In the middle of the broad, fertile plain that stretches away in the
direction of the Rhine, a mile and a quarter from Mülhausen, the camp
was pitched. In the fitful light of the overcast August day, beneath
the lowering sky that was filled with heavy drifting clouds, the long
lines of squat white shelter-tents seemed to cower closer to the
ground, and the muskets, stacked at regular intervals along the
regimental fronts, made little spots of brightness, while over all the
sentries with loaded pieces kept watch and ward, motionless as statues,
straining their eyes to pierce the purplish mists that lay on the
horizon and showed where the mighty river ran.
It was about five o’clock when they had come in from Belfort; it was
now eight, and the men had only just received their rations. There
could be no distribution of wood, however, the wagons having gone
astray, and it had therefore been impossible for them to make fires and
warm their soup. They had consequently been obliged to content
themselves as best they might, washing down their dry hard-tack with
copious draughts of brandy, a proceeding that was not calculated
greatly to help their tired legs after their long march. Near the
canteen, however, behind the stacks of muskets, there were two soldiers
pertinaciously endeavoring to elicit a blaze from a small pile of green
wood, the trunks of some small trees that they had chopped down with
their sword-bayonets, and that were obstinately determined not to burn.
The cloud of thick, black smoke, rising slowly in the evening air,
added to the general cheerlessness of the scene.
There were but twelve thousand men there, all of the 7th corps that the
general, Felix Douay, had with him at the time. The 1st division had
been ordered to Froeschwiller the day before; the 3d was still at
Lyons, and it had been decided to leave Belfort and hurry to the front
with the 2d division, the reserve artillery, and an incomplete division
of cavalry. Fires had been seen at Lorrach. The _sous-préfet_ at
Schelestadt had sent a telegram announcing that the Prussians were
preparing to pass the Rhine at Markolsheim. The general did not like
his unsupported position on the extreme right, where he was cut off
from communication with the other corps, and his movement in the
direction of the frontier had been accelerated by the intelligence he
had received the day before of the disastrous surprise at Wissembourg.
Even if he should not be called on to face the enemy on his own front,
he felt that he was likely at any moment to be ordered to march to the
relief of the 1st corps. There must be fighting going on, away down the
river near Froeschwiller, on that dark and threatening Saturday, that
ominous 6th of August; there was premonition of it in the sultry air,
and the stray puffs of wind passed shudderingly over the camp as if
fraught with tidings of impending evil. And for two days the division
had believed that it was marching forth to battle; the men had expected
to find the Prussians in their front, at the termination of their
forced march from Belfort to Mülhausen.
The day was drawing to an end, and from a remote corner of the camp the
rattling drums and the shrill bugles sounded retreat, the sound dying
away faintly in the distance on the still air of evening. Jean
Macquart, who had been securing the tent and driving the pegs home,
rose to his feet. When it began to be rumored that there was to be war
he had left Rognes, the scene of the bloody drama in which he had lost
his wife, Françoise and the acres that she brought him; he had
re-enlisted at the age of thirty-nine, and been assigned to the 106th
of the line, of which they were at that time filling up the _cadres_,
with his old rank of corporal, and there were moments when he could not
help wondering how it ever came about that he, who after Solferino had
been so glad to quit the service and cease endangering his own and
other people’s lives, was again wearing the _capote_ of the infantry
man. But what is a man to do, when he has neither trade nor calling,
neither wife, house, nor home, and his heart is heavy with mingled rage
and sorrow? As well go and have a shot at the enemy, if they come where
they are not wanted. And he remembered his old battle cry: Ah! _bon
sang_! if he had no longer heart for honest toil, he would go and
defend her, his country, the old land of France!
When Jean was on his legs he cast a look about the camp, where the
summons of the drums and bugles, taken up by one command after another,
produced a momentary bustle, the conclusion of the business of the day.
Some men were running to take their places in the ranks, while others,
already half asleep, arose and stretched their stiff limbs with an air
of exasperated weariness. He stood waiting patiently for roll-call,
with that cheerful imperturbability and determination to make the best
of everything that made him the good soldier that he was. His comrades
were accustomed to say of him that if he had only had education he
would have made his mark. He could just barely read and write, and his
aspirations did not rise even so high as to a sergeantcy. Once a
peasant, always a peasant.
But he found something to interest him in the fire of green wood that
was still smoldering and sending up dense volumes of smoke, and he
stepped up to speak to the two men who were busying themselves over it,
Loubet and Lapoulle, both members of his squad.
“Quit that! You are stifling the whole camp.”
Loubet, a lean, active fellow and something of a wag, replied:
“It will burn, corporal; I assure you it will—why don’t you blow, you!”
And by way of encouragement he bestowed a kick on Lapoulle, a colossus
of a man, who was on his knees puffing away with might and main, his
cheeks distended till they were like wine-skins, his face red and
swollen, and his eyes starting from their orbits and streaming with
tears. Two other men of the squad, Chouteau and Pache, the former
stretched at length upon his back like a man who appreciates the
delight of idleness, and the latter engrossed in the occupation of
putting a patch on his trousers, laughed long and loud at the
ridiculous expression on the face of their comrade, the brutish
Lapoulle.
Jean did not interfere to check their merriment. Perhaps the time was
at hand when they would not have much occasion for laughter, and he,
with all his seriousness and his humdrum, literal way of taking things,
did not consider that it was part of his duty to be melancholy,
preferring rather to close his eyes or look the other way when his men
were enjoying themselves. But his attention was attracted to a second
group not far away, another soldier of his squad, Maurice Levasseur,
who had been conversing earnestly for near an hour with a civilian, a
red-haired gentleman who was apparently about thirty-six years old,
with an intelligent, honest face, illuminated by a pair of big
protruding blue eyes, evidently the eyes of a near-sighted man. They
had been joined by an artilleryman, a quartermaster-sergeant from the
reserves, a knowing, self-satisfied-looking person with brown mustache
and imperial, and the three stood talking like old friends, unmindful
of what was going on about them.
In the kindness of his heart, in order to save them a reprimand, if not
something worse, Jean stepped up to them and said:
“You had better be going, sir. It is past retreat, and if the
lieutenant should see you—” Maurice did not permit him to conclude his
sentence:
“Stay where you are, Weiss,” he said, and turning to the corporal,
curtly added: “This gentleman is my brother-in-law. He has a pass from
the colonel, who is acquainted with him.”
What business had he to interfere with other people’s affairs, that
peasant whose hands were still reeking of the manure-heap? _He_ was a
lawyer, had been admitted to the bar the preceding autumn, had enlisted
as a volunteer and been received into the 106th without the formality
of passing through the recruiting station, thanks to the favor of the
colonel; it was true that he had condescended to carry a musket, but
from the very start he had been conscious of a feeling of aversion and
rebellion toward that ignorant clown under whose command he was.
“Very well,” Jean tranquilly replied; “don’t blame me if your friend
finds his way to the guardhouse.”
Thereon he turned and went away, assured that Maurice had not been
lying, for the colonel, M. de Vineuil, with his commanding, high-bred
manner and thick white mustache bisecting his long yellow face, passed
by just then and saluted Weiss and the soldier with a smile. The
colonel pursued his way at a good round pace toward a farmhouse that
was visible off to the right among the plum trees, a few hundred feet
away, where the staff had taken up their quarters for the night. No one
could say whether the general commanding the 7th corps was there or
not; he was in deep affliction on account of the death of his brother,
slain in the action at Wissembourg. The brigadier, however,
Bourgain-Desfeuilles, in whose command the 106th was, was certain to be
there, brawling as loud as ever, and trundling his fat body about on
his short, pudgy legs, with his red nose and rubicund face, vouchers
for the good dinners he had eaten, and not likely ever to become
top-heavy by reason of excessive weight in his upper story. There was a
stir and movement about the farmhouse that seemed to be momentarily
increasing; couriers and orderlies were arriving and departing every
minute; they were awaiting there, with feverish anxiety of impatience,
the belated dispatches which should advise them of the result of the
battle that everyone, all that long August day, had felt to be
imminent. Where had it been fought? what had been the issue? As night
closed in and darkness shrouded the scene, a foreboding sense of
calamity seemed to settle down upon the orchard, upon the scattered
stacks of grain about the stables, and spread, and envelop them in
waves of inky blackness. It was said, also, that a Prussian spy had
been caught roaming about the camp, and that he had been taken to the
house to be examined by the general. Perhaps Colonel de Vineuil had
received a telegram of some kind, that he was in such great haste.
Meantime Maurice had resumed his conversation with his brother-in-law
Weiss and his cousin Honoré Fouchard, the quartermaster-sergeant.
Retreat, commencing in the remote distance, then gradually swelling in
volume as it drew near with its blare and rattle, reached them, passed
them, and died away in the solemn stillness of the twilight; they
seemed to be quite unconscious of it. The young man was grandson to a
hero of the Grand Army, and had first seen the light at Chêne-Populeux,
where his father, not caring to tread the path of glory, had held an
ill-paid position as collector of taxes. His mother, a peasant, had
died in giving him birth, him and his twin sister Henriette, who at an
early age had become a second mother to him, and that he was now what
he was, a private in the ranks, was owing entirely to his own
imprudence, the headlong dissipation of a weak and enthusiastic nature,
his money squandered and his substance wasted on women, cards, the
thousand follies of the all-devouring minotaur, Paris, when he had
concluded his law studies there and his relatives had impoverished
themselves to make a gentleman of him. His conduct had brought his
father to the grave; his sister, when he had stripped her of her little
all, had been so fortunate as to find a husband in that excellent young
fellow Weiss, who had long held the position of accountant in the great
sugar refinery at Chêne-Populeux, and was now foreman for M.
Delaherche, one of the chief cloth manufacturers of Sedan. And Maurice,
always cheered and encouraged when he saw a prospect of amendment in
himself, and equally disheartened when his good resolves failed him and
he relapsed, generous and enthusiastic but without steadiness of
purpose, a weathercock that shifted with every varying breath of
impulse, now believed that experience had done its work and taught him
the error of his ways. He was a small, light-complexioned man, with a
high, well-developed forehead, small nose, and retreating chin, and a
pair of attractive gray eyes in a face that indicated intelligence;
there were times when his mind seemed to lack balance.
Weiss, on the eve of the commencement of hostilities, had found that
there were family matters that made it necessary for him to visit
Mülhausen, and had made a hurried trip to that city. That he had been
able to employ the good offices of Colonel de Vineuil to afford him an
opportunity of shaking hands with his brother-in-law was owing to the
circumstance that that officer was own uncle to young Mme. Delaherche,
a pretty young widow whom the cloth manufacturer had married the year
previous, and whom Maurice and Henriette, thanks to their being
neighbors, had known as a girl. In addition to the colonel, moreover,
Maurice had discovered that the captain of his company, Beaudoin, was
an acquaintance of Gilberte, Delaherche’s young wife; report even had
it that she and the captain had been on terms of intimacy in the days
when she was Mme. Maginot, living at Mézière, wife of M. Maginot, the
timber inspector.
“Give Henriette a good kiss for me, Weiss,” said the young man, who
loved his sister passionately. “Tell her that she shall have no reason
to complain of me, that I wish her to be proud of her brother.”
Tears rose to his eyes at the remembrance of his misdeeds. The
brother-in-law, who was also deeply affected, ended the painful scene
by turning to Honoré Fouchard, the artilleryman.
“The first time I am anywhere in the neighborhood,” he said, “I will
run up to Remilly and tell Uncle Fouchard that I saw you and that you
are well.”
Uncle Fouchard, a peasant, who owned a bit of land and plied the trade
of itinerant butcher, serving his customers from a cart, was a brother
of Henriette’s and Maurice’s mother. He lived at Remilly, in a house
perched upon a high hill, about four miles from Sedan.
“Good!” Honoré calmly answered; “the father don’t worry his head a
great deal on my account, but go there all the same if you feel
inclined.”
At that moment there was a movement over in the direction of the
farmhouse, and they beheld the straggler, the man who had been arrested
as a spy, come forth, free, accompanied only by a single officer. He
had likely had papers to show, or had trumped up a story of some kind,
for they were simply expelling him from the camp. In the darkening
twilight, and at the distance they were, they could not make him out
distinctly, only a big, square-shouldered fellow with a rough shock of
reddish hair. And yet Maurice gave vent to an exclamation of surprise.
“Honoré! look there. If one wouldn’t swear he was the Prussian—you
know, Goliah!”
The name made the artilleryman start as if he had been shot; he
strained his blazing eyes to follow the receding shape. Goliah
Steinberg, the journeyman butcher, the man who had set him and his
father by the ears, who had stolen from him his Silvine; the whole
base, dirty, miserable story, from which he had not yet ceased to
suffer! He would have run after, would have caught him by the throat
and strangled him, but the man had already crossed the line of stacked
muskets, was moving off and vanishing in the darkness.
“Oh!” he murmured, “Goliah! no, it can’t be he. He is down yonder,
fighting on the other side. If I ever come across him—”
He shook his fist with an air of menace at the dusky horizon, at the
wide empurpled stretch of eastern sky that stood for Prussia in his
eyes. No one spoke; they heard the strains of retreat again, but very
distant now, away at the extreme end of the camp, blended and lost
among the hum of other indistinguishable sounds.
“_Fichtre_!” exclaimed Honoré, “I shall have the pleasure of sleeping
on the soft side of a plank in the guard-house unless I make haste back
to roll-call. Good-night—adieu, everybody!”
And grasping Weiss by both his hands and giving them a hearty squeeze,
he strode swiftly away toward the slight elevation where the guns of
the reserves were parked, without again mentioning his father’s name or
sending any word to Silvine, whose name lay at the end of his tongue.
The minutes slipped away, and over toward the left, where the 2d
brigade lay, a bugle sounded. Another, near at hand, replied, and then
a third, in the remote distance, took up the strain. Presently there
was a universal blaring, far and near, throughout the camp, whereon
Gaude, the bugler of the company, took up his instrument. He was a
tall, lank, beardless, melancholy youth, chary of his words, saving his
breath for his calls, which he gave conscientiously, with the vigor of
a young hurricane.
Forthwith Sergeant Sapin, a ceremonious little man with large vague
eyes, stepped forward and began to call the roll. He rattled off the
names in a thin, piping voice, while the men, who had come up and
ranged themselves in front of him, responded in accents of varying
pitch, from the deep rumble of the violoncello to the shrill note of
the piccolo. But there came a hitch in the proceedings.
“Lapoulle!” shouted the sergeant, calling the name a second time with
increased emphasis.
There was no response, and Jean rushed off to the place where Private
Lapoulle, egged on by his comrades, was industriously trying to fan the
refractory fuel into a blaze; flat on his stomach before the pile of
blackening, spluttering wood, his face resembling an underdone
beefsteak, the warrior was now propelling dense clouds of smoke
horizontally along the surface of the plain.
“Thunder and ouns! Quit that, will you!” yelled Jean, “and come and
answer to your name.”
Lapoulle rose to his feet with a dazed look on his face, then appeared
to grasp the situation and yelled: “Present!” in such stentorian tones
that Loubet, pretending to be upset by the concussion, sank to the
ground in a sitting posture. Pache had finished mending his trousers
and answered in a voice that was barely audible, that sounded more like
the mumbling of a prayer. Chouteau, not even troubling himself to rise,
grunted his answer unconcernedly and turned over on his side.
Lieutenant Rochas, the officer of the guard, was meantime standing a
few steps away, motionlessly awaiting the conclusion of the ceremony.
When Sergeant Sapin had finished calling the roll and came up to report
that all were present, the officer, with a glance at Weiss, who was
still conversing with Maurice, growled from under his mustache:
“Yes, and one over. What is that civilian doing here?”
“He has the colonel’s pass, Lieutenant,” explained Jean, who had heard
the question.
Rochas made no reply; he shrugged his shoulders disapprovingly and
resumed his round among the company streets while waiting for taps to
sound. Jean, stiff and sore after his day’s march, went and sat down a
little way from Maurice, whose murmured words fell indistinctly upon
his unlistening ear, for he, too, had vague, half formed reflections of
his own that were stirring sluggishly in the recesses of his muddy,
torpid mind.
Maurice was a believer in war in the abstract; he considered it one of
the necessary evils, essential to the very existence of nations. This
was nothing more than the logical sequence of his course in embracing
those theories of evolution which in those days exercised such a potent
influence on our young men of intelligence and education. Is not life
itself an unending battle? Does not all nature owe its being to a
series of relentless conflicts, the survival of the fittest, the
maintenance and renewal of force by unceasing activity; is not death a
necessary condition to young and vigorous life? And he remembered the
sensation of gladness that had filled his heart when first the thought
occurred to him that he might expiate his errors by enlisting and
defending his country on the frontier. It might be that France of the
plebiscite, while giving itself over to the Emperor, had not desired
war; he himself, only a week previously, had declared it to be a
culpable and idiotic measure. There were long discussions concerning
the right of a German prince to occupy the throne of Spain; as the
question gradually became more and more intricate and muddled it seemed
as if everyone must be wrong, no one right; so that it was impossible
to tell from which side the provocation came, and the only part of the
entire business that was clear to the eyes of all was the inevitable,
the fatal law which at a given moment hurls nation against nation. Then
Paris was convulsed from center to circumference; he remembered that
burning summer’s night, the tossing, struggling human tide that filled
the boulevards, the bands of men brandishing torches before the Hôtel
de Ville, and yelling: “On to Berlin! on to Berlin!” and he seemed to
hear the strains of the Marseillaise, sung by a beautiful, stately
woman with the face of a queen, wrapped in the folds of a flag, from
her elevation on the box of a coach. Was it all a lie, was it true that
the heart of Paris had not beaten then? And then, as was always the
case with him, that condition of nervous excitation had been succeeded
by long hours of doubt and disgust; there were all the small annoyances
of the soldier’s life; his arrival at the barracks, his examination by
the adjutant, the fitting of his uniform by the gruff sergeant, the
malodorous bedroom with its fetid air and filthy floor, the horseplay
and coarse language of his new comrades, the merciless drill that
stiffened his limbs and benumbed his brain. In a week’s time, however,
he had conquered his first squeamishness, and from that time forth was
comparatively contented with his lot; and when the regiment was at last
ordered forward to Belfort the fever of enthusiasm had again taken
possession of him.
For the first few days after they took the field Maurice was convinced
that their success was absolutely certain. The Emperor’s plan appeared
to him perfectly clear: he would advance four hundred thousand men to
the left bank of the Rhine, pass the river before the Prussians had
completed their preparations, separate northern and southern Germany by
a vigorous inroad, and by means of a brilliant victory or two compel
Austria and Italy to join hands immediately with France. Had there not
been a short-lived rumor that that 7th corps of which his regiment
formed a part was to be embarked at Brest and landed in Denmark, where
it would create a diversion that would serve to neutralize one of the
Prussian armies? They would be taken by surprise; the arrogant nation
would be overrun in every direction and crushed utterly within a few
brief weeks. It would be a military picnic, a holiday excursion from
Strasbourg to Berlin. While they were lying inactive at Belfort,
however, his former doubts and fears returned to him. To the 7th corps
had been assigned the duty of guarding the entrance to the Black
Forest; it had reached its position in a state of confusion that
exceeded imagination, deficient in men, material, everything. The 3d
division was in Italy; the 2d cavalry brigade had been halted at Lyons
to check a threatened rising among the people there, and three
batteries had straggled off in some direction—where, no one could say.
Then their destitution in the way of stores and supplies was something
wonderful; the depots at Belfort, which were to have furnished
everything, were empty; not a sign of a tent, no mess-kettles, no
flannel belts, no hospital supplies, no farriers’ forges, not even a
horse-shackle. The quartermaster’s and medical departments were without
trained assistants. At the very last moment it was discovered that
thirty thousand rifles were practically useless owing to the absence of
some small pin or other interchangeable mechanism about the
breech-blocks, and the officer who posted off in hot haste to Paris
succeeded with the greatest difficulty in securing five thousand of the
missing implements. Their inactivity, again, was another matter that
kept him on pins and needles; why did they idle away their time for two
weeks? why did they not advance? He saw clearly that each day of delay
was a mistake that could never be repaired, a chance of victory gone.
And if the plan of campaign that he had dreamed of was clear and
precise, its manner of execution was most lame and impotent, a fact of
which he was to learn a great deal more later on and of which he had
then only a faint and glimmering perception: the seven army corps
dispersed along the extended frontier line _en échelon_, from Metz to
Bitche and from Bitche to Belfort; the many regiments and squadrons
that had been recruited up to only half-strength or less, so that the
four hundred and thirty thousand men on paper melted away to two
hundred and thirty thousand at the outside; the jealousies among the
generals, each of whom thought only of securing for himself a marshal’s
baton, and gave no care to supporting his neighbor; the frightful lack
of foresight, mobilization and concentration being carried on
simultaneously in order to gain time, a process that resulted in
confusion worse confounded; a system, in a word, of dry rot and slow
paralysis, which, commencing with the head, with the Emperor himself,
shattered in health and lacking in promptness of decision, could not
fail ultimately to communicate itself to the whole army, disorganizing
it and annihilating its efficiency, leading it into disaster from which
it had not the means of extricating itself. And yet, over and above the
dull misery of that period of waiting, in the intuitive, shuddering
perception of what must infallibly happen, his certainty that they must
be victors in the end remained unimpaired.
On the 3d of August the cheerful news had been given to the public of
the victory of Sarrebruck, fought and won the day before. It could
scarcely be called a great victory, but the columns of the newspapers
teemed with enthusiastic gush; the invasion of Germany was begun, it
was the first step in their glorious march to triumph, and the little
Prince Imperial, who had coolly stooped and picked up a bullet from the
battlefield, then commenced to be celebrated in legend. Two days later,
however, when intelligence came of the surprise and defeat at
Wissembourg, every mouth was opened to emit a cry of rage and distress.
That five thousand men, caught in a trap, had faced thirty-five
thousand Prussians all one long summer day, that was not a circumstance
to daunt the courage of anyone; it simply called for vengeance. Yes,
the leaders had doubtless been culpably lacking in vigilance and were
to be censured for their want of foresight, but that would soon be
mended; MacMahon had sent for the 1st division of the 7th corps, the
1st corps would be supported by the 5th, and the Prussians must be
across the Rhine again by that time, with the bayonets of our infantry
at their backs to accelerate their movement. And so, beneath the deep,
dim vault of heaven, the thought of the battle that must have raged
that day, the feverish impatience with which the tidings were awaited,
the horrible feeling of suspense that pervaded the air about them,
spread from man to man and became each minute more tense and
unendurable.
Maurice was just then saying to Weiss:
“Ah! we have certainly given them a righteous good drubbing to-day.”
Weiss made no reply save to nod his head with an air of anxiety. His
gaze was directed toward the Rhine, on that Orient region where now the
night had settled down in earnest, like a wall of blackness, concealing
strange forms and shapes of mystery. The concluding strains of the
bugles for roll-call had been succeeded by a deep silence, which had
descended upon the drowsy camp and was only broken now and then by the
steps and voices of some wakeful soldiers. A light had been lit—it
looked like a twinkling star—in the main room of the farmhouse where
the staff, which is supposed never to sleep, was awaiting the telegrams
that came in occasionally, though as yet they were undecided. And the
green wood fire, now finally left to itself, was still emitting its
funereal wreaths of dense black smoke, which drifted in the gentle
breeze over the unsleeping farmhouse, obscuring the early stars in the
heavens above.
“A drubbing!” Weiss at last replied, “God grant it may be so!”
Jean, still seated a few steps away, pricked up his ears, while
Lieutenant Rochas, noticing that the wish was attended by a doubt,
stopped to listen.
“What!” Maurice rejoined, “have you not confidence? can you believe
that defeat is possible?”
His brother-in-law silenced him with a gesture; his hands were
trembling with agitation, his kindly pleasant face was pale and bore an
expression of deep distress.
“Defeat, ah! Heaven preserve us from that! You know that I was born in
this country; my grandfather and grandmother were murdered by the
Cossacks in 1814, and whenever I think of invasion it makes me clench
my fist and grit my teeth; I could go through fire and flood, like a
trooper, in my shirt sleeves! Defeat—no, no! I cannot, I will not
believe it possible.”
He became calmer, allowing his arms to fall by his side in
discouragement.
“But my mind is not easy, do you see. I know Alsace; I was born there;
I am just off a business trip through the country, and we civilians
have opportunities of seeing many things that the generals persist in
ignoring, although they have them thrust beneath their very eyes. Ah,
_we_ wanted war with Prussia as badly as anyone; for a long, long time
we have been waiting patiently for a chance to pay off old scores, but
that did not prevent us from being on neighborly terms with the people
in Baden and Bavaria; every one of us, almost, has friends or relatives
across the Rhine. It was our belief that they felt like us and would
not be sorry to humble the intolerable insolence of the Prussians. And
now, after our long period of uncomplaining expectation, for the past
two weeks we have seen things going from bad to worse, and it vexes and
terrifies us. Since the declaration of war the enemy’s horse have been
suffered to come among us, terrorizing the villages, reconnoitering the
country, cutting the telegraph wires. Baden and Bavaria are rising;
immense bodies of troops are being concentrated in the Palatinate;
information reaches us from every quarter, from the great fairs and
markets, that our frontier is threatened, and when the citizens, the
mayors of the communes, take the alarm at last and hurry off to tell
your officers what they know, those gentlemen shrug their shoulders and
reply: Those things spring from the imagination of cowards; there is no
enemy near here. And when there is not an hour to lose, days and days
are wasted. What are they waiting for? To give the whole German nation
time to concentrate on the other bank of the river?”
His words were uttered in a low, mournful, voice, as if he were
reciting to himself a story that had long occupied his thoughts.
“Ah! Germany, I know her too well; and the terrible part of the
business is that you soldiers seem to know no more about her than you
do about China. You must remember my cousin Gunther, Maurice, the young
man, who came to pay me a flying visit at Sedan last spring. His mother
is a sister of my mother, and married a Berliner; the young man is a
German out and out; he detests everything French. He is a captain in
the 5th Prussian corps. I accompanied him to the railway station that
night, and he said to me in his sharp, peremptory way: ‘If France
declares war on us, she will be soundly whipped!’ I can hear his words
ringing in my ears yet.”
Forthwith, Lieutenant Rochas, who had managed to contain himself until
then, not without some difficulty, stepped forward in a towering rage.
He was a tall, lean individual of about fifty, with a long,
weather-beaten, and wrinkled face; his inordinately long nose, curved
like the beak of a bird of prey, over a strong but well-shaped mouth,
concealed by a thick, bristling mustache that was beginning to be
touched with silver. And he shouted in a voice of thunder:
“See here, you, sir! what yarns are those that you are retailing to
dishearten my men?”
Jean did not interfere with his opinion, but he thought that the last
speaker was right, for he, too, while beginning to be conscious of the
protracted delay, and the general confusion in their affairs, had never
had the slightest doubt about that terrible thrashing they were certain
to give the Prussians. There could be no question about the matter, for
was not that the reason of their being there?
“But I am not trying to dishearten anyone, Lieutenant,” Weiss answered
in astonishment. “Quite the reverse; I am desirous that others should
know what I know, because then they will be able to act with their eyes
open. Look here! that Germany of which we were speaking—”
And he went on in his clear, demonstrative way to explain the reason of
his fears: how Prussia had increased her resources since Sadowa; how
the national movement had placed her at the head of the other German
states, a mighty empire in process of formation and rejuvenation, with
the constant hope and desire for unity as the incentive to their
irresistible efforts; the system of compulsory military service, which
made them a nation of trained soldiers, provided with the most
effective arms of modern invention, with generals who were masters in
the art of strategy, proudly mindful still of the crushing defeat they
had administered to Austria; the intelligence, the moral force that
resided in that army, commanded as it was almost exclusively by young
generals, who in turn looked up to a commander-in-chief who seemed
destined to revolutionize the art of war, whose prudence and foresight
were unparalleled, whose correctness of judgment was a thing to wonder
at. And in contrast to that picture of Germany he pointed to France:
the Empire sinking into senile decrepitude, sanctioned by the
plebiscite, but rotten at its foundation, destroying liberty, and
therein stifling every idea of patriotism, ready to give up the ghost
as soon as it should cease to satisfy the unworthy appetites to which
it had given birth; then there was the army, brave, it was true, as was
to be expected from men of their race, and covered with Crimean and
Italian laurels, but vitiated by the system that permitted men to
purchase substitutes for a money consideration, abandoned to the
antiquated methods of African routine, too confident of victory to keep
abreast with the more perfect science of modern times; and, finally,
the generals, men for the most part not above mediocrity, consumed by
petty rivalries, some of them of an ignorance beyond all belief, and at
their head the Emperor, an ailing, vacillating man, deceiving himself
and everyone with whom he had dealings in that desperate venture on
which they were embarking, into which they were all rushing blindfold,
with no preparation worthy of the name, with the panic and confusion of
a flock of sheep on its way to the shambles.
Rochas stood listening, open-mouthed, and with staring eyes; his
terrible nose dilated visibly. Then suddenly his lantern jaws parted to
emit an obstreperous, Homeric peal of laughter.
“What are you giving us there, you? what do you mean by all that silly
lingo? Why, there is not the first word of sense in your whole
harangue—it is too idiotic to deserve an answer. Go and tell those
things to the recruits, but don’t tell them to me; no! not to me, who
have seen twenty-seven years of service.”
And he gave himself a thump on the breast with his doubled fist. He was
the son of a master mason who had come from Limousin to Paris, where
the son, not taking kindly to the paternal handicraft, had enlisted at
the age of eighteen. He had been a soldier of fortune and had carried
the knapsack, was corporal in Africa, sergeant in the Crimea, and after
Solferino had been made lieutenant, having devoted fifteen years of
laborious toil and heroic bravery to obtaining that rank, and was so
illiterate that he had no chance of ever getting his captaincy.
“You, sir, who think you know everything, let me tell you a thing you
don’t know. Yes, at Mazagran I was scarce nineteen years old, and there
were twenty-three of us, not a living soul more, and for more than four
days we held out against twelve thousand Arabs. Yes, indeed! for years
and years, if you had only been with us out there in Africa, sir, at
Mascara, at Biskra, at Dellys, after that in Grand Kabylia, after that
again at Laghouat, you would have seen those dirty niggers run like
deer as soon as we showed our faces. And at Sebastopol, sir, _fichtre_!
you wouldn’t have said it was the pleasantest place in the world. The
wind blew fit to take a man’s hair out by the roots, it was cold enough
to freeze a brass monkey, and those beggars kept us on a continual
dance with their feints and sorties. Never mind; we made them dance in
the end; we danced them into the big hot frying pan, and to quick
music, too! And Solferino, you were not there, sir! then why do you
speak of it? Yes, at Solferino, where it was so hot, although I suppose
more rain fell there that day than you have seen in your whole life, at
Solferino, where we had our little brush with the Austrians, it would
have warmed your heart to see how they vanished before our bayonets,
riding one another down in their haste to get away from us, as if their
coat tails were on fire!”
He laughed the gay, ringing laugh of the daredevil French soldier; he
seemed to expand and dilate with satisfaction. It was the old story:
the French trooper going about the world with his girl on his arm and a
glass of good wine in his hand; thrones upset and kingdoms conquered in
the singing of a merry song. Given a corporal and four men, and great
armies would bite the dust. His voice suddenly sank to a low, rumbling
bass:
“What! whip France? We, whipped by those Prussian pigs, we!” He came up
to Weiss and grasped him violently by the lapel of his coat. His entire
long frame, lean as that of the immortal Knight Errant, seemed to
breathe defiance and unmitigated contempt for the foe, whoever he might
be, regardless of time, place, or any other circumstance. “Listen to
what I tell you, sir. If the Prussians dare to show their faces here,
we will kick them home again. You hear me? we will kick them from here
to Berlin.” His bearing and manner were superb; the serene tranquillity
of the child, the candid conviction of the innocent who knows nothing
and fears nothing. “_Parbleu_! it is so, because it is so, and that’s
all there is about it!”
Weiss, stunned and almost convinced, made haste to declare that he
wished for nothing better. As for Maurice, who had prudently held his
tongue, not venturing to express an opinion in presence of his superior
officer, he concluded by joining in the other’s merriment; he warmed
the cockles of his heart, that devil of a man, whom he nevertheless
considered rather stupid. Jean, too, had nodded his approval at every
one of the lieutenant’s assertions. He had also been at Solferino,
where it rained so hard. And that showed what it was to have a tongue
in one’s head and know how to use it. If all the leaders had talked
like that they would not be in such a mess, and there would be
camp-kettles and flannel belts in abundance.
It was quite dark by this time, and Rochas continued to gesticulate and
brandish his long arms in the obscurity. His historical studies had
been confined to a stray volume of Napoleonic memoirs that had found
its way to his knapsack from a peddler’s wagon. His excitement refused
to be pacified and all his book-learning burst from his lips in a
torrent of eloquence:
“We flogged the Austrians at Castiglione, at Marengo, at Austerlitz, at
Wagram; we flogged the Prussians at Eylau, at Jena, at Lutzen; we
flogged the Russians at Friedland, at Smolensk and at the Moskowa; we
flogged Spain and England everywhere; all creation flogged, flogged,
flogged, up and down, far and near, at home and abroad, and now you
tell me that it is we who are to take the flogging! Why, pray tell me?
How? Is the world coming to an end?” He drew his tall form up higher
still and raised his arm aloft, like the staff of a battle-flag. “Look
you, there has been a fight to-day, down yonder, and we are waiting for
the news. Well! I will tell you what the news is—I will tell you, I! We
have flogged the Prussians, flogged them until they didn’t know whether
they were a-foot or a-horseback, flogged them to powder, so that they
had to be swept up in small pieces!”
At that moment there passed over the camp, beneath the somber heavens,
a loud, wailing cry. Was it the plaint of some nocturnal bird? Or was
it a mysterious voice, reaching them from some far-distant field of
carnage, ominous of disaster? The whole camp shuddered, lying there in
the shadows, and the strained, tense sensation of expectant anxiety
that hung, miasma-like, in the air became more strained, more feverish,
as they waited for telegrams that seemed as if they would never come.
In the distance, at the farmhouse, the candle that lighted the dreary
watches of the staff burned up more brightly, with an erect,
unflickering flame, as if it had been of wax instead of tallow.
But it was ten o’clock, and Gaude, rising to his feet from the ground
where he had been lost in the darkness, sounded taps, the first in all
the camp. Other bugles, far and near, took up the strain, and it passed
away in the distance with a dying, melancholy wail, as if the angel of
slumber had already brushed with his wings the weary men. And Weiss,
who had lingered there so late, embraced Maurice affectionately;
courage, and hope! he would kiss Henriette for her brother and would
have many things to tell uncle Fouchard when they met. Then, just as he
was turning to go, a rumor began to circulate, accompanied by the
wildest excitement. A great victory had been won by Marshal MacMahon,
so the report ran; the Crown Prince of Prussia a prisoner, with
twenty-five thousand men, the enemy’s army repulsed and utterly
destroyed, its guns and baggage abandoned to the victors.
“Didn’t I tell you so!” shouted Rochas, in his most thundering voice.
Then, running after Weiss, who, light of heart, was hastening to get
back to Mülhausen: “To Berlin, sir, and we’ll kick them every step of
the way!”
A quarter of an hour later came another dispatch, announcing that the
army had been compelled to evacuate Woerth and was retreating. Ah, what
a night was that! Rochas, overpowered by sleep, wrapped his cloak about
him, threw himself down on the bare ground, as he had done many a time
before. Maurice and Jean sought the shelter of the tent, into which
were crowded, a confused tangle of arms and legs, Loubet, Chouteau,
Pache, and Lapoulle, their heads resting on their knapsacks. There was
room for six, provided they were careful how they disposed of their
legs. Loubet, by way of diverting his comrades and making them forget
their hunger, had labored for some time to convince Lapoulle that there
was to be a ration of poultry issued the next morning, but they were
too sleepy to keep up the joke; they were snoring, and the Prussians
might come, it was all one to them. Jean lay for a moment without
stirring, pressing close against Maurice; notwithstanding his fatigue
he was unable to sleep; he could not help thinking of the things that
gentleman had said, how all Germany was up in arms and preparing to
pour her devastating hordes across the Rhine; and he felt that his
tent-mate was not sleeping, either—was thinking of the same things as
he. Then the latter turned over impatiently and moved away, and the
other understood that his presence was not agreeable. There was a lack
of sympathy between the peasant and the man of culture, an enmity of
caste and education that amounted almost to physical aversion. The
former, however, experienced a sensation of shame and sadness at this
condition of affairs; he shrinkingly drew in his limbs so as to occupy
as small a space as possible, endeavoring to escape from the hostile
scorn that he was vaguely conscious of in his neighbor. But although
the night wind without had blown up chill, the crowded tent was so
stifling hot and close that Maurice, in a fever of exasperation, raised
the flap, darted out, and went and stretched himself on the ground a
few steps away. That made Jean still more unhappy, and in his
half-sleeping, half-waking condition he had troubled dreams, made up of
a regretful feeling that no one cared for him, and a vague apprehension
of impending calamity of which he seemed to hear the steps approaching
with measured tread from the shadowy, mysterious depths of the unknown.
Two hours passed, and all the camp lay lifeless, motionless under the
oppression of the deep, weird darkness, that was instinct with some
dreadful horror as yet without a name. Out of the sea of blackness came
stifled sighs and moans; from an invisible tent was heard something
that sounded like the groan of a dying man, the fitful dream of some
tired soldier. Then there were other sounds that to the strained ear
lost their familiarity and became menaces of approaching evil; the
neighing of a charger, the clank of a sword, the hurrying steps of some
belated prowler. And all at once, off toward the canteens, a great
light flamed up. The entire front was brilliantly illuminated; the
long, regularly aligned array of stacks stood out against the darkness,
and the ruddy blaze, reflected from the burnished barrels of the
rifles, assumed the hue of new-shed blood; the erect, stern figures of
the sentries became visible in the fiery glow. Could it be the enemy,
whose presence the leaders had been talking of for the past two days,
and on whose trail they had come out from Belfort to Mülhausen? Then a
shower of sparks rose high in the air and the conflagration subsided.
It was only the pile of green wood that had been so long the object of
Loubet’s and Lapoulle’s care, and which, after having smoldered for
many hours, had at last flashed up like a fire of straw.
Jean, alarmed by the vivid light, hastily left the tent and was near
falling over Maurice, who had raised himself on his elbow. The darkness
seemed by contrast more opaque than it had been before, and the two men
lay stretched on the bare ground, a few paces from each other. All that
they could descry before them in the dense shadows of the night was the
window of the farm-house, faintly illuminated by the dim candle, which
shone with a sinister gleam, as if it were doing duty by the bedside of
a corpse. What time was it? two o’clock, or three, perhaps. It was
plain that the staff had not made acquaintance with their beds that
night. They could hear Bourgain-Desfeuilles’ loud, disputatious voice;
the general was furious that his rest should be broken thus, and it
required many cigars and toddies to pacify him. More telegrams came in;
things must be going badly; silhouettes of couriers, faintly drawn
against the uncertain sky line, could be descried, galloping madly.
There was the sound of scuffling steps, imprecations, a smothered cry
as of a man suddenly stricken down, followed by a blood-freezing
silence. What could it be? Was it the end? A breath, chill and icy as
that from the lips of death, had passed over the camp that lay lost in
slumber and agonized expectation.
It was at that moment that Jean and Maurice recognized in the tall,
thin, spectral form that passed swiftly by, their colonel, de Vineuil.
He was accompanied by the regimental surgeon, Major Bouroche, a large
man with a leonine face They were conversing in broken, unfinished
sentences, whisperingly, such a conversation as we sometimes hear in
dreams.
“It came by the way of Basle. Our 1st division all cut to pieces. The
battle lasted twelve hours; the whole army is retreating—”
The colonel’s specter halted and called by name another specter, which
came lightly forward; it was an elegant ghost, faultless in uniform and
equipment.
“Is that you, Beaudoin?”
“Yes, Colonel.”
“Ah! bad news, my friend, terrible news! MacMahon beaten at
Froeschwiller, Frossard beaten at Spickeren, and between them de
Failly, held in check where he could give no assistance. At
Froeschwiller it was a single corps against an entire army; they fought
like heroes. It was a complete rout, a panic, and now France lies open
to their advance—”
His tears choked further utterance, the words came from his lips
unintelligible, and the three shadows vanished, swallowed up in the
obscurity.
Maurice rose to his feet; a shudder ran through his frame.
“Good God!” he stammeringly exclaimed.
And he could think of nothing else to say, while Jean, in whose bones
the very marrow seemed to be congealing, murmured in his resigned
manner:
“Ah, worse luck! The gentleman, that relative of yours, was right all
the same in saying that they are stronger than we.”
Maurice was beside himself, could have strangled him. The Prussians
stronger than the French! The thought made his blood boil. The peasant
calmly and stubbornly added:
“That don’t matter, mind you. A man don’t give up whipped at the first
knock-down he gets. We shall have to keep hammering away at them all
the same.”
But a tall figure arose before them. They recognized Rochas, still
wrapped in his long mantle, whom the fugitive sounds about him, or it
may have been the intuition of disaster, had awakened from his uneasy
slumber. He questioned them, insisted on knowing all. When he was
finally brought, with much difficulty, to see how matters stood,
stupor, immense and profound, filled his boyish, inexpressive eyes.
More than ten times in succession he repeated:
“Beaten! How beaten? Why beaten?”
And that was the calamity that had lain hidden in the blackness of that
night of agony. And now the pale dawn was appearing at the portals of
the east, heralding a day heavy with bitterest sorrow and striking
white upon the silent tents, in one of which began to be visible the
ashy faces of Loubet and Lapoulle, of Chouteau and of Pache, who were
snoring still with wide-open mouths. Forth from the thin mists that
were slowly creeping upward from the river off yonder in the distance
came the new day, bringing with it mourning and affliction.