We were walking up the Avenue des Champs-Élysées with Dr. V----, trying
to read the story of the siege of Paris in the shell-scarred walls and
the sidewalks plowed up by grape-shot. Just before we reached the
Circle, the doctor stopped and, pointing out to me one of the big
corner houses so pompously grouped around the Arc de Triomphe,[266-2]
told me this story.
You see those four closed windows above the balcony? During the first
day of August, that terrible August of last year, so full of storms and
disaster, I was called there to attend a very severe case of apoplexy.
The patient was Colonel Jouve, once a cuirassier of the First
Empire,[266-3] and now an old gentleman mad about glory and patriotism.
At the outbreak of war he had gone to live in the Champs-Élysées, in an
apartment with a balcony. Can you guess why? That he might be present
at the triumphant return of our troops. Poor old boy! The news of
Wissemburg reached him just as he was leaving the table. When he read
the name of Napoleon at the foot of that bulletin of defeat, he had a
stroke and fell.
I found the old cuirassier stretched out on the carpet with his face
bleeding and motionless as if struck by a heavy blow. If he had been
standing, he would have seemed a tall man. Stretched out as he was, he
seemed immense. He had a fine face, magnificent teeth, a thick head of
curly white hair, and though eighty years old did not look more than
sixty. Near him his granddaughter knelt weeping. There was a strong
family resemblance between them. Seeing them side by side, you thought
of two beautiful Greek medals struck from the same matrix, but one old
and worn and the other bright and clear-cut with all the brilliancy and
smoothness of a first impression.
I found the child's grief very touching. Daughter and granddaughter of
a soldier (her father was on Mac Mahon's[267-1] staff), the sight of
this splendid old man stretched out before her had suggested to her
another scene, no less terrible. I did all I could to reassure her, but
in my own mind I was not any too hopeful. There was no question that
the stroke had been apoplectic, and that is the sort of thing from
which at eighty one does not recover. As it turned out, the sick man
remained in a state of coma for three days.
Meanwhile, the news of the battle of Reichshoffen reached Paris. You
will remember in what form that news reached us first. Until evening we
all believed that we had won a great victory, with 20,000 Prussians
killed and the Crown Prince captured. Through some miracle, some
magnetic current, an echo of this national rejoicing must have reached
the sufferer, deaf and speechless and unable to move though he was.
That evening when I went to his bedside, I found a different man. His
eye was clear, his tongue was no longer thick, and he had strength
enough to smile at me and to stammer, "Vic-to-ry!"
"Yes, Colonel, a great victory!"
And the more details I gave him of Mac Mahon's brilliant success, the
more his face relaxed and brightened.
As I left, I found the little girl waiting for me outside the door. She
was pale and was crying.
"But he is going to get well," I said, taking her hands in mine.
The poor child had hardly courage to answer me. The true story of the
battle of Reichshoffen had just appeared on the bulletin boards. Mac
Mahon was retreating and the army cut to pieces. Surprised and shocked,
our eyes met, she thinking of her father and I of my patient. Surely he
would succumb to this new blow; and yet what could we do? Leave him the
joy, the illusion that had brought him back to life? That meant keeping
him alive with lies.
"Very well, I will tell them," said the child, and quickly wiping away
her tears she went back to her grandfather's room with a smile on her
face.
It was not an easy task which she had set herself. For the first few
days she had no great difficulty. The old gentleman's head was very
weak and he was as easily deceived as a child, but as his strength came
back his mind became clearer. He wanted to be kept in touch with troop
movements and to have the War Department Bulletin read to him. It was
pathetic to see the little girl, night and day, bent over her map of
Germany, sticking in pins with little flags on them, and trying hard to
invent to the last detail a successful campaign: Bazaine advancing on
Berlin, Frossard penetrating Bavaria, and Mac Mahon reaching the
Baltic.
To work this all out she needed help, and I helped her as much as I
could. But the one who helped her most was her grandfather himself. He
had conquered Germany so many times during the First Empire, he knew
every move. "This will be the enemy's next move, here," he would say,
"and ours will be this." His anticipations were always justified by the
event, which made him not a little proud.
Unhappily, no matter how fast we took cities and won battles, we never
went fast enough for him. The old fellow was insatiable. Each day as I
came in, I learned of some new success.
"Doctor, we have taken Mayence,"[269-1] said the little girl coming to
meet me with a smile that went to your heart, and through the door I
heard his glad salutation, "We're getting on! In another week we shall
be in Berlin."
At that time the Prussians were only a week's march from Paris. At
first we wondered whether we had not better carry our patient into the
country. Then we reflected that as soon as he was taken out of the
house, he would learn the true state of affairs, and I decided that he
was still too feeble, too stunned by his stroke, to let him find out
the truth. So we decided to stay where we were.
The first day of the Prussian occupation, I climbed the stairs to his
apartment, I remember, with a heavy heart at the thought of all the
closed doors of Paris and the fighting going on under her walls, in the
suburbs which were now on the frontier. I found the old gentleman
sitting up in bed jubilant and proud.
"Well," he said, "the siege has begun."