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.'