The shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained
in the drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated, or astride of garden
chairs, were smoking outside the door of the house, around a table laden
with cups and liqueur glasses.
Their lighted cigars shone like eyes in the darkness, which was
gradually becoming more dense. They had been talking about a frightful
accident which had occurred the night before--two men and three women
drowned in the river before the eyes of the guests.
General de G----remarked:
“Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.
“Horrible, that well-known word, means much more than terrible. A
frightful accident like this affects, upsets, terrifies; it does not
horrify. In order that we should experience horror, something more is
needed than emotion, something more than the spectacle of a dreadful
death; there must be a shuddering sense of mystery, or a sensation of
abnormal terror, more than natural. A man who dies, even under the most
tragic circumstances, does not excite horror; a field of battle is not
horrible; blood is not horrible; the vilest crimes are rarely horrible.
“Here are two personal examples which have shown me what is the meaning
of horror.
“It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating toward Pont-Audemer,
after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting of about twenty
thousand men, twenty thousand routed men, disbanded, demoralized,
exhausted, were going to disband at Havre.
“The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not
eaten anything since the day before. They were fleeing rapidly, the
Prussians not being far off.
“All the Norman country, sombre, dotted with the shadows of the trees
surrounding the farms, stretched out beneath a black, heavy, threatening
sky.
“Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight but the confused sound,
undefined though rapid, of a marching throng, an endless tramping,
mingled with the vague clink of tin bowls or swords. The men, bent,
round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged themselves
along, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed stride.
“The skin of their hands froze to the butt ends of their muskets, for it
was freezing hard that night. I frequently saw a little soldier take off
his shoes in order to walk barefoot, as his shoes hurt his weary feet;
and at every step he left a track of blood. Then, after some time, he
would sit down in a field for a few minutes' rest, and he never got up
again. Every man who sat down was a dead man.
“Should we have left behind us those poor, exhausted soldiers, who
fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had
somewhat refreshed their stiffened legs? But scarcely had they ceased
to move, and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their veins,
than an unconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to the ground,
closed their eyes, and paralyzed in one second this overworked human
mechanism. And they gradually sank down, their foreheads on their knees,
without, however, falling over, for their loins and their limbs became
as hard and immovable as wood, impossible to bend or to stand upright.
“And the rest of us, more robust, kept straggling on, chilled to the
marrow, advancing by a kind of inertia through the night, through the
snow, through that cold and deadly country, crushed by pain, by
defeat, by despair, above all overcome by the abominable sensation of
abandonment, of the end, of death, of nothingness.
“I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man,
old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.
“They were looking for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy.
The word 'spy' at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, and
they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice exclaimed: 'He
must be shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling from utter
prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their
guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger
which urges on a mob to massacre.
“I wanted to speak. I was at that time in command of a battalion; but
they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers;
they would even have shot me.
“One of the gendarmes said: 'He has been following us for the three
last days. He has been asking information from every one about the
artillery.'”