had all disappeared. When I went downstairs I kept meeting Prussians,
for the unfortunate proprietor had been invaded compulsorily by the
German army. He looked at each soldier and at every officer, trying to
find out whether he were not in presence of the one who had killed his
poor boy. He did not tell me this, but it was my idea. It seemed to me
that such was his thought and such the meaning of his gaze.
In the vehicle in which I drove to the station the kind man had put a
basket of food. He also gave me a copy of the sonnet and a tracing of
his son’s photograph.
I left the desolate couple with the deepest emotion, and I kissed the
girl on taking our departure. Soubise and I did not exchange a word on
our journey to the railway station, but we were both preoccupied with
the same distressing thoughts.
At the station we found that the Germans were masters there too. I asked
for a first-class compartment to ourselves, or for a _coupé_, whatever
they liked, provided we were alone.
I could not make myself understood.
I saw a man, oiling the wheels of the carriages, who looked to me like a
Frenchman. I was not mistaken. He was an old man who had been kept on,
partly out of charity and partly because he knew every nook and corner,
and, being Alsatian, spoke German. This good man took me to the booking
office, and explained my wish to have a first-class compartment to
myself. The man who had charge of the ticket office burst out laughing.
There was neither first nor second class, he said. It was a German
train, and I should have to travel like every one else. The wheel-oiler
turned purple with rage, which he quickly suppressed. (He had to keep
his place. His consumptive wife was nursing their son, who had just been
sent home from the hospital with his leg cut off and the wound not yet
healed up. There were so many in the hospital.) All this he told me as
he took me to the station-master. The latter spoke French very well, but
he was not at all like the other German officers I had met.
He scarcely saluted me, and when I expressed my desire he replied
curtly:
“It is impossible. Two places shall be reserved for you in the officers’
carriage.”
“But that is what I want to avoid,” I exclaimed. “I do not want to
travel with German officers.”
“Well then, you shall be put with German soldiers,” he growled angrily,
and, putting on his hat, he went out slamming the door. I remained
there, amazed and confused by the insolence of this ignoble brute. I
turned so pale, it appears, and the blue of my eyes became so clear,
that Soubise, who was acquainted with my fits of anger, was very much
alarmed.
“Do be calm, Madame, I implore!” she said. “We are two women alone in
the midst of hostile people. If they liked to harm us they could, and we
must accomplish the aim and object of our journey; we must see little
Maurice again.”
She was very clever, this charming Mlle. Soubise, and her little speech
had the desired effect. To see the child again was my aim and object. I
calmed down, and vowed that I would not allow myself to get angry during
this journey, which promised to be fertile in incidents, and I almost
kept my word. I left the station-master’s office, and found the poor
Alsatian waiting at the door. I gave him a couple of louis, which he hid
away quickly, and then shook my hand as though he would shake it off.
“You ought not to have that so visible, Madame,” he said, pointing to
the little bag I had hanging at my side, “it is very dangerous.”
I thanked him, but did not pay any attention to his advice. As the train
was about to start we entered the only first-class compartment there
was; in it were two young German officers. They saluted, and I took this
as a good omen. The train whistled, and I thought what good luck we had,
as no one else would get in! Well, the wheels had not turned round ten
times when the door opened violently and five German officers leaped
into our carriage.
We were nine then, and what torture it was! The station-master waved a
farewell to one of the officers, and both of them burst out laughing as
they looked at us. I glanced at the station-master’s friend. He was a
surgeon-major, and was wearing the ambulance badge on his sleeve. His
wide face was congested, and a ring of sandy bushy beard surrounded the
lower part of it. Two little bright, light-coloured eyes in perpetual
movement lit up this ruddy face and gave him a sly look. He was broad-
shouldered and thick-set, and gave one the idea of having strength
without nerves. The horrid man was still laughing when the station and
its master were far away from us, but what the other one had said was
evidently very droll.
I was in a corner seat, with Soubise opposite me. A young German officer
sat beside me, and the other young officer was next to my friend. They
were both very gentle and polite, and one of them was quite delightful
in his youthful charm.
The surgeon-major took off his helmet. He was very bald, and had a very
small, stubborn-looking forehead. He began to talk in a loud voice to
the other officers.
Our two young bodyguards took very little part in the conversation.
Among the others was a tall, affected young man, whom they addressed as
baron. He was slender, very elegant, and very strong. When he saw that
we did not understand German he spoke to us in English. But Soubise was
too timid to answer, and I speak English very badly. He therefore
resigned himself regretfully to talking French.
He was agreeable, too agreeable; he certainly had not bad manners, but
he was deficient in tact. I made him understand this by turning my face
towards the scenery we were passing.
We were very much absorbed in our thoughts, and had been travelling for
a long time, when I suddenly felt suffocated by smoke which was filling
the carriage. I looked round, and saw that the surgeon-major had lighted
his pipe, and, with his eyes half closed, was sending up puffs of smoke
to the ceiling.
My eyes were smarting, and I was choking with indignation, so much so
that I was seized with a fit of coughing, which I exaggerated in order
to attract the attention of the impolite man. The baron, however,
slapped him on the knee and endeavoured to make him comprehend that the
smoke inconvenienced me. He answered by an insult which I did not
understand, shrugged his shoulders, and continued to smoke. Exasperated
by this, I lowered the window on my side. The intense cold made itself
felt in the carriage, but I preferred that to the nauseous smoke of the
pipe. Suddenly the surgeon-major got up, putting his hand to his ear,
which I then saw was filled with cotton-wool. He swore like an ox-
driver, and, pushing past every one and stepping on my feet and on
Soubise’s, he shut the window violently, cursing and swearing all the
time quite uselessly, for I did not understand him. He went back to his
seat, continued his pipe, and sent out enormous clouds of smoke in the
most insolent way. The baron and the two young Germans who had been the
first in the carriage appeared to ask him something and then to
remonstrate with him, but he evidently told them to mind their own
business and began to abuse them. Very much calmer myself on seeing the
increasing anger of the disagreeable man, and very much amused by his
earache, I again opened the window. He got up again, furious, showed me
his ear and his swollen cheek, and I caught the word “periostitis” in
the explanation he gave me on shutting the window again and threatening
me. I then made him understand that I had a weak chest, and that the
smoke made me cough.
The baron acted as my interpreter, and explained this to him; but it was
easy to see that he did not care a bit about that, and he once more took
up his favourite attitude and his pipe. I left him in peace for five
minutes, during which time he was able to imagine himself triumphant,
and then with a sudden jerk of my elbow I broke the pane of glass.
Stupefaction was depicted on the major’s face, and he became livid. He
got straight up, but the two young men rose at the same time, whilst the
baron burst out laughing in the most brutal manner.
The surgeon moved a step in our direction, but he found a rampart before
him; another officer had joined the two young men, and he was a strong,
hardy-looking fellow, just cut out for an obstacle. I do not know what
he said to the surgeon-major, but it was something clear and decisive.
The latter, not knowing how to expend his anger, turned on the baron,
who was still laughing, and abused him so violently that the latter
calmed down suddenly and answered in such a way that I quite understood
the two men were calling each other out. That affected me but little,
anyhow. They might very well kill each other, these two men, for they
were equally ill-mannered.
The carriage was now quiet and icy cold, for the wind blew in wildly
through the broken pane. The sun had set. The sky was getting cloudy. It
was about half-past five, and we were approaching Tergnier. The major
had changed seats with his friend, in order to shelter his ear as much
as possible. He kept moaning like a half-dead cow.
Suddenly the repeated whistling of a distant locomotive made us listen
attentively. We then heard two, three, and four crackers bursting under
our wheels. We could perfectly well feel the efforts the engine-driver
was making to slacken speed, but before he could succeed we were thrown
against each other by a frightful shock. There were cracks and creaks,
the hiccoughs of the locomotive spitting out its smoke in irregular
fits, desperate cries, shouts, oaths, sudden downfalls, a lull, then a
thick smoke, broken by the flames of a fire. Our carriage was standing
up, like a horse kicking up its hind legs. It was impossible to get our
balance again.
Who was wounded and who was not wounded? We were nine in the
compartment. For my part, I fancied that all my bones were broken. I
moved one leg and then I tried the other. Then, delighted at finding
them unbroken, I tried my arms in the same way. I had nothing broken,
and neither had Soubise. She had bitten her tongue, and it was bleeding,
and this had frightened me. She did not seem to understand anything. The
tremendous shaking had made her dizzy, and she lost her memory for some
days. I had a rather deep scratch between my eyes. I had not had time to
stretch out my arms, and my forehead had knocked against the hilt of the
sword which the officer seated by Soubise had been holding upright.
Assistance arrived from all sides.
For some time the door of our compartment could not be opened.
Darkness had come on when it finally yielded, and a lantern shone feebly
on our poor broken-up carriage.
I looked round for our one bag, but on finding it I let it go
immediately, for my hand was red with blood. Whose blood was it?
Three men did not move, and one of them was the major. His face looked
to me livid. I closed my eyes, in order not to know, and I let the man
who had come to our aid pull me out of the compartment. One of the young
officers got out after me. He took Soubise, who was almost in a fainting
condition, from his friend. The imbecile baron then got out; his
shoulder was out of joint. A doctor came forward among the rescuers. The
baron held his arm out to him, telling him at the same time to pull it,
which he did at once. The French doctor took off the officer’s cloak,
told two of the railway-men to hold him, and then, pushing against him
himself, pulled at the poor arm. The baron was very pale, and gave a low
whistle. When the arm was back in its place, the doctor shook the
baron’s other hand. “Cristi!” he said, “I must have hurt you very much.
You are most courageous.” The German saluted, and I helped him on again
with his cloak.
The doctor was then fetched away, and I saw that he was taken back to
our compartment. I shuddered in spite of myself. We were now able to
find out what had been the cause of our accident. A locomotive attached
to two vans of coal had been shunting on to a side line in order to let
us pass, when one of the vans got off the rails, and the locomotive
tired its lungs with whistling the alarm, whilst men ran to meet us,
scattering crackers. Everything had been in vain, and we had run against
the overturned van.
What were we to do? The roads, softened by the recent wet weather, were
all broken up by the cannons. We were about four miles from Tergnier,
and a thin penetrating rain was making our clothes stick to our bodies.
There were four carriages, but they were for the wounded. Other
carriages would come, but there were the dead to be carried away. An
improvised litter was just being borne along by two workmen. The major
was lying on it, so livid that I clenched my hands until my nails
entered the flesh. One of the officers wanted to question the doctor who
was following.
“Oh no!” I exclaimed. “Please, please do not. I do not want to know. The
poor fellow!”
I stopped my ears, as though some one was about to shout out something
horrible to me, and I never knew his fate.
We were obliged to resign ourselves to setting out on foot. We went
about two kilometres as bravely as possible, and then I stopped, quite
exhausted. The mud which clung to our shoes made these very heavy. The
effort we had to make at every step to get our feet out of the mire
tired us out. I sat down on a milestone, and declared that I would not
go any farther.
My sweet companion wept: the two young German officers who had acted as
bodyguards made a seat for me by crossing their hands, and so we went
nearly another mile. My companion could not walk any farther. I offered
her my place, but she refused it.
“Well then, let us wait here!” I said, and, quite at the end of our
strength, we rested against a little broken tree.
It was now night, and such a cold night!
Soubise and I huddled close together, trying to keep each other warm. I
began to fall asleep, seeing before my eyes the wounded men of
Châtillon, who had died seated against the little shrubs. I did not want
to move again, and the torpor seemed to me thoroughly delicious.
A cart passed by, however, on its way to Tergnier. One of the young men
hailed it, and when a price was agreed upon I felt myself picked up from
the ground, lifted into the vehicle, and carried along by the jerky,
rolling movement of two loose wheels, which climbed the hills, sank into
the mire, and jumped over the heaps of stones, whilst the driver whipped
up his beasts and urged them on with his voice. He had a “don’t care,
let what will happen” way of driving, which was characteristic of those
days.
I was aware of all this in my semi-sleep, for I was not really asleep,
but I did not want to answer any questions. I gave myself up to this
prostration of my whole being with a certain amount of enjoyment.
A rough jerk, however, indicated that we had arrived at Tergnier. The
cart had drawn up at the hotel, and we had to get out. I pretended to be
still sleeping heavily. But it was no use, for I had to wake up. The two
young men helped me up to my room.
I asked Soubise to arrange about the payment of the cart before the
departure of our excellent young companions, who were sorry to leave us.
I signed for each of them a voucher, on a sheet of the hotel paper, for
a photograph. Only one of them ever claimed it. This was six years
later, and I sent it to him.
The Tergnier hotel could only give us one room. I let Soubise go to bed,
and I slept in an arm-chair, dressed as I was.
The following morning I asked about a train for Cateau, but was told
that there was no train.
We had to work marvels to procure a vehicle, but finally Dr. Meunier, or
Mesnier, agreed to lend us a two-wheeled conveyance. That was something,
but there was no horse. The poor doctor’s horse had been requisitioned
by the enemy. A wheelwright for an exorbitant price let me have a colt
that had never been in the shafts, and which went wild when the harness
was put on. The poor little beast calmed down after being well lashed,
but his wildness then changed into stubbornness. He stood still on his
four legs, which were trembling furiously, and refused to move. With his
neck stretched towards the ground, his eye fixed, and his nostrils
dilating, he would not budge any more than a stake in the earth. Two men
then held the light carriage back; the halter was taken off the colt’s
neck; he shook his head for an instant, and, thinking himself free and
without any impediments, began to advance. The men were scarcely holding
the vehicle. He gave two little kicks, and then began to trot. Oh, it
was only a very short trot. A boy then stopped him, some carrots were
given to him, his mane was stroked, and the halter was put on again. He
stopped suddenly, but the boy, jumping into the gig and holding the
reins lightly, spoke to him and encouraged him to move on. The colt, not
feeling any resistance, began to trot along for about a quarter of an
hour, and then came back to us at the door of the hotel.
I had to leave a deposit of four hundred francs with the notary of the
place, in case the colt should die.
Ah, what a journey that was with the boy, Soubise, and me sitting close
together in that little gig, the wheels of which creaked at every jolt!
The unhappy colt was steaming like a _pot-au-feu_ when the lid is
raised. We started at eleven in the morning, and when we had to stop,
because the poor beast could not go any farther, it was five in the
afternoon, and we had not gone five miles. Oh, that poor colt, he was
certainly to be pitied! We were not very heavy, all three of us
together, but we were too much for him. We were just a few yards away
from a sordid-looking house. I knocked, and an old woman, enormous in
size, opened the door.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Hospitality for an hour and shelter for our horse.”
She looked out on to the road and saw our turn-out.
“Hey, father!” She called out in a husky voice, “come and look here!”
A stout man, quite as stout as she was, but older, came hobbling heavily
along. She pointed to the gig, so oddly equipped, and he burst out
laughing and said to me in an insolent way:
“Well, what do you want?”
I repeated my phrase: “Hospitality for an hour,” &c. &c.
“Perhaps we can do it, but it’ll want paying for.”
I showed him twenty francs. The old woman gave him a nudge.
“Oh, but in these times, you know, it’s well worth forty francs.”
“Very good,” I said, “agreed; forty francs.”
He then let me go inside the house with Mlle. Soubise, and sent his son
towards the boy, who was coming along holding the colt by his mane. He
had taken off the halter very considerately and thrown my rug over its
steaming sides. On reaching the house the poor beast was quickly
unharnessed and taken into a little enclosure, at the far end of which a
few badly-joined planks served as a stable for an old mule, which was
aroused by the fat woman with kicks and turned out into the enclosure.
The colt took its place, and when I asked for some oats for it she
replied:
“Perhaps we could get it some, but that isn’t included in the forty
francs.”
“Very well,” I said, and I gave our boy five francs to fetch the oats,
but the old shrew took the money from him and handed it to her lad,
saying:
“You go; you know where to find them, and come back quick.”
Our boy remained with the colt, drying it and rubbing it down as well as
he could. I went back to the house, where I found my charming Soubise
with her sleeves turned up and her delicate hands washing two glasses
and two plates for us. I asked if it would be possible to have some
eggs.
“Yes, but——”
I interrupted our monstrous hostess.
“Don’t tire yourself, Madame, I beg,” I said. “It is understood that the
forty francs are your tip, and that I am to pay for everything else.”
She was confused for a moment, shaking her head and trying to find
words, but I asked her to give me the eggs. She brought me five eggs,
and I began to make an omelette, as my culinary glory is an omelette.
The water was nauseous, so we drank cider. I sent for the boy and made
them serve him something to eat in our presence, for I was afraid that
the ogress would give him too economical a meal.
When I paid the fabulous bill of seventy-five francs, inclusive of
course of the forty francs, the matron put on her spectacles, and taking
one of the gold pieces, looked at it on one side, then on the other,
made it ring on a plate and then on the ground. She did this with each
of the three gold pieces. I could not help laughing.
“Oh, there’s nothing to laugh at,” she grunted. “For the last six months
we’ve had nothing but thieves here.”
“And you know something about theft!” I said.
She looked at me, trying to make out what I meant, but the laughing
expression in my eyes took away her suspicions. This was very fortunate,
as they were people capable of doing us harm. I had taken the
precaution, when sitting down to table, of putting my revolver near me.
“You know how to fire that?” asked the lame man.
“Oh yes, I shoot very well,” I answered, though it was not true.
Our steed was then put in again in a few seconds, and we proceeded on
our way. The colt appeared to be quite joyful. He stamped, kicked a
little, and began to go at a pretty steady pace.
Our disagreeable hosts had indicated the way to St. Quentin, and we set
off, after our poor colt had made various attempts at standing still. I
was dead tired and fell asleep, but after about an hour the vehicle
stopped abruptly and the wretched beast began to snort and put his back
up, supporting himself on his four stiff, trembling legs.
It had been a gloomy day, and a lowering sky full of tears seemed to be
falling slowly over the earth. We had stopped in the middle of a field
which had been ploughed up all over by the heavy wheels of cannons. The
rest of the ground had been trampled by horses’ feet and the cold had
hardened the little ridges of earth, leaving icicles here and there,
which glittered dismally in the thick atmosphere.
We got down from the vehicle, to try to discover what was making our
little animal tremble in this way. I gave a cry of horror, for, only
about five yards away, some dogs were pulling wildly at a dead body,
half of which was still underground. It was a soldier, and fortunately
one of the enemy. I took the whip from our young driver and lashed the
horrid animals as hard as I could. They moved away for a second, showing
their teeth, and then returned to their voracious and abominable work,
growling sullenly at us.
Our boy got down and led the snorting pony by the bridle. We went on
with some difficulty, trying to find the road in these devastated
plains.
Darkness came over us, and it was icy cold.
The moon feebly pushed aside her veils and shone over the landscape with
a wan, sad light. I was half dead with fright. It seemed to me that the
silence was broken by cries from underground, and every little mound of
earth appeared to me to be a head.
Mlle. Soubise was crying, with her face hidden in her hands. After going
along for half an hour, we saw in the distance a little group of people
coming along carrying lanterns. I went towards them, as I wanted to find
out which way to go. I was embarrassed on getting nearer to them, for I
could hear sobs. I saw a poor woman, who was very corpulent, being
helped along by a young priest. The whole of her body was shaken by her
fits of grief. She was followed by two sub-officers and by three other
persons. I let her pass by, and then questioned those who were following
her. I was told that she was looking for the bodies of her husband and
son, who had both been killed a few days before on the St. Quentin
plains. She came each day at dusk, in order to avoid general curiosity,
but she had not yet met with any success. It was hoped that she would
find them this time, as one of these sub-officers, who had just left the
hospital, was taking her to the spot where he had seen the poor woman’s
husband fall, mortally wounded. He had fallen there himself, and had
been picked up by the ambulance people.
I thanked these persons, who showed me the sad road we must take, the
best one there was, through the cemetery, which was still warm under the
ice.
We could now distinguish groups of people searching about, and it was
all so horrible that it made me want to scream out.
Suddenly the boy who was driving us pulled my coat-sleeve.
“Oh, Madame,” he said, “look at that scoundrel stealing.”
I looked, and saw a man lying down full length, with a large bag near
him. He had a dark lantern, which he held towards the ground. He then
got up, looked round him, for his outline could be seen distinctly on
the horizon, and began his work again.