine, we shall want a sponge all the same.’
She gave no answer, however. She stood there as though rooted to the tiled floor, with her arms all unconsciously folded across her bosom, and with her throat gripped as by an iron collar. But all at once she noticed that Charlot was there, hanging to her skirts. No doubt he had awakened and managed to open the doors, and nobody had seen or heard him creep into the kitchen like the inquisitive child he was. How long had he been there, half hidden behind his mother? He also was looking on. From under his shock of yellow hair, those big blue eyes of his were watching the dripping blood, the little red streamlet which was slowly filling the tub. Possibly the sight amused him. Perhaps he had at first failed to understand it; and then, maybe, some sense of horror had dawned upon him, an instinctive consciousness that he was witnessing an abomination. At all events, he suddenly raised a wild cry of affright: ‘Oh! mammy, mammy, I’m afraid—take me away!’
And this cry gave Silvine a shock of such violence that she reeled. This was the last straw; something gave way, crumbled to pieces within her; horror was at last sweeping away that strength and excitement, born of her fixed idea, which had buoyed her up for two days past. She became a woman once more, burst into tears, and made a mad, wild gesture as she took up Charlot and distractedly pressed him to her heart. And then she rushed away with him at a terrified gallop, unable to see or hear more, feeling nought but an imperious need to go and annihilate herself, it mattered not where, in the first secluded hole that she might fall into.
At that same moment Jean had just made up his mind to open his door. Although as a rule he never troubled himself about the sounds wafted to him from in and around the house, he had ended, that evening, by feeling surprised at all the comings and goings and bursts of shouting that he heard. And it was into his quiet room that Silvine now swept, dishevelled, sobbing, shaken by such a paroxysm of wretchedness that he could not at first catch the disjointed words which she stammered through her clenched teeth. And again and again did she make the same wild gesture as though to drive away the atrocious scene. At last, however, Jean understood her, and then he also—in his mind’s eye—beheld the ambuscade, the slaughtering, the mother standing by with the little one among her skirts, both gazing at the father, whose blood was trickling from his cut throat; and at the thought of so much horror he felt icy cold, his heart was fairly overturned with anguish.
Ah! War, abominable War, which transformed all these poor folks into ferocious wild beasts, which sowed the seed of such fearful hatred—the son bespattered with his father’s blood, perpetuating the enmity of races, growing up in execration of the paternal family which some day or other he might perhaps help to exterminate! Ah! the villainous seeds whence only frightful harvests could spring!
Silvine, who had fallen on a chair, covered Charlot, who clung, sobbing, to her neck, with frantic kisses, again and again repeating the same phrase, the one cry that rose from her bleeding heart: ‘Ah! my poor little one, nobody will say any more that you are a Prussian! Ah! my poor little one, nobody will say any more that you are a Prussian!’
Meantime old Fouchard had arrived and was in the kitchen. He had rapped on the door like the master he was, and the others had decided they must let him in. And, truly, the surprise he experienced was scarcely a pleasant one—that corpse lying upon his table, with the tub full of blood underneath. He was of anything but an enduring nature, and naturally he waxed wrathful at the sight.
‘Couldn’t you do your dirty work out of doors, you filthy beasts?’ he shouted. ‘Do you take my house for a manure pit, that you come here and spoil my furniture in that style?’ Then as Sambuc began to apologise and explain matters, the old fellow, growing alarmed and more and more irritated, continued: ‘What the —— can I do with your corpse? Do you think it at all reasonable to stick a corpse in a man’s house like that, without knowing if he can dispose of it? Suppose a patrol came in, I should be in a nice fix! But you fellows don’t care a rap, you never considered that this business might cost me my skin. Well, curse you, you’ll have to deal with me if you don’t carry your corpse away at once! You hear me! So make haste, take it up by the head, or by the legs, or in whatever way you like, but don’t dawdle, and mind that there’s not so much as a hair of that fellow’s head left here in three minutes from now!’
In the end Sambuc prevailed on Fouchard to provide him with a sack, though it made the old fellow’s heart bleed to give anything away. As it was, he chose one of the most damaged sacks that he could find, declaring that one full of holes even was still far too good for a Prussian. Then Cabasse and Ducat had all the trouble in the world to get Goliath into the sack, the body being so broad and so long; and, pack it as they would, they could not prevent the feet from protruding. At last it was carried into the yard and placed on the barrow which was used for conveying the bandits’ bread to them.
‘Upon my word of honour,’ declared Sambuc as he went off, ‘we are going to fling him into the Meuse.’
‘And mind,’ insisted Fouchard, ‘mind you fasten two big stones to his legs so that he mayn’t come up again.’
And thereupon the little cortège went off over the pale snow, vanishing into the pitchy night, unheard, save for a faint, plaintive creaking of the barrow.
Ever afterwards Sambuc would swear by his father’s memory that he had fastened the two big stones to the legs of the corpse. Nevertheless it came to the surface again, and three days later the Prussians discovered it among the rushes at Pont-Maugis; and their fury was extreme when they pulled out of the sack this dead spy of theirs, who had been bled like a porker. There were terrible threats, all sorts of vexatory measures, and perquisitions. Some of the villagers no doubt let their tongues wag too freely, for one evening a party of soldiers came and arrested both the mayor of Remilly and old Fouchard on the charge of keeping up an intercourse with the Francs-tireurs, to whom Goliath’s death was naturally imputed. And in this extremity Fouchard really cut a fine figure, exhibiting all the stubborn impassiveness of an old peasant who knows the value of silence and a calm demeanour. He allowed himself to be marched off, without evincing the slightest uneasiness, and without even asking for any explanations. The other folks would soon see how he would dish the Prussians. It was whispered through the district that he had already made a large fortune by his dealings with the enemy, bags upon bags of silver, which he had buried away somewhere, one by one, according as his profits increased.
When Henriette heard of all this dreadful business, she felt terribly uneasy. Jean, fearing lest he might endanger those who sheltered him, again wished to go off, though the doctor still considered him too weak. Henriette, however, insisted upon his remaining another fortnight; her sadness had become deeper still at the thought that before long their separation must become an absolute necessity. On the day of old Fouchard’s arrest Jean had managed to escape a like fate by hiding among the forage in the barn; but was he not in danger of being taken and led away captive at any moment, in the event of further perquisitions, which were quite possible? Moreover, Henriette was anxious concerning her uncle’s fate; and she resolved that she would go to Sedan one morning to see the Delaherches, on whom, it was said, a very influential Prussian officer was quartered.
‘Silvine,’ said she, as she was about to start, ‘take good care of our patient; mind you give him his broth at noon and his draught at four o’clock.’
The servant, wholly absorbed in her daily toil, had become the same courageous, docile girl as formerly, superintending everything at the farm in its master’s absence, whilst Charlot gambolled and laughed around her.
‘Don’t be uneasy, madame,’ she answered, ‘he shall want for nothing. I’m here to take good care of him.’
< < < Chapter IV
Chapter VI > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
Copyright holders – Public Domain Book
| If you liked this site, subscribe , put likes, write comments! Share on social networks Check out Our Latest Posts |
© 2023 Akirill.com – All Rights Reserved
AKirill, Learn, apprenez, translation, traduction, livres bilingues, bilingual books 