occupied by the troops. They pass through and do not make any stay.
Nevertheless, two or three times I have heard at night the cavalry
patrols skirt the walls of the Hermitage. Often, when the shooting
season was near, the forest rangers would thus pass by, pausing for an
instant under the gateway to call out a loud “Good-night” to the keeper’s
little home. The dogs would bark and sniff at the kennel railings, then
a door opened, and old Guillard brought out a large jug of sparkling
wine, in which a ray of moonlight danced, and without dismounting they
drank it down. How different from these ghostly patrols, whose very
approach makes my heart beat! They pass by in silence. Only from time
to time the clink of a sword, the neigh of a horse, a few low-spoken
words in a harsh and barbarous language, jar on the stillness of the air.
This effectually drives away sleep for the rest of the night.
[Picture: “Old Guillard brought out a large jug of sparkling wine.”] In
the daytime the clear, shrill notes of the bugles come in gusts to the
little garden, with the beating of dull and discordant drums, marking the
tune in a jerky, singular rhythm, which seems to accompany a cannibal’s
war-dance. It is to the sound of these barbarous drums that all the
northern races, the Goths, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, are advancing over our
magnificent roads of the _Ile-de-France_, the glorious autumn weather
dazzling them by the unaccustomed brilliancy of its sun and sky. During
this time I live as unobtrusively as possible. I no longer light my
fire, in order to avoid the smoke which gives light and life to the roof.
I do not even go out into the orchard. I am sure that already the grass
is growing across my threshold, and that the invading forest is hemming
me closely in. Lastly, by way of precaution, I have killed my cock.
That was a cruel sacrifice. I like that abrupt awakening at dawn, that
call to life and work, which the cock gives forth to the surrounding
country, drawing himself up for the battle with a great flapping of
wings. But the Prussians might have heard him . . . Now I have only
three or four quiet and silent hens in my poultry-yard, and a few
rabbits, who are not likely to betray me.
[Picture: . . I have killed my cock]
* * * * *
[Picture: Robert writing by the light of a small fire]
_September_ 21_st_, 22_d_, _and_ 23_d_.
I am writing this at night, by the glimmer of a small turf-fire—a sort of
brazier burning on the flags in a corner of the room. I have neither oil
nor candles. It is raining. On all sides of the Hermitage I hear the
water streaming over miles of foliage. The wind blows. My revolver and
a gun loaded with buckshot are ready by my side, and I await the return
of the ruffians, for they have already been here.
Their first visit took place three days ago, in the afternoon of the
21st. The sound of heavy steps on the pavement of the cloister made me
peep out of my attic window, and I saw five or six hulking fellows in
forage-caps, with ruddy faces and low, brutal countenances, like those of
Goudeloup’s murderers. They spoke in hushed voices, timidly advancing,
like cowardly plunderers. If I had been able to fire at them, I should
have put them to flight, but once the alarm given, they would return in
greater numbers. I waited. Owing to the neglected look of the house,
and thanks to the vines and ivy, that gave it the aspect of a ruin, the
ruffians have passed by without stopping. And yet the last of them bent
down for a moment to the keyhole. Standing behind my door, revolver in
hand, I heard his breathing while I held my own breath. Perhaps he had
caught sight of the glimmer of the dying cinders of my fire. However
that may be, the wretch did not go away, and began to rummage in my
keyhole with his bayonet. Fortunately his comrades called out to
him:—Hartmann . . . Hartman . . .
[Picture: Enemy soldier trying the keyhole]
He went off to rejoin them, and I was able to look into the enclosure
through the attic window.
[Picture: “They began drinking out of their caps.]
They had just broken open the door of the keeper’s house. Poor mother
Guillard! it was indeed lost trouble to have given me her key. Soon
after, shouts of joy told me that they had discovered the cellar. They
brought out a barrel of wine into the orchard, so as to drink it more at
their ease, and hoisted it on to a wide stone bench. Having staved in
the barrel, they began drinking out of their caps and hands, shouting and
jostling each other. The bent heads disappeared in the cask, and came
out smeared with dregs, while others greedily took their place. The thin
new wine, made of small, sour black grapes, soon intoxicated all these
beer-drinkers. Some of them sang and danced round the barrel, while the
others re-entered the keeper’s house, and as they found nothing tempting
there to satisfy their craving for pillage, they threw the furniture out
of the window, and set fire to a walnut cupboard, whose dry and time-worn
shelves blazed up like a bundle of straw. At last they went off, reeling
through the driving rain. In front of the gateway there was a quarrel.
I saw the flash of bayonets, a man fall heavily into the mud and rise up
again covered with blood, his uniform all stained with the
yellow-coloured soil of the quarries. And to think that France is at the
mercy of these brutes! . . .
The next day the same party returned. I understood by that, they had not
mentioned their windfall, and I was a little reassured. However, I am a
complete prisoner. I dare not stir from the principal room. Near at
hand, in a little wood-shed, I have fastened up Colaquet, whose galloping
might have betrayed me. The poor animal patiently bears his captivity,
sleeps part of the day, and at times gives himself a good shake,
surprised at the loss of his freedom . . . At dusk the Prussians depart,
more intoxicated than on the evening before.
To-day I have seen no one. But the cask is not yet empty, and I expect
them again.
[Picture: Plundered wine-barrels]
* * * * *
[Picture: Prussians firing on Paris]
_September_ 24_th_.
. . . This morning a furious cannonading is taking place. They are
fighting before Paris. The siege is begun. It has given me a feeling of
pain and anger impossible to describe. They are firing on Paris, the
wretches! It is the intellect of the whole world that they attack. Oh,
why am I not there with the others? . . .
Instantaneously all yesterday’s apprehensions have vanished. I became
ashamed of my mole-like existence. For the last week I have drunk
nothing but the water from the cistern, but now, I hardly know wherefore,
I went out on purpose to fill my jug at the cloister well, and it seemed
to do me good to run some kind of risk. I looked into the Guillards’
house as I passed by, and my anger increased at the sight of this humble
home ruthlessly pillaged, the furniture destroyed and burnt, the
window-panes broken. I could not help thinking of the fate of Paris if
they enter it . . .
[Picture: Robert peering through his window] I had just closed my door
when I heard footsteps in the enclosure. It was one of those rascals who
came the other day, the identical one who had so long rummaged at my
lock. He looked if there was any wine left in the cask, and then, having
filled his flask, began drinking, sprawling at full length on the stone
bench, his head resting on his hands. He sang while drinking; his young
fresh voice rang through the cloister with a song about the month of May,
in which the words—_Mein lieb_, _lieb Mai_—were constantly repeated. He
was just opposite my attic window, within easy reach of my revolver. I
looked at him for a long time, asking myself if I should kill him. In
the direction of Paris the cannon still thundered, filling my heart with
terrible anguish . . . After all, perhaps by killing this fellow I
should be saving some of my own people now fighting on the ramparts . . .
[Picture: Soldier drinking and singing]
I do not know whether my unseen glance and the intense hatred I was
feeling towards him, did not at last disturb him and put him on his
guard; but all of a sudden he raised his head, a head covered with thick
bristling hair, the eyes of an albino, and red moustaches, showing a
grinning set of cruel-looking teeth. For one moment he threw a
suspicious glance around him, and having rebuckled his belt and refilled
his flask, he went off. As he passed in front of my window, I had my
finger on the trigger. Well, no; I could not do it. To kill for the
sake of killing, with such certainty, and so little personal danger, was
beyond me. It is not such an easy thing as one fancies, to take a
fellow-creature’s life in cold blood.
Once outside the precincts of the Hermitage, and having shaken off his
undefined sensation of fear, the rascal again took up his song, and I
heard him getting farther and farther away, giving forth to the forest
his “_Mein lieb_, _lieb Mai_ . . .”
Sing away, sing away, my lad! you have had a narrow escape of never
seeing again your sweet month of May . . .
[Picture: Soldier walks off singing]
* * * * *
[Picture: The approach of Autumn]
_October_ . . .
What day, what date can it be? I have completely lost count. My brain
is all confused. Yet it seems to me that it must be October. The
monotonous days get shorter and shorter, the wind colder, and the foliage
of the large trees around me becomes thinner at each gust of wind. The
sound of incessant cannonading in the direction of Paris, makes a
lugubrious accompaniment to my everyday life, a deep, low bass, always
mingling in my thoughts. I think the Prussians must have their hands
full over there, for my marauders have not reappeared. I no longer even
hear the long, slow rumbling of the ammunition waggons, nor the rolling
of drums, which used to resound on the roads outside the forest. So I
have again lighted the fire in the large room, and I walk openly about in
the orchard.
From day to day the difficulties of life increase. I have nothing left,
neither bread, wine, nor lamp-oil. A month ago, with the sunshine, the
house well aired, and the comfort of warmth, these privations were
bearable, but now they seem very hard. In the poultry-yard there are
only two hens left; always hiding under the rafters to escape the
continual driving rain. I make faggots with the branches of the
fruit-trees, which, brittle and no longer protected by their leaves, snap
off and fall to the ground. The apple-trees have golden moss, the
plum-trees long streaks of light-coloured gum under their resinous bark,
and they make large, bright fires, throwing a sunshine into their warmth.
I have also gathered the last apples, all reddened by the breath of the
first frost, and I have made a poor kind of cider, which I drink instead
of wine. With my bread I have been less successful. I tried, with the
unfortunate Goudeloup’s flour, to knead some dough in the bottom of a
cupboard drawer which I used as a trough; and then, under the ashes on
the bricks, I made as well as I could, thick cakes, of which the outsides
were burnt, and the insides hardly done enough. They reminded me of
those little round bits of dough that, as a child, I held in the tongs,
and made into rolls about the size of a lozenge.
From time to time I get a windfall. For instance, the other day, as I
was rummaging in the keeper’s house, I found on a damp and mouldy
cupboard shelf a few bottles of walnut-spirit that had been overlooked by
the plunderers; and another time I found a large sack, which I opened
with a beating heart, thinking it contained potatoes. I was quite
startled on pulling out from it magpies’ beaks, vipers’ heads, dry and
dust-coloured, squirrels’ tails, with their bushy red fur, and
field-mice’s tails, as delicate as silken twist. These are the keeper’s
perquisites, as they are given so much for the head and tail of
destructive animals. They therefore keep these trophies of the chase
very carefully, as they are paid for them by Government once a month.
—It always buys tobacco, as good old Guillard used to say.
[Picture: Robert exploring cupboards] I must confess that at this moment
I would willingly have given up all these old bones in exchange for a few
rolls of tobacco. I have only enough to last me two or three days, and
that is really the only privation I dread. To me the forest is an
inexhaustible larder. When my poultry-yard is empty, I shall be able to
snare some of those fine cock-pheasants that come round the Hermitage to
pick up the grains of buckwheat hidden in the wet soil. But tobacco!
tobacco! . . .
I read a little, and have even tried to paint. It was a few mornings
ago, in the light of a beautiful red sun, shining through the air thick
with mist; under the shed was a heap of apples, tempting me by their
lovely colouring of all shades, from the tender green of young leaves to
the ardent glow of autumnal foliage. But I was not able to work for
long. In a few minutes the sky became overcast. It was raining in
torrents. And large flocks of wild geese, with outstretched necks and
beating against the wind, passed over the house, announcing a hard winter
and the approach of snow by the white down shaken from their wings.
[Picture: Robert working on a picture]
* * * * *
[Picture: Wild geese over the house]
* * * * *
[Picture: Deserted roads in Champrosay]
_The same month_ . . .
To-day I made a long expedition to Champrosay. Reassured by the
stillness around me, I harnessed Colaquet in good time, and we started.
Failing the sight of a human face, I longed to gaze on roads and houses.
[Picture: Damaged door in house] I found the country as deserted and
silent, and far more dreary than before. The Prussians have only passed
through, but they have left their mark everywhere. It seemed the very
picture of an Algerian village after a swarm of locusts, a bare,
devastated, devoured, and riddled scene; the houses with doors and
windows all wide open, even to the little iron gates of the kennels and
the latticed shutters of the rabbit-hutches. I went into some of the
houses . . . Our peasants are rather like the Arabs. They are seen in
the fields, in the courtyards, on their thresholds, but they do not often
admit a Parisian inside their doors. Now I could thoroughly search into
these unknown lives, these forsaken homes. Their habits still clung to
them, and could be traced in the mantelpieces dark with soot, the hanging
ropes in the courtyards where the washing is dried, the now empty nails
driven into the walls, and on the walnut table, by the marks idly cut
with a knife, and the notches made between each mouthful. All those
village households were alike—I came upon one, however, that possessed
one luxury more than the others—a parlour, or at least what was intended
for a parlour. In a small brick-floored room behind the kitchen, a green
paper had been put up, coloured glass had been let into the window, and a
pair of gilt fire-dogs, a round tea-table, and a large arm-chair covered
with worn chintz, had been placed in it. The ambition of a peasant’s
lifetime could be felt there. Certainly that man had said to himself,
“When I shall be old, when I shall have slaved and laboured hard, I will
become a _bourgeois_. I will have a parlour like the mayor, and a
comfortable arm-chair to sit in.” Poor devil! They have made a fine
mess of his parlour!
[Picture: A parlour in an abandoned house]
I left Champrosay sad at heart. The desolation of those abandoned houses
had struck and chilled me like the cold damp falling from the walls of a
cellar. Instead of going straight hack to the Hermitage, I went a long
way round by the woods. I felt a craving for air and Nature.
Unluckily all this side of the forest bears an aspect of wildness and
neglect, which is not very inspiriting. Old and now unused quarries have
left there piles of rocks, and a scattering of pebbles, which make the
soil both dry and barren. Not a single blade of grass is to be seen on
the paths. Wild stocks, brambles, and ivy alone spring up from out of
these large gaping holes, clinging by all their roots to the uneven edges
of the stones, and through the bare and interwoven branches, the quarries
appear still deeper. For a short time we had been winding our way among
the rocks. Suddenly Colaquet stopped short, and his ears began to
tremble with fear. What is the matter with him? I lean forward and look
. . . It is the body of a Prussian soldier that has been pitched down
head-foremost into the quarry. I must confess it gave me a shudder. Had
it been on the highway or in the plain, this corpse would not have
horrified me so much. Where there are so many soldiers and so many guns,
the probability of death seems ever present; but here in this hollow, in
this out-of-the-way part of the wood, it bore an appearance of murder and
mystery . . . Looking more attentively, I thought I recognised my robber
of the other day, he who was singing so lustily about the month of May.
Has he been killed by a peasant? But where could the peasant have come
from? There is nobody left at Champrosay, Minville, or the Meillottes.
More probably it is the result of some drunken quarrel between comrades,
like the one I saw from the windows of the Hermitage . . .
I went home very quickly; and all through the evening I was haunted by
the idea that my only guest, my only companion in the whole of the dreary
forest, was that dead body stretched out on the red sand of the quarries
. . .
[Picture: Overgrown quarry]
* * * * *
[Picture: Robert gathering wood]
_Unknown date_ . . .
It is raining—it is cold. The sky is dark. I go to and fro in the
Hermitage, tying up faggots and making bread, while the cannon thunders
incessantly, and by a strange phenomenon disturbs the earth even more
than the air. With my prison labour, my selfish and silent life in the
midst of such a terrible drama, I compare myself to an ant, busily
groping about on the surface of the soil, deaf to the sounds of humanity
around it, all too great for its insignificance, and which surround
without troubling it. From time to time, to divert my thoughts, I take a
journey to Champrosay without any fear of meeting the Prussians, who have
decidedly abandoned the Corbeil road, and are making their descent on
Paris by way of Melun and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Once or twice,
however, a horse’s gallop obliged me to take refuge in some shed, and I
saw a rapid and hurried bearer of despatches riding across the country as
if merely to unite it to headquarters, to take possession of the road,
and mark it with the hoofs of the Prussian horses.
This deserted village, with its wide-open houses, interests and charms me
like a sort of Pompeii. I wander through and examine it. I amuse myself
by reconstructing the lives of these absent ones . . .
[Picture: Prussian despatch rider]
* * * * *
[Picture: Champrosay washing-pond]
_Another day_ . . .
. . . Something strange is going on around me. I am not alone in the
forest. There is evidently some one hiding near here, and some one who
kills. To-day, in the washing-pond of Champrosay, I found a second
corpse. A Saxon was stretched out there, only his fair head visible
above the water, lying on the damp stone ledge. Moreover, he was well
hidden away, thrust into oblivion in this small pond surrounded by
brushwood, as securely as that other one over there, in the quarry in the
wood. I had by chance taken Colaquet to drink there. The sight of that
long, motionless body startled me. Were it not for the pool of blood
which stained the stones round his head, and mingled with the reflection
of the purple sunset in the water, it might have been supposed that he
was asleep, so quiet and peaceful were his features. I have often
noticed that expression on the face of the dead. For the space of a
brief moment there is something about them more beautiful than life: a
solemn peace, a breathless slumber, a renewal of youth in the whole
being, which seems like a pause between the agitations of life and the
surprises of the unknown world opening before them.
[Picture: Colaquet about to drink] While I was contemplating the
unfortunate creature, night began to close in. In the clear and mellow
twilight a great softness reigned over everything. The roads, already
lighter than the sky, stretched out straight and regular. The forest
spread out in dark masses, and beneath me a small vineyard path was
faintly lighted up by a ray of moonlight. Over all Nature, reposing
after the day’s labour—on the silent fields, the hushed river, the
peaceful landscape gently fading into night—there was the same calm, the
same grand peace that rested on the face of the dead soldier.
[Picture: Saxon corpse in the pond]
* * * * *
[Picture: River scene in the park]
_Another day_.
. . . Between Champrosay and the Meillottes, in the middle of a park
which skirts the Seine, there stands a mansion built in the style of
Louis XV. of the period of the Marquis d’Etiolles and Madame de
Pompadour. Two thick straight rows of trees slope down to the river,
showing, in summer-time, at the end of the arch of green foliage, a
mirror of blue water blended with a blue sky. All the darkness of the
old avenues seems to escape through these two vistas of light. At the
entrance near the gates, a wide moat surrounding the lawns, a circle of
moss-covered lime-trees and curbstones grazed by carriage-wheels, all
combine to show the antiquity of this quiet old place. A fancy took me,
and the other day I went in there.
By a winding path I reached the front of the steps. The doors were open,
the shutters broken. On the ground-floor, in the large drawing-rooms,
where the walls were all covered with white carved panels, not a single
piece of furniture was left. Nothing but straw, and on the façade,
between the stone carving of the balconies, were fresh marks and
scratches, showing how the furniture had been thrown out through the
windows. The billiard-room only was untouched. The Prussian officers
are like our own, they are very fond of playing billiards. Only these
gentlemen had amused themselves by making a target of a large mirror, and
with its scratches, its chipped fragments, its small round holes looking
black in the light, the mirror seemed like a frozen lake cut and furrowed
by sharp skates. Inside, the wind rushed through the large windows
battered down by bayonets and butt-ends of rifles, scattering and
sweeping in the dead leaves on to the floors. Outside, it dashed under
the green-leafed aisle, rocking a forgotten boat on the pond, full of
broken twigs and golden-coloured willow-leaves.
I walked to the end of the avenues. There, at the end of the terrace, is
a summer-house of red bricks overlooking the river; it is buried in the
trees, and the Prussians have probably not seen it. The door, however,
is ajar. I found a little sitting-room inside, hung with a flowery
chintz, which seemed the continuation of the Virginian jasmine climbing
through the latticed shutters; a piano, some scattered music, a book
forgotten on a bamboo stool in front of the view over the Seine, and in
the mysterious light of the closed shutters, the elegant and refined
portrait of a woman looked out of a golden frame. Wife or maiden, who
can tell? Dark, tall, with an ingenuous look, an enigmatic smile, and
eyes the colour of thought—those Parisian eyes that change with each
passing emotion. It is the first face I have seen for two months, and is
so living, so proud, so youthful in its seriousness! The impression this
picture has caused me is singular . . . I dreamt of the summer
afternoons that she had spent there, seeking the solitude and freshness
of this corner of the park. The book, the music, spoke of a refined
nature; and there lingered in the twilight of this little nook a perfume
of the past summer, of the vanished woman, and of a tender grace left
only in the smile of the portrait.
[Picture: Mansion in the park]
[Picture: Portrait in summer-house] Who is she? Where is she? I have
never seen her. I shall in all probability never meet her. And yet,
without knowing wherefore, I feel less lonely as I gaze at her. I read
the book which she was reading, made happy by its being marked. And
since then, not a day passes without my thinking of her. It seems to me
that if I had this portrait here, the Hermitage would be less desolate,
but to complete the charm of the face, one ought also to have the
climbing jasmine of the summer-house, the rushes at the water’s edge, and
the little wild plants of the moat, whose bitter aroma comes back to me
as I write these lines.
[Picture: Sitting-room containing portrait]
* * * * *
[Picture: Dead Prussian in ditch]
_One evening_, _on returning home_.