French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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PART III
Chapter IV
DARK DAYS—BAZAINE THE TRAITOR—THE TIDE OF WAR
Jean’s room, a large chamber with a tiled floor and lime-washed walls, had formerly been used as a fruitery. You could still detect there the pleasant scent of apples and pears, and the only furniture was an iron bedstead, a deal table and two chairs, together with an old walnut wardrobe, wonderfully deep and containing a multitude of things. The quietness was profoundly soothing; only a few faint sounds from the adjacent cowhouse could be heard, the occasional lowing of cattle and the muffled stamping of their hoofs. The bright sunshine came in by the window, which faced the south. Merely a strip of slope could be seen, a cornfield skirted by a little wood. And this mysterious closed room was so hidden away from every eye that no stranger could even have suspected its existence.
Henriette immediately settled how things were to be managed. In view of avoiding suspicions it was arranged that only she and the doctor should have access to Jean. Silvine was never to enter the room unless she were called—for instance, at an early hour in the morning when the two women tidied the place; after which the door remained as though walled up, throughout the day. If the wounded man should need anyone at night-time, he would merely have to knock on the wall, for the room occupied by Henriette was adjacent. And thus it came to pass that after many weeks of life amid a violent multitude, Jean suddenly found himself separated from the world, seeing no one but the doctor and that gentle young woman whose light footsteps were inaudible. And whilst she ministered to his wants with an air of infinite goodness, he again saw her as he had espied her on the first occasion, at Sedan, looking like an apparition, with small and delicate features save that her mouth was somewhat large, and with hair the hue of ripened grain.
During the earlier days the wounded man’s fever was so intense that Henriette scarcely left him. Dr. Dalichamp dropped in every morning, under pretence of fetching her to go to the ambulance with him; and he would then examine Jean’s leg and dress it. After fracturing the tibia, the bullet had passed out again, and the doctor was astonished at the bad appearance of the wound, and was afraid there might be some splinter there—though in probing he was unable to detect any—which would necessitate an excision of the bone. He had spoken on the subject to Jean, but the latter revolted at the thought of having his leg shortened and going lame all the rest of his life: no, no, indeed, he would rather die at once than become a cripple. The doctor therefore simply kept the wound under observation, dressing it with lint soaked in olive oil and phenic acid, after inserting a gutta-percha drainage-tube, so that the pus might flow away. At the same time, however, he warned Jean that if he did not perform an operation the cure would probably take a very long time. Yet it happened that the fever abated during the second week, when the state of the wound also became more favourable—at least so long as the patient remained quite still.
Henriette’s intercourse with Jean was then regulated in a systematic way. Habits came to them both; it seemed to them as though they had never lived otherwise, as though they would go on living like that for ever. She gave him all the time that she did not devote to the ambulance, saw that he ate and drank at regular hours, and helped him to turn over with a strength of wrist that would never have been suspected in a woman with such slender arms. At times they chatted, but during the earlier period they more often remained together without speaking. Yet they never seemed to be bored. It was a very calm, reposeful life for both of them—for him crippled by the battle, and for her in her widow’s gown, and with her heart crushed by her bereavement. He had felt somewhat intimidated at first, for he was fully conscious that she was his superior, almost a lady, whereas he had never been anything but a mere peasant and soldier. He could barely read and write. However, he had felt more at his ease on finding that she treated him like an equal, without any display of pride. And this emboldened him to show himself as he really was, intelligent after a fashion, thanks to his sober common-sense. To his astonishment, moreover, he would often feel less coarse and heavy than formerly, full of new ideas that he had never dreamt of before. Was this the outcome of the abominable life that he had been leading for two months past? It was as though he were emerging refined from all his physical and moral sufferings. He regained, however, a still greater measure of self-possession on realising that she did not know much more than he did. Her mother’s death had turned her when very young into a little housewife, with three men, as she put it, to take care of—her grandfather, her father, and her brother—so that she had not had much time for schooling. Reading, writing, a rudimentary knowledge of spelling and cyphering—beyond that she did not go. And, therefore, if she still somewhat intimidated Jean, if she still appeared to him to be above all others of her sex, it was simply because he knew her to be superlatively good, endowed with extraordinary courage, albeit she appeared to be merely a retiring little woman taking her pleasure in the petty duties of life.
They agreed together at once, whilst chatting about Maurice. If she thus devoted herself to Jean it was indeed because she looked upon him as Maurice’s brother and friend, as the worthy protector who had helped and succoured him, and to whom she in her turn was paying a debt of gratitude. She was indeed full of gratitude, of affection which grew and grew as she learnt to know him better, simple and sensible as he was, with a sound, sober head; and he, whom she nursed as though he were a child, was on his side contracting a debt of infinite gratitude towards her and would have kissed her hands for each cup of broth that she brought to him. The bond of affectionate sympathy uniting them grew closer every day in the profound solitude in which they lived, with the same anxieties to trouble them. When they had exhausted Jean’s reminiscences, the particulars which she was never weary of asking for respecting that woeful march from Rheims to Sedan, the same question invariably came back again: What was Maurice doing? Why did he not write? Was Paris completely invested, since no more news had reached them? They had so far received but one letter from the young fellow, written from Rouen three days after he had left them, and in this he had explained how, after a most circuitous journey, he had just reached that town, in view of making his way to Paris. And there had been nothing further for an entire week—he was now altogether silent.
When Dr. Dalichamp had dressed Jean’s leg in the morning he liked to linger there for a few minutes. And he even dropped in occasionally of an evening, when he would stay for a longer time. He was their only link with the world, that vast outside world, now all topsy-turvy with catastrophes. The only news they obtained came through him. He had an ardent, patriotic heart, which overflowed with anger and grief at the news of each defeat; and he spoke of little else but the invading march of the Prussians, who since the battle of Sedan had been gradually spreading over France like the waves of some black, rising sea. Each day brought its grief, and the doctor, quite overwhelmed, would often linger on one of the two chairs beside the bed, relating with trembling gestures how the situation was becoming more and more serious. He often had his pockets full of Belgian newspapers, which he left behind him. And thus after the lapse of weeks the echoes of each successive disaster penetrated to that lonely room, drawing the two poor suffering creatures shut up there yet closer together, in the bonds of a common anguish.
And it was in this wise that Henriette read to Jean, from sundry old newspapers, an account of the events which had taken place around Metz—the great, heroic battles, which at an interval of one day on each occasion had been thrice renewed. These battles were already five weeks old, but Jean was still ignorant of them, and listened to the accounts in the newspapers with his heart oppressed at finding that the same misery and defeat, that had caused him so much suffering, had befallen his comrades over yonder. Whilst Henriette clearly articulated each sentence in the somewhat singsong voice of an attentive school-girl, the melancholy story slowly unfolded itself amid the quivering silence of the room. After Frœschweiler, after Spichern, at the moment when the vanquished First Corps was carrying off the Fifth in its rout, such consternation prevailed that the other corps, écheloned from Metz to Bitche, wavered and fell back, eventually concentrating in advance of the intrenched camp of Metz, on the right bank of the Moselle. But how much precious time had been lost in accomplishing this junction of forces when the retreat on Paris, now bound to prove a difficult operation, ought to have been hastened with all despatch! The Emperor had been obliged to surrender the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine, to whom every one looked for victory, and then on August 14 came the battle of Borny,[40] when the army was attacked just as it was at last making up its mind to cross over to the left bank of the stream. It had two German armies against it—that of Steinmetz, motionless in front of the intrenched camp which it was threatening, and that of Frederick Charles, which, after crossing the river higher up, was approaching along the left bank to cut Bazaine off from the rest of France. The first shots were only fired at three in the afternoon and the victory proved a barren one, for although the French corps remained in possession of their positions, they found themselves immobilised on the two banks of the Moselle, whilst the turning movement of the second German army was completed. Then on the 16th came Rézonville: all the corps at last landed on the left bank of the river, the third and fourth alone lagging behind, belated by the frightful block at the intersection of the roads of Etain and Mars-la-Tour which had been intercepted early in the morning by an audacious attack of the Prussian cavalry and artillery. A slowly fought, confused battle was this engagement of Rézonville, which up to two o’clock in the afternoon Bazaine might yet have won, since he had but a handful of men to overthrow, but which he ended by losing through his inexplicable dread of being cut off from Metz. And it was also a battle of immense extent, spread over leagues of hills and plains, where the French, attacked in front and in flank, performed prodigies of valour to avoid marching forward, giving the enemy the requisite time to concentrate, and themselves helping on the Prussian plan, which was to force them back upon the other bank of the river. At last, on the 18th, after the French had returned to positions in advance of the intrenched camp, there came St. Privât, the supreme struggle, a line of attack over eight miles long, two hundred thousand Germans, with seven hundred guns against one hundred and twenty thousand Frenchmen with only five hundred guns, the Germans facing Germany, the French facing France, as though the invaders had become the invaded, in the singular displacement of forces that had taken place. And after two o’clock the fight became a most terrible mêlée, the Prussian Guard repulsed, cut to pieces, Bazaine long victorious, strong in the unshakeable firmness of his left wing, until towards evening his weaker right wing was obliged to abandon St. Privât, amidst horrible carnage, carrying away with it the entire army, beaten, thrown back under Metz, enclosed henceforth in a circle of iron.
At each moment, whilst Henriette was reading, Jean interrupted her to say: ‘And to think we others had been expecting Bazaine ever since leaving Rheims!’
The marshal’s despatch of the 19th, the morrow of the battle of St. Privât, in which he spoke of resuming his movement of retreat by way of Montmédy—that despatch which had determined the forward march of the army of Châlons—appeared to be simply the commonplace report of a beaten general, desirous of attenuating his defeat. Later on, but only on the 29th, when the news of the approach of an army of succour had reached him through the Prussian lines, he certainly did attempt a last effort, at Noiseville, on the right bank of the Moselle, but so feebly that on September 1, the very day when the army of Châlons was crushed at Sedan, that of Metz fell back, definitely paralysed, dead so to say for France. And the marshal, who, so far, had proved himself merely an indifferent captain, neglecting to march on when the roads were open, but afterwards really hemmed in by superior forces, was now, under the sway of political preoccupations, on the point of becoming a conspirator and a traitor.
In the newspapers, however, that Dr. Dalichamp brought with him, Bazaine still figured as the great man, the brave soldier from whom France yet awaited salvation. Jean asked Henriette to read him certain passages over again, so that he might clearly understand how it was that the third German army, commanded by the Crown Prince of Prussia, had been able to pursue them, whilst the first and the second were blockading Metz, both of them so strong in men and guns that it had been possible to draw and detach from them that fourth army,[41] which, under the orders of the Crown Prince of Saxony, had given the finishing stroke to the disaster of Sedan. Then, having at last grasped these facts, on the bed of pain to which his wound confined him, he forced himself despite everything to be hopeful: ‘So that’s why we weren’t the stronger,’ said he. ‘But no matter, there are figures given there: Bazaine has a hundred thousand men, three hundred thousand rifles, and more than five hundred guns; of course he means to deal them some crushing blow of his invention.’
Henriette nodded, falling in with his opinion so as not to sadden him. She could not follow all these complicated movements of troops, but she felt that misfortune was inevitable. As a rule her voice remained quite clear; she could have gone on reading for hours, simply happy at the thought that she was interesting him. But at times, whilst perusing some narrative of slaughter, she all at once began to stammer and her eyes filled with a sudden flow of tears. Doubtless she had just thought of her husband shot down over yonder, and kicked against the wall by the Bavarian officer.
‘If it grieves you too much, you mustn’t read any more battles to me,’ said Jean in surprise.
But, gentle and complaisant, she at once recovered her self-possession: ‘No, no; excuse me, I assure you that it interests me too.’
One evening, during the early days of October, whilst a violent wind was blowing out of doors, she came back from the ambulance and entered the room in a state of great emotion: ‘Here’s a letter from Maurice!’ she exclaimed. ‘The doctor received it to-day and has just given it to me!’
They both had been growing more and more anxious each morning on finding that the young man still gave no sign of life; and now that for a whole week rumours had been circulating that Paris was completely invested they were quite in despair at receiving no tidings, wondering in their anxiety what could have become of him after his departure from Rouen. His silence was now explained to them, however; the letter which Henriette brought home with her, written to Dr. Dalichamp from Paris, on September 18, the very day when the last trains left for Havre, had made a tremendous round, only reaching its destination by a miracle, after going astray a score of times.
‘Ah! the dear fellow!’ exclaimed Jean in delight. ‘Make haste and read it to me.’
The wind was increasing in violence, and the window was rattling as though it were being battered with a ram. Henriette placed the lamp on the table near the bed, and, seated so close to Jean that her wavy hair brushed against his, she began to read Maurice’s letter. It was very snug and pleasant in that quiet room whilst the tempest was raging out of doors.
In the letter, which was a long one, covering eight pages, Maurice began by explaining that immediately on his arrival in Paris, on September 16, he had been fortunate enough to get enrolled in a Line regiment. Then he reverted to the past, and in extremely feverish language detailed all that he had learnt of the events of that terrible month: Paris growing calmer after the woeful stupor of Weissenburg and Frœschweiler, then swiftly indulging in the hope of revenge, falling into fresh illusions, believing in Bazaine as a commander, in the levée en masse, the imaginary victories, the wholesale slaughtering of Prussian troops which even ministers themselves announced in the Chamber of Deputies. And, all at once, he explained how, on September 3, the thunderbolt of Sedan had fallen upon Paris: every hope shattered, the ignorant, confiding city overwhelmed by the crushing blow of destiny; the shouts of ‘Dethronement! Dethronement!’ bursting forth on the Boulevards that same evening; the short, lugubrious night sitting of the Corps Législatif at which Jules Favre had read out his proposal for the deposition which the people demanded; then, on the morrow, September 4, the Downfall of a world, the Second Empire carried away amid the smash-up of its vices and its faults; the entire population in the streets, a torrent of half a million of men filling the Place de la Concorde, in the broad sunshine, and flowing at last across the bridge to the gates of the Corps Législatif, which were protected merely by a handful of soldiers who raised the butts of their guns in the air. Then the crowd bursting the doors open and invading the Chamber, whence Jules Favre, Gambetta, and other deputies of the Left soon started to proclaim the Republic at the Hôtel-de-Ville, whilst a little door of the Louvre, facing the Place Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, was being set ajar to give egress to the Empress-Regent, who came forth clad in black, accompanied by a single female friend, both of them trembling, fleeing, cowering in a cab which jolted them away, afar from those Tuileries through which the crowd was now streaming. And on that same day Napoleon III. had quitted the inn at Bouillon, where he had spent his first night of exile, on the way to Wilhelmshohe.
With a thoughtful expression on his face Jean interrupted Henriette: ‘So we now have a Republic, then. So much the better if it helps us to lick the Prussians.’ However, he shook his head doubtfully, for during his peasant life he had always been told bad things of the Republic. Besides, it seemed to him that they all ought to agree together, and unite in presence of the enemy. Yet it was certainly necessary that there should be a new government of some kind, since the Empire was shown to be rotten, and nobody would tolerate it any longer.
Then Henriette read the end of the letter, which mentioned the approach of the German armies. On September 13, the day when a delegation of the Government of National Defence had established its quarters at Tours, they had advanced as near as Lagny, on the east of Paris. On the 14th and 15th they were almost at the city gates, at Créteil and Joinville-le-Pont. Yet on the 18th, on the morning when he had written, Maurice still refused to believe in the possibility of completely investing Paris, swayed as he once more was by superb confidence, regarding the projected siege as an insolent, hazardous attempt, which would break down before three weeks were over; relying, too, on the armies of succour which the provinces would undoubtedly send, without mentioning the army of Metz, which he imagined to be already on the march by way of Verdun and Rheims. Nevertheless, the links of the iron chain had met, and encompassed Paris; and now, separated from the whole world, the city had become but the great prison of two millions of living beings, whence came no sound, nothing but a death-like silence.
‘Ah! my God!’ murmured Henriette with anguish at her heart. ‘How long will it all last, and shall we ever see him again?’
A squall was bending the trees afar off, and drawing groan after groan from the old timbers of the farmhouse. If the winter should prove a severe one, how the poor soldiers would suffer, starving and tireless, and fighting in the snow!
‘All the same,’ concluded Jean, ‘it’s a very nice letter, and it’s pleasant to have heard from him! One must never despair.’
Then, day by day, the month of October went by, with the sky ever grey and mournful, and the wind merely abating, to come back before long with darker and darker flights of clouds. Jean’s wound was cicatrising very, very slowly; the drainage-tube did not yet discharge the healthy pus which would have enabled the doctor to remove it, and the wounded man had become greatly enfeebled, but still obstinately refused to undergo any operation, for fear lest he should remain a cripple. And the long hours of resigned waiting which sudden fits of anxiety occasionally disturbed now seemed to lull that little room to sleep; that little, lonely room which the news of the world reached but at long intervals and even then distantly, vaguely, like the visions one tries to recall on awaking from a nightmare. The abominable war was continuing somewhere yonder, with its massacres and disasters, but the exact truth they never learned; they heard nothing but the loud, hollow clamour of slaughtered France. And now the wind was carrying the leaves away under the livid sky, and there were long deep spells of silence over the country-side, athwart which only sped the cawing of the crows, presaging a bitter winter.
The ambulance, which Henriette seldom left except to keep Jean company, had now become a frequent subject of conversation between them. He questioned her when she came in of an evening, learnt to know each of her charges, wished to be informed which of them were dying and which were getting well; and she, with her heart full of all these matters, did not cease speaking of them but recounted in great detail all that she did during the day. ‘Ah!’ she frequently repeated, ‘the poor children, the poor children!’
This was not the ambulance of raging battle, the ambulance where fresh blood flowed, and where the flesh amputated by the surgeon was ruddy and healthy. It was the ambulance infected by hospital gangrene, reeking of fever and death, damp with the exhalations of the patients who were slowly attaining convalescence and of those who were dying by inches. Dr. Dalichamp had had the greatest difficulty in procuring the necessary beds, mattresses, and sheets; in order to provide for his patients, to supply them with bread, meat and dried vegetables, not to mention compresses, bandages and other appliances, he was forced to accomplish a fresh miracle every day. As the Prussians, now in possession of the military hospital of Sedan, refused him everything, even chloroform, he obtained all his supplies from Belgium. Yet he tended German as well as French wounded, and among others a dozen Bavarians who had been picked up at Bazeilles. The foes who had rushed so frantically at one another’s throats were now lying side by side reconciled by their common sufferings. And what an abode of horror and wretchedness that ambulance was—established in two long rooms of the disused school-house, each containing some fifty beds over which streamed the broad pale light admitted by the lofty windows!
Ten days after the battle some more wounded men had been brought thither, forgotten ones who had been discovered in out-of-the-way corners. Four of them had remained since the fight in an empty house at Balan, without any medical attendance, living no one knew how, but probably by the charity of some neighbour; and their wounds were swarming with maggots, and they died poisoned by their filthy sores. A purulence which nothing could check was wafted hither and thither, emptying rows of beds. At the very door an odour of necrosis caught you at the throat. The wounds were suppurating, drop after drop of fœtid pus was exuding from the drainage-tubes. It was often necessary to open the healing flesh again in order to extract splinters of bone, the presence of which had not been previously suspected. Then an abscess would form, some flux which broke out in another part of the body. Exhausted and emaciated, ashen pale, the poor wretches endured every torture. Some of them, prostrate, scarce breathing, lay all day long upon their backs with their eyelids closed and blackened, like corpses already half-decomposed. Others, denied the boon of sleep, agitated by restless insomnia, bathed in sweat, grew wildly excited as though the catastrophe had struck them mad. But whether they were violent or calm, as soon as the shivering of the infectious fever seized them, they were doomed—the end came, the poison triumphed, flying from one to another and carrying them all off in the same stream, as it were, of victorious gangrene.
But there was especially one awful room, the infernal room as it was called, set apart for those whom dysentery, typhus, and variola had attacked. There were many who had the black pox, and these were restless, cried out in ceaseless delirium, and rose up erect in their beds looking like spectres. Others, wounded in the lungs, racked by frightful coughs, were dying of pneumonia. Others again, who howled, obtained no relief except from the refreshing cold water which was allowed to trickle on their wounds. And the hour when their wounds were dressed was the hour which they all waited for, the only time when a little calmness was restored, when the beds were aired, when the sufferers, stiffened by remaining so long without moving, were eased by a change of position. And this was also the dreaded hour, for not a day went by but the doctor, whilst examining the sores, was grieved to notice some bluey specks, the marks of invading gangrene on some poor devil’s skin. The operation would take place on the morrow. Another bit of leg or arm was cut away. And sometimes the gangrene ascended yet higher, and amputation had to be repeated, until the whole limb had been lopped off. Then perhaps the sufferer’s entire body was attacked, became covered with the livid spots of typhus, and he had to be removed, staggering, dizzy, and haggard, into the inferno where he succumbed, his flesh already dead, exhaling a corpse-like smell before he even began to agonise.
Every evening on her return home, Henriette answered Jean’s questions in the same tremulous tone of emotion: ‘Ah, the poor children, the poor children!’
And the particulars she gave were ever the same; each day brought similar torments in that inferno. An arm had been amputated at the shoulder, a foot had been cut off, the resection of a humerus had been performed; but would these means suffice to arrest gangrene or purulent infection? Another man, too, had been buried, more frequently a Frenchman, at times a German. Not a day went by but a coffin, formed of four planks hastily knocked together, left the school-house in the twilight, accompanied by a single ambulance attendant, and often by Henriette herself, unwilling as she was that a fellow-creature should be poked away under the ground like a dog. Two trenches had been dug in the little cemetery of Remilly; and they all slept there side by side, the Germans in the trench on the left, the French in that on the right, reconciled together under the sod.
Though he had never seen them, Jean had ended by becoming interested in some of the wounded and would ask for news of them: ‘And how is “Poor child” getting on to-day?’
‘Poor child’ was a little infantryman, a soldier of the 5th of the Line, who had volunteered for the war and was not yet twenty years of age. The nickname of ‘Poor child’ had stuck to him because he incessantly employed it in referring to himself; and one day on being asked the reason of this, he had answered that his mother had always called him in that fashion. And indeed he was a poor child, for he was dying of pleurisy, brought on by a wound in the left side.
‘Ah! the dear lad,’ said Henriette, who felt quite a motherly affection for him: ‘he’s not at all well, he coughed all day. It pains my heart to hear him.’
‘And your bear—your Gutmann?’ resumed Jean with a faint smile. ‘Is the doctor more hopeful?’
‘Yes, perhaps he will be saved, but he suffers horribly.’
Great as was their compassion, neither of them could speak of Gutmann without a kind of emotional gaiety. On the very first day that the young woman had gone to the ambulance, she had been thunderstruck at sight of this Bavarian soldier, in whom she recognised the red-haired, red-bearded man, with big blue eyes and square-shaped nose, who had carried her off in his arms at Bazeilles, whilst her husband was being shot. He also recognised her, but he could not speak, for a bullet, penetrating by the back of the neck, had carried away half of his tongue. And after recoiling with horror during the first two days, shuddering involuntarily each time that she approached his bed, she had been conquered by the despairing, gentle glances with which he watched her. Was he no longer then the monster with blood-splashed hair, and eyes inverted with rage, who haunted her with such a frightful recollection? She had to make an effort to recognise him in this unfortunate man with such a good-natured air, who proved so docile too, amid his atrocious sufferings. The nature of his affliction, one of by no means frequent occurrence, his sudden distressing infirmity, touched the entire ambulance with compassion. They were not even sure that his name was Gutmann, he was simply called so because the only sound he could manage to utter was a grunt of two syllables which formed something like that name. With regard to other matters, it was surmised that he was married and had children. He must have understood a few words of French, for he replied at times with an energetic nod of the head. Married? Yes, yes! Children? Yes, yes! Moreover, the emotion he displayed one day on seeing some flour had prompted the supposition that he might be a miller. But that was all. Where was the mill? In what far-away village of Bavaria were his little ones and his wife now weeping? Would he die without being identified, without a name, leaving those who belonged to him over yonder for ever waiting for his return?
‘Gutmann kissed his hand to me to-day,’ Henriette told Jean one evening. ‘I can no longer give him anything to drink or render him the slightest service, but he raises his fingers to his lips, with a fervent gesture of gratitude.—You mustn’t smile, it’s too dreadful, it is like being buried before one’s time.’
Towards the end of October Jean’s condition had improved, and the doctor consented to remove the drainage-tube, though he still continued anxious. And yet the wound appeared to be cicatrising pretty swiftly. Jean was then allowed to get up, and would spend long hours walking about the room and sitting at the window, where he was saddened by the sight of the flying clouds. Then he began to feel bored and talked of employing himself in some way, of rendering himself useful at the farm. One of his secret worries was the question of money, for he realised that his two hundred francs must have been entirely spent during the six long weeks that he had lain in bed. If old Fouchard continued showing him a pleasant face it must be that Henriette was paying for his board and lodging. This thought greatly worried him, though he lacked the courage to bring about an explanation; and thus he experienced much relief when it was agreed that he should be passed off as a new hand, entrusted, like Silvine, with a part of the house-duties whilst Prosper attended to the outdoor work.
Hard though the times were, a hand the more was none too many at Fouchard’s, for the old fellow’s affairs were prospering. Whilst the entire country was groaning in agony, bled in every limb, he had contrived to extend his butcher’s business to such a point that he now slaughtered three and four times as many animals as formerly. It was said that he had entered into a superb contract with the Prussians already on August 31. He, who on the 30th had defended his door, gun in hand, refusing to sell even a crust of bread to the men of the Seventh Corps, shouting to them that his house was quite empty, had on the morrow, upon the arrival of the first German soldiers, exhumed all sorts of provisions from his cellars and brought back perfect flocks and herds from the mysterious nooks where he had concealed them. And since then he had become one of the principal purveyors of meat to the German armies, displaying wonderful artfulness in disposing of his stock and in getting paid for it between a couple of requisitions. Others suffered from the often brutal demands of the conquerors, but so far he had not supplied a bushel of flour, a cask of wine, or a quarter of beef without obtaining hard cash in return. Folks talked a good deal about it in Remilly, and it was considered scandalous on the part of a man who had just lost his son in the war, his son whose grave he did not even visit, Silvine being the only person who kept it trim and neat. Yet, all the same, the old fellow was respected for the talent he displayed in making money at a time when others, thought to be very shrewd, were being stripped to the skin. For his own part, on hearing of the tittle-tattle, he shrugged his shoulders in a jeering way, and like the obstinate man he was, whose broad back could well bear the weight of a little abuse, he contented himself with growling: ‘Patriot! patriot! why, I’m more of a patriot than all of them put together! Is it patriotic to gorge the Prussians with food for nothing? I make them pay for everything. You’ll all see, you’ll all see, by-and-by.’
Jean had only been up and about again for a couple of days when he remained too long on his legs and the doctor’s secret fears were realised: the sore reopened, inflammation caused the leg to swell and the wounded man had to take to his bed again. Dalichamp ended by suspecting the presence of a splinter of bone, which the efforts made during a couple of days’ exercise had served to liberate. He searched the wound for it and succeeded in extracting it. But all this caused Jean a great shock and brought on a violent fever, which again exhausted him. Never before indeed had his weakness been so great. Henriette, like the faithful nurse she was, resumed her place in his room, which was becoming quite dismal now that the winter was setting in. They were in the early days of November, the east wind had already brought them a fall of snow, and it was bitterly cold on the tiled floor between those four bare walls. As there was no chimney in the room, they decided to set up a stove, the snorting of which somewhat enlivened their solitude.
The days passed by monotonously, and this first week of Jean’s relapse was certainly both for himself and Henriette the most melancholy of their long, enforced intimacy. Would their sufferings never terminate? Would danger ever and ever reappear, without any hope of an end to all their wretchedness? At every hour their thoughts flew away to Maurice, from whom they had received no further tidings. Yet it was said that others received letters, tiny notes brought them by carrier pigeons. Doubtless some German bullet had killed, aloft in the open sky, the bird that had been bringing them their supply of joy and love. Everything seemed to become more distant, to fade away and disappear in the depths of the early winter. The war rumours now only reached them after long intervals; the few newspapers which Dr. Dalichamp still brought with him were often a week old. Thus their sadness was due less to certain knowledge than to what they did not know but divined, to the long death-cry which, despite everything, they could instinctively hear piercing through the silence of the country around the farm.
One morning the doctor arrived looking terribly upset and with his hands trembling. He pulled a Belgian newspaper from his pocket and flinging it on the bed exclaimed: ‘Ah, my poor friends, France is dead, Bazaine has betrayed us!’
Jean, who was dozing, propped up by a couple of pillows, awoke at once: ‘How, betrayed?’
‘Yes, he has delivered up Metz and the army. It’s the blow of Sedan all over again, and this time it’s the rest of our flesh and our blood that has gone!’ Then taking up the newspaper again he read: ‘One hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, one hundred and fifty-three eagles and colours, five hundred and forty-one field guns, seventy-six mitrailleuses, eight hundred fortress guns, three hundred thousand rifles, two thousand army service vans, the matériel of eighty-five batteries——’
And he continued giving particulars: Marshal Bazaine, shut up with his army in Metz, reduced to a powerless state, making no effort to break through the iron circle that encompassed him; his systematic intercourse with Prince Frederick Charles, his ambiguous, hesitating political combinations, his ambition to play a decisive part which he did not appear, however, to have well determined; then all the complicated negotiations, the despatch of equivocal, lying emissaries to Count von Bismarck, King William, and the Empress-Regent, who ultimately refused to treat with the enemy on the basis of a cession of territory; and then the inevitable catastrophe, destiny completing its work, famine breaking out in Metz, compulsory capitulation, commanders and soldiers reduced to accept the harsh terms of the victors. France no longer had an army![42]
‘Curse it!’ swore Jean in a hollow voice. He did not yet understand everything, but until that moment he had continued in the belief that Bazaine was the great captain, the one possible saviour of France. ‘And what’s to be done now?’ he gasped. ‘What is becoming of them in Paris?’
The doctor, as it happened, was just coming to the news from Paris, which was disastrous. He called attention to the fact that his newspaper bore the date of November 5. Metz had surrendered on October 27, and the news had only been known in Paris on the 30th. After the repulses at Chevilly, Bagneux, and La Malmaison, after the fight and loss of Le Bourget, these tidings from Metz had fallen like a thunderbolt on the despairing population, which was already irritated by the weakness and impotence of the Government of National Defence. And thus, on the morrow, October 31, quite an insurrection had broken out, an immense crowd assembling on the Place de l’Hôtel-de-Ville, invading the building, and detaining as prisoners the members of the Government whom the National Guard did not deliver till late at night and then only because they feared the triumph of the revolutionaries who demanded the Commune.[43] And to this account of the affair the Belgian newspaper appended some extremely insulting remarks concerning the great city of Paris, which civil war was rending when the enemy was at its gates. Was not this the final decomposition, the puddle of blood and mire into which this falling world must ultimately sink?
‘It’s quite true,’ muttered Jean, who was extremely pale, ‘they oughtn’t to fight among themselves when the Prussians are there.’
Henriette, who had so far said nothing, not wishing to meddle in these political matters, was now, however, unable to restrain the cry of her heart. She was thinking of her brother! ‘Good heavens! I hope that Maurice, who is so excitable, won’t mix himself up in all those things.’
There was a pause, and then that ardent patriot, the doctor, resumed: ‘No matter, other soldiers will spring up if there be none left. Metz has surrendered, Paris itself may surrender, but even that won’t be the end of France. The chest’s all right, as our peasants say, and we shall still survive.’
It could be seen, however, that he was forcing himself to be hopeful. He spoke of the new army now being formed on the Loire, whose first operations in the direction of Artenay had not proved very fortunate: however, it would soon become inured to warfare and march to the help of Paris. The doctor was particularly excited by the proclamations in which Gambetta, who had left Paris on October 7, and two days later had established himself at Tours, called all citizens under arms, in language at once so virile and so sensible that the entire country was surrendering itself to his dictatorship. And was it not also proposed to form another army in the North, and yet another one in the East—to make soldiers spring from the ground by the mere power of faith? It was the awakening of the provinces, the unconquerable determination to create and provide everything that was lacking, and to fight on to the last copper and the last drop of blood.
‘Hum!’ the doctor added, as he rose to go away, ‘I myself have often condemned patients who were on their legs again a week afterwards.’
‘Well, make haste and cure me, doctor, so that I may return to my duties,’ said Jean smiling.
However, both he and Henriette were greatly saddened by all these evil tidings. That same evening there was another snowstorm, and next day, when Henriette came back from the ambulance shivering, she announced that Gutmann was dead. The bitter cold was decimating the wounded, emptying rows upon rows of beds. The wretched dumb soldier with the tongueless mouth had agonised during two long days. Henriette had remained at his bedside during his last hours, unable to resist the supplicating glances he had turned towards her. He spoke to her with his tearful eyes, perhaps trying to tell her his real name, and the name of the distant village where his wife and little ones were waiting for him. And he passed away, unknown, sending her with his twitching fingers a last farewell kiss, as though to thank her for all her kindness. She alone accompanied his body to the cemetery, where the frozen earth, the heavy foreign soil mingled with lumps of snow, fell with a dull sound upon his deal coffin.
Then on her return the next evening she exclaimed: ‘”Poor child” is dead!’ For this one she was weeping: ‘If you could only have seen him in his delirium. He called me “Mamma! mamma!” and stretched out such loving arms that I had to take him on my knees. Ah! the poor fellow! suffering had so wasted him that he weighed no heavier than a little boy. And I rocked him in my arms so that he might die relieved—yes, I rocked him whilst he called me mother, though I am but a few years older than he was. He wept, poor fellow, and I could not help weeping myself and am still weeping now.’ Her sobs were suffocating her and she had to pause. ‘When he died,’ she resumed, ‘he stammered that nickname of his: “Poor child! poor child!” Ah, yes indeed, they are poor children, all of them, all those brave fellows, some of them so young, whom your abominable war maims and mangles, whom it condemns to so much suffering before they are laid in the ground!’
And now not a day went by but Henriette came home distracted by some fresh agony; and the sufferings of others seemed to link her and Jean closer together during the sad hours when they were so much alone in that large, peaceful room. And yet those hours were also very sweet ones, for affection had come to them, a fraternal affection, as they thought, between their two hearts which had slowly learned to know one another. He, of such a thoughtful nature, had risen to a higher level during their continuous intimacy; she, finding him so good and reasonable, no longer remembered that he was but one of the humble, and had driven the plough before he carried the knapsack. They agreed together very well, they got on capitally, as Silvine expressed it with her grave smile. No embarrassment had ever arisen between them whilst she nursed him. Invariably clad in the black garments of her widowhood, it seemed as though she had ceased to be a woman.
And yet, during the long afternoons when he found himself alone, Jean could not help pondering on it all. His feeling towards her was one of infinite gratitude, a kind of devout respect that would have impelled him to brush aside any idea of love as sacrilegious. Still he reflected that had he had such a woman as her for his wife, one so loving, so gentle, and so helpful, life would have become an earthly paradise. His earlier misfortunes, the evil years he had spent at Rognes, his disastrous marriage, the tragic death of his wife, all the past came back to him with regretfulness for love, and a vague confused hope of wooing happiness once more. He closed his eyes, allowed himself to sink into a semi-somnolent state, and then confusedly pictured himself at Remilly, married afresh, and owning a field or two, which would suffice to provide for a couple of honest, unaspiring folks. The vision was so slight, so vague, that it could most certainly never have any existence. Indeed, he deemed himself henceforth incapable of any warmer feeling than friendship, and if he were so attached to Henriette it was, he thought, simply because he was Maurice’s brother. Nevertheless, this hazy dream of marriage at last became a consolation as it were, one of those fancies with which one cheers the hours of sadness, though one knows that they can never be realised.
No such thoughts, however, had for a moment presented themselves to Henriette’s mind. The atrocious tragedy of Bazeilles had lacerated her heart, and if any relief, any fresh affection were penetrating it, it could only be without her knowledge, by a stealthy march like that of the germinating seed, whose hidden labour there is nothing to reveal. She was ignorant even of the pleasure she at last took in remaining for hours beside Jean’s bed, reading to him those newspapers which brought them, however, only sadness. Never had the slightest warmth come to her hand when it brushed against his; never even had thought of the morrow left her in a dreamy mood, with a wish to be loved again. And yet it was only in that room that she forgot, and felt consoled. When she was there, busying herself with her gentle activeness, her heart grew calmer; it seemed to her as though her brother would soon come back again, that everything would be arranged, and that it would end by their all being happy together, never to part again. And she would speak of all this without feeling in any wise embarrassed, so natural did it seem to her that things should end in this way; and never did she think of questioning herself any further, utterly ignorant as she was that she had chastely bestowed her heart.
One afternoon, however, as she was about to return to the ambulance, the terror that froze her at sight of a Prussian captain and two other officers whom she found in the kitchen revealed to her the great affection that she felt for Jean. These officers had evidently heard of the wounded man’s presence at the farm, and had come to fetch him—he would inevitably be dragged away, carried off into captivity in the depths of some German fortress. She listened, trembling, with her heart beating loudly.
The captain, a stout man, who spoke French with scarcely any foreign accent, was violently upbraiding old Fouchard: ‘It cannot go on like this,’ he said; ‘you are playing the fool with us! I came in person to warn you that should it occur again I shall make you responsible, and take steps to punish you.’
The old man, although he was really very cool and collected, affected the bewilderment of one who fails to understand, with his mouth agape and his arms hanging: ‘What is it, sir, what is it?’
‘Don’t get my blood up; you know very well that the three cows you sold us last Sunday were rotten—yes, rotten—or rather diseased; killed by some disgusting complaint—for the meat has quite poisoned my men, and two of them must now be dead.’
At this Fouchard put on an air of virtuous indignation: ‘Rotten? My cows rotten! Such beautiful meat; meat fit to be given to an accouchée to restore her to health and strength!’ Then he whimpered and thumped himself on the chest, and declared that he was an honest man, and would rather cut off some of his own flesh than sell any bad meat. He was known, and for thirty years that he had been a butcher there was nobody in the world who could say that he had not always given good weight and good quality. ‘Those cows were as healthy as they could be, sir, and if your men have had the stomach-ache, it must surely be because they ate too much; unless some villains dropped some poison in the pot——’
He poured forth such a flood of words, indulged in such ridiculous suppositions that the captain, quite beside himself, hastily interrupted him: ‘That will do! You are warned, so take care! And now another matter: We suspect all of you here, in this village, of lending assistance to the Francs-tireurs of the Dieulet Woods, who killed another of our sentries only the night before last. You hear me? well, mind you take care!’
When the Prussians had gone away old Fouchard shrugged his shoulders and sneered with profound contempt. Diseased animals indeed? why of course he sold them diseased animals, he didn’t sell them anything else! All the carrion that the peasants brought him, whatever died of disease and was picked up in the ditches—wasn’t that good enough for those dirty hounds? Turning towards Henriette, whose fears had been relieved on discovering what purpose it was that had brought the Prussians there, he tipped her a wink and muttered with a chuckle of triumph: ‘And to think, little one, that some folks say I’m not a patriot. Why don’t they do as I do, cram those brutes with bad meat and pocket their silver? Not a patriot, indeed! Why, I shall have killed more of them with my rotten cows than many soldiers will have killed with their chassepots!’
However, when Jean came to hear of the affair he felt very uneasy. If the German authorities suspected the inhabitants of Remilly of harbouring the Francs-tireurs of the Dieulet Woods they might at any time make a perquisition and discover him. The idea of compromising those who had sheltered him, of causing Henriette the slightest worry, was more than he could bear, and he was anxious to leave the farm at once. So pressing, however, were the young woman’s entreaties, that she prevailed on him to stay a few days longer, for his wound was cicatrising but slowly, and his legs were not yet strong enough to enable him to join one of the campaigning regiments either in the North or on the Loire.
Then, until mid-December, came the most nipping, dismal, heartrending days of their solitude. The cold had become so intense that the stove no longer warmed the big, bare room. Whenever they looked out of the window at the thick snow covering the ground they bethought themselves of Maurice, buried over yonder in frozen, lifeless Paris, whence no certain tidings reached them. The same questions were ever on their lips: What was he doing? Why did he give no sign of life? They did not dare to express their horrible fears—he might be wounded, ill, perhaps dead. The vague, scanty information which from time to time still reached them through the newspapers was not of a nature to reassure them. After various reports of so-called successful sorties, invariably contradicted as time went on, there had come a rumour of a great victory gained at Champigny, on December 2, by General Ducrot. But they afterwards learned that he had been obliged to recross the Marne on the morrow, abandoning the positions he had conquered to the foe. And now at each hour the bonds that were strangling Paris pressed more and more tightly round her, famine was beginning, potatoes as well as cattle and horses had been requisitioned, gas was no longer supplied to private consumers, and the streets were soon plunged at night-time into perfect darkness, through which, ere long, the bombarding shells were to wing their lurid flight. And now Jean and Henriette never warmed themselves, never ate without being haunted by thoughts of Maurice and those two millions of living beings shut up in that gigantic tomb.
From all sides, moreover, from Northern as from Central France, the tidings were becoming more grievous. In the North the Twenty-second Army Corps, formed of Mobile Guards, depôt companies, officers and soldiers who had escaped the disasters of Sedan and Metz, had been obliged to abandon Amiens and fall back in the direction of Arras; and Rouen in its turn had just fallen into the enemy’s hands, no serious effort to defend it having been made by that handful of demoralised, disbanded men. In Central France, the victory of Coulmiers, gained on November 3 by the Army of the Loire, had given birth to ardent hopes: Orleans having been reoccupied and the Bavarians put to flight, a forward march would ensue by way of Etampes, and Paris would speedily be delivered. But on December 5, Prince Frederick Charles recaptured Orleans, and cut the Army of the Loire in two, three of its corps withdrawing towards Vierzon and Bourges whilst the two others under the orders of General Chanzy fell back, step by step, as far as Le Mans, during an entire week of incessant marching and fighting. The Prussians were everywhere—at Dijon as well as at Dieppe, on the road to Le Mans as well as at Vierzon. And then, too, almost every morning there resounded the distant crash of some stronghold capitulating under the shells. Strasburg had succumbed already on September 28, after forty-six days of siege and thirty-seven days of bombardment, its ramparts pounded, its monuments riddled by nearly two hundred thousand projectiles. The citadel of Laon had previously blown up, Toul also had capitulated; and then came a dismal procession of surrenders:—Soissons, with one hundred and twenty-eight guns; Schelestadt, with one hundred and twenty; Verdun, which mounted one hundred and thirty-six; Neuf Brisach, one hundred; La Fère, seventy; Montmédy, sixty-five. Thionville, mounting its two hundred and fifty cannon, was in flames; Phalsburg, defended by five and sixty guns, only opened its gates during the twelfth week of its furious resistance. It seemed as though the whole of France were burning, crumbling, and sinking amid the rageful cannonade.[44]
One morning when Jean insisted on starting off Henriette caught hold of his hands and detained him with a despairing grasp. ‘No, no,’ said she, ‘do not leave me all alone, I beg of you; you are still too weak, wait for a few days, only for a few days longer; I promise that I will let you start when the doctor says you are strong enough to fight.’
< < < Chapter III
Chapter V > > >
French Literature – Children Books – Émile Zola – The Downfall (La Débâcle) – Contents
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