Sleep did not visit Henriette’s eyes that night. She knew her husband
to be a prudent man, but the thought that he was in Bazeilles, so near
the German lines, was cause to her of deep anxiety. She tried to soothe
her apprehensions by reminding herself that she had his solemn promise
to return at the first appearance of danger; it availed not, and at
every instant she detected herself listening to catch the sound of his
footstep on the stair. At ten o’clock, as she was about to go to bed,
she opened her window, and resting her elbows on the sill, gazed out
into the night.
The darkness was intense; looking downward, she could scarce discern
the pavement of the Rue des Voyards, a narrow, obscure passage,
overhung by old frowning mansions. Further on, in the direction of the
college, a smoky street lamp burned dimly. A nitrous exhalation rose
from the street; the squall of a vagrant cat; the heavy step of a
belated soldier. From the city at her back came strange and alarming
sounds: the patter of hurrying feet, an ominous, incessant rumbling, a
muffled murmur without a name that chilled her blood. Her heart beat
loudly in her bosom as she bent her ear to listen, and still she heard
not the familiar echo of her husband’s step at the turning of the
street below.
Hours passed, and now distant lights that began to twinkle in the open
fields beyond the ramparts excited afresh her apprehensions. It was so
dark that it cost her an effort of memory to recall localities. She
knew that the broad expanse that lay beneath her, reflecting a dim
light, was the flooded meadows, and that flame that blazed up and was
suddenly extinguished, surely it must be on la Marfée. But never, to
her certain knowledge, had there been farmer’s house or peasant’s
cottage on those heights; what, then, was the meaning of that light?
And then on every hand, at Pont-Maugis, Noyers, Frenois, other fires
arose, coruscating fitfully for an instant and giving mysterious
indication of the presence of the swarming host that lay hidden in the
bosom of the night. Yet more: there were strange sounds and voices in
the air, subdued murmurings such as she had never heard before, and
that made her start in terror; the stifled hum of marching men, the
neighing and snorting of steeds, the clash of arms, hoarse words of
command, given in guttural accents; an evil dream of a demoniac crew, a
witch’s sabbat, in the depths of those unholy shades. Suddenly a single
cannon-shot rang out, ear-rending, adding fresh terror to the dead
silence that succeeded it. It froze her very marrow; what could it
mean? A signal, doubtless, telling of the successful completion of some
movement, announcing that everything was ready, down there, and that
now the sun might rise.
It was about two o’clock when Henriette, forgetting even to close her
window, at last threw herself, fully dressed, upon her bed. Her anxiety
and fatigue had stupefied her and benumbed her faculties. What could
ail her, thus to shiver and burn alternately, she who was always so
calm and self-reliant, moving with so light a step that those about her
were unconscious of her existence? Finally she sank into a fitful,
broken slumber that brought with it no repose, in which was present
still that persistent sensation of impending evil that filled the dusky
heavens. All at once, arousing her from her unrefreshing stupor, the
firing commenced again, faint and muffled in the distance, not a single
shot this time, but peal after peal following one another in quick
succession. Trembling, she sat upright in bed. The firing continued.
Where was she? The place seemed strange to her; she could not
distinguish the objects in her chamber, which appeared to be filled
with dense clouds of smoke. Then she remembered: the fog must have
rolled in from the near-by river and entered the room through the
window. Without, the distant firing was growing fiercer. She leaped
from her bed and ran to the casement to listen.
Four o’clock was striking from a steeple in Sedan, and day was
breaking, tingeing the purplish mists with a sickly, sinister light. It
was impossible to discern objects; even the college buildings, distant
but a few yards, were undistinguishable. Where could the firing be,
_mon Dieu_! Her first thought was for her brother Maurice; for the
reports were so indistinct that they seemed to her to come from the
north, above the city; then, listening more attentively, her doubt
became certainty; the cannonading was there, before her, and she
trembled for her husband. It was surely at Bazeilles. For a little
time, however, she suffered herself to be cheered by a ray of hope, for
there were moments when the reports seemed to come from the right.
Perhaps the fighting was at Donchery, where she knew that the French
had not succeeded in blowing up the bridge. Then she lapsed into a
condition of most horrible uncertainty; it seemed to be now at
Donchery, now at Bazeilles; which, it was impossible to decide, there
was such a ringing, buzzing sensation in her head. At last the feeling
of suspense became so acute that she felt she could not endure it
longer; she _must_ know; every nerve in her body was quivering with the
ungovernable desire, so she threw a shawl over her shoulders and left
the house in quest of news.
When she had descended and was in the street Henriette hesitated a
brief moment, for the little light that was in the east had not yet
crept downward along the weather-blackened house-fronts to the roadway,
and in the old city, shrouded in opaque fog, the darkness still reigned
impenetrable. In the tap-room of a low pot-house in the Rue au Beurre,
dimly lighted by a tallow candle, she saw two drunken Turcos and a
woman. It was not until she turned into the Rue Maqua that she
encountered any signs of life: soldiers slinking furtively along the
sidewalk and hugging the walls, deserters probably, on the lookout for
a place in which to hide; a stalwart trooper with despatches, searching
for his captain and knocking thunderously at every door; a group of fat
burghers, trembling with fear lest they had tarried there too long, and
preparing to crowd themselves into one small carriole if so be they
might yet reach Bouillon, in Belgium, whither half the population of
Sedan had emigrated within the last two days. She instinctively turned
her steps toward the Sous-Prefecture, where she might depend on
receiving information, and her desire to avoid meeting acquaintances
determined her to take a short cut through lanes and by-ways. On
reaching the Rue du Four and the Rue des Laboureurs, however, she found
an obstacle in her way; the place had been pre-empted by the ordnance
department, and guns, caissons, forges were there in interminable
array, having apparently been parked away in that remote corner the day
before and then forgotten there. There was not so much as a sentry to
guard them. It sent a chill to her heart to see all that artillery
lying there silent and ineffective, sleeping its neglected sleep in the
concealment of those deserted alleys. She was compelled to retrace her
steps, therefore, which she did by passing through the Place du Collège
to the Grande-Rue, where in front of the Hotel de l’Europe she saw a
group of orderlies holding the chargers of some general officers, whose
high-pitched voices were audible from the brilliantly lighted dining
room. On the Place du Rivage and the Place Turenne the crowd was even
greater still, composed of anxious groups of citizens, with women and
children interspersed among the struggling, terror-stricken throng,
hurrying in every direction; and there she saw a general emerge from
the Hotel of the Golden Cross, swearing like a pirate, and spur his
horse off up the street at a mad gallop, careless whom he might
overturn. For a moment she seemed about to enter the Hôtel de Ville,
then changed her mind, and taking the Rue du Pont-de-Meuse, pushed on
to the Sous-Prefecture.
Never had Sedan appeared to her in a light so tragically sinister as
now, when she beheld it in the livid, forbidding light of early dawn,
enveloped in its shroud of fog. The houses were lifeless and silent as
tombs; many of them had been empty and abandoned for the last two days,
others the terrified owners had closely locked and barred. Shuddering,
the city awoke to the cares and occupations of the new day; the morning
was fraught with chill misery in those streets, still half deserted,
peopled only by a few frightened pedestrians and those hurrying
fugitives, the remnant of the exodus of previous days. Soon the sun
would rise and send down its cheerful light upon the scene; soon the
city, overwhelmed in the swift-rising tide of disaster, would be
crowded as it had never been before. It was half-past five o’clock; the
roar of the cannon, caught and deadened among the tall dingy houses,
sounded more faintly in her ears.
At the Sous-Prefecture Henriette had some acquaintance with the
concierge’s daughter, Rose by name, a pretty little blonde of refined
appearance who was employed in Delaherche’s factory. She made her way
at once to the lodge; the mother was not there, but Rose received her
with her usual amiability.
“Oh! dear lady, we are so tired we can scarcely stand; mamma has gone
to lie down and rest a while. Just think! all night long people have
been coming and going, and we have not been able to get a wink of
sleep.”
And burning to tell all the wonderful sights that she had been witness
to since the preceding day, she did not wait to be questioned, but ran
on volubly with her narrative.
“As for the marshal, he slept very well, but that poor Emperor! you
can’t think what suffering he has to endure! Yesterday evening, do you
know, I had gone upstairs to help give out the linen, and as I entered
the apartment that adjoins his dressing-room I heard groans, oh, _such_
groans! just like someone dying. I thought a moment and knew it must be
the Emperor, and I was so frightened I couldn’t move; I just stood and
trembled. It seems he has some terrible complaint that makes him cry
out that way. When there are people around he holds in, but as soon as
he is alone it is too much for him, and he groans and shrieks in a way
to make your hair stand on end.”
“Do you know where the fighting is this morning?” asked Henriette,
desiring to check her loquacity.
Rose dismissed the question with a wave of her little hand and went on
with her narrative.
“That made me curious to know more, you see, and I went upstairs four
or five times during the night and listened, and every time it was just
the same; I don’t believe he was quiet an instant all night long, or
got a minute’s sleep. Oh! what a terrible thing it is to suffer like
that with all he has to worry him! for everything is upside down; it is
all a most dreadful mess. Upon my word, I believe those generals are
out of their senses; such ghostly faces and frightened eyes! And people
coming all the time, and doors banging and some men scolding and others
crying, and the whole place like a sailor’s boarding-house; officers
drinking from bottles and going to bed in their boots! The Emperor is
the best of the whole lot, and the one who gives least trouble, in the
corner where he conceals himself and his suffering!” Then, in reply to
Henriette’s reiterated question: “The fighting? there has been fighting
at Bazeilles this morning. A mounted officer brought word of it to the
marshal, who went immediately to notify the Emperor. The marshal has
been gone ten minutes, and I shouldn’t wonder if the Emperor intends to
follow him, for they are dressing him upstairs. I just now saw them
combing him and plastering his face with all sorts of cosmetics.”
But Henriette, having finally learned what she desired to know, rose to
go.
“Thank you, Rose. I am in somewhat of a hurry this morning.”
The young girl went with her to the street door, and took leave of her
with a courteous:
“Glad to have been of service to you, Madame Weiss. I know that
anything said to you will go no further.”
Henriette hurried back to her house in the Rue des Voyards. She felt
quite certain that her husband would have returned, and even reflected
that he would be alarmed at not finding her there, and hastened her
steps in consequence. As she drew near the house she raised her eyes in
the expectation of seeing him at the window watching for her, but the
window, wide open as she had left it when she went out, was vacant, and
when she had run up the stairs and given a rapid glance through her
three rooms, it was with a sinking heart that she saw they were
untenanted save for the chill fog and continuous roar of the cannonade.
The distant firing was still going on. She went and stood for a moment
at the window; although the encircling wall of vapor was not less dense
than it had been before, she seemed to have a clearer apprehension, now
that she had received oral information, of the details of the conflict
raging at Bazeilles, the grinding sound of the mitrailleuses, the
crashing volleys of the French batteries answering the German batteries
in the distance. The reports seemed to be drawing nearer to the city,
the battle to be waxing fiercer and fiercer with every moment.
Why did not Weiss return? He had pledged himself so faithfully not to
outstay the first attack! And Henriette began to be seriously alarmed,
depicting to herself the various obstacles that might have detained
him: perhaps he had not been able to leave the village, perhaps the
roads were blocked or rendered impassable by the projectiles. It might
even be that something had happened him, but she put the thought aside
and would not dwell on it, preferring to view things on their brighter
side and finding in hope her safest mainstay and reliance. For an
instant she harbored the design of starting out and trying to find her
husband, but there were considerations that seemed to render that
course inadvisable: supposing him to have started on his return, what
would become of her should she miss him on the way? and what would be
his anxiety should he come in and find her absent? Her guiding
principle in all her thoughts and actions was her gentle, affectionate
devotedness, and she saw nothing strange or out of the way in a visit
to Bazeilles under such extraordinary circumstances, accustomed as she
was, like an affectionate little woman, to perform her duty in silence
and do the thing that she deemed best for their common interest. Where
her husband was, there was her place; that was all there was about it.
She gave a sudden start and left the window, saying:
“Monsieur Delaherche, how could I forget—”
It had just come to her recollection that the cloth manufacturer had
also passed the night at Bazeilles, and if he had returned would be
able to give her the intelligence she wanted. She ran swiftly down the
stairs again. In place of taking the more roundabout way by the Rue des
Voyards, she crossed the little courtyard of her house and entered the
passage that conducted to the huge structure that fronted on the Rue
Maqua. As she came out into the great central garden, paved with
flagstones now and retaining of its pristine glories only a few
venerable trees, magnificent century-old elms, she was astonished to
see a sentry mounting guard at the door of a carriage-house; then it
occurred to her that she had been told the day before that the camp
chests of the 7th corps had been deposited there for safe keeping, and
it produced a strange impression on her mind that all the gold,
millions, it was said to amount to, should be lying in that shed while
the men for whom it was destined were being killed not far away. As she
was about to ascend the private staircase, however, that conducted to
the apartment of Gilberte, young Madame Delaherche, she experienced
another surprise in an encounter that startled her so that she retraced
her steps a little way, doubtful whether it would not be better to
abandon her intention, and go home again. An officer, a captain, had
crossed her path, as noiselessly as a phantom and vanishing as swiftly,
and yet she had had time to recognize him, having seen him in the past
at Gilberte’s house in Charleville, in the days when she was still
Madame Maginot. She stepped back a few steps in the courtyard and
raised her eyes to the two tall windows of the bedroom, the blinds of
which were closed, then dismissed her scruples and entered.
Upon reaching the first floor, availing herself of that privilege of
old acquaintanceship by virtue of which one woman often drops in upon
another for an unceremonious early morning chat, she was about to knock
at the door of the dressing-room, but apparently someone had left the
room hastily and failed to secure the door, so that it was standing
ajar, and all she had to do was give it a push to find herself in the
dressing room, whence she passed into the bedroom. From the lofty
ceiling of the latter apartment depended voluminous curtains of red
velvet, protecting the large double bed. The warm, moist air was
fragrant with a faint perfume of Persian lilac, and there was no sound
to break the silence save a gentle, regular respiration, scarcely
audible.
“Gilberte!” said Henriette, very softly.
The young woman was sleeping peacefully, and the dim light that entered
the room between the red curtains of the high windows displayed her
exquisitely rounded head resting upon a naked arm and her profusion of
beautiful hair straying in disorder over the pillow. Her lips were
parted in a smile.
“Gilberte!”
She slightly moved and stretched her arms, without opening her eyes.
“Yes, yes; good-by. Oh! please—” Then, raising her head and recognizing
Henriette: “What, is it you! How late is it?”
When she learned that it had not yet struck six she seemed
disconcerted, assuming a sportive air to hide her embarrassment, saying
it was unfair to come waking people up at such an hour. Then, to her
friend, questioning her about her husband, she made answer:
“Why, he has not returned; I don’t look for him much before nine
o’clock. What makes you so eager to see him at this hour of the
morning?”
Henriette’s voice had a trace of sternness in it as she answered,
seeing the other so smiling, so dull of comprehension in her happy
waking.
“I tell you there has been fighting all the morning at Bazeilles, and I
am anxious about my husband.”
“Oh, my dear,” exclaimed Gilberte, “I assure you there is not the
slightest reason for your feeling so. My husband is so prudent that he
would have been home long ago had there been any danger. Until you see
him back here you may rest easy, take my word for it.”
Henriette was struck by the justness of the argument; Delaherche, it
was true, was distinctly not a man to expose himself uselessly. She was
reassured, and went and drew the curtains and threw back the blinds;
the tawny light from without, where the sun was beginning to pierce the
fog with his golden javelins, streamed in a bright flood into the
apartment. One of the windows was part way open, and in the soft air of
the spacious bedroom, but now so close and stuffy, the two women could
hear the sound of the guns. Gilberte, half recumbent, her elbow resting
on the pillow, gazed out upon the sky with her lustrous, vacant eyes.
“So, then, they are fighting,” she murmured. Her chemise had slipped
downward, exposing a rosy, rounded shoulder, half hidden beneath the
wandering raven tresses, and her person exhaled a subtle, penetrating
odor, the odor of love. “They are fighting, so early in the morning,
_mon Dieu!_ It would be ridiculous if it were not for the horror of
it.”
But Henriette, in looking about the room, had caught sight of a pair of
gauntlets, the gloves of a man, lying forgotten on a small table, and
she started perceptibly. Gilberte blushed deeply, and extending her
arms with a conscious, caressing movement, drew her friend to her and
rested her head upon her bosom.
“Yes,” she almost whispered, “I saw that you noticed it. Darling, you
must not judge me too severely. He is an old friend; I told you all
about it at Charleville, long ago, you remember.” Her voice sank lower
still; there was something that sounded very like a laugh of
satisfaction in her tender tones. “He pleaded so with me yesterday that
I would see him just once more. Just think, this morning he is in
action; he may be dead by this. How could I refuse him?” It was all so
heroic and so charming, the contrast was so delicious between war’s
stern reality and tender sentiment; thoughtless as a linnet, she smiled
again, notwithstanding her confusion. Never could she have found it in
her heart to drive him from her door, when circumstances all were
propitious for the interview. “Do you condemn me?”
Henriette had listened to her confidences with a very grave face. Such
things surprised her, for she could not understand them; it must be
that she was constituted differently from other women. Her heart that
morning was with her husband, her brother, down there where the battle
was raging. How was it possible that anyone could sleep so peacefully
and be so gay and cheerful when the loved ones were in peril?
“But think of your husband, my dear, and of that poor young man as
well. Does not your heart yearn to be with them? You do not reflect
that their lifeless forms may be brought in and laid before your eyes
at any moment.”
Gilberte raised her adorable bare arm before her face to shield her
vision from the frightful picture.
“O Heaven! what is that you say? It is cruel of you to destroy all the
pleasure of my morning in this way. No, no; I won’t think of such
things. They are too mournful.”
Henriette could not refrain from smiling in spite of her anxiety. She
was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how Gilberte’s father,
Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had been made collector of
customs at Charleville when his wounds had incapacitated him for active
service, hearing his daughter cough and fearing for her the fate of his
young wife, who had been snatched from his arms by that terrible
disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house near
Chêne-Populeux. The little maid was not nine years old, and already she
was a consummate actress—a perfect type of the village coquette,
queening it over her playmates, tricked out in what old finery she
could lay hands on, adorning herself with bracelets and tiaras made
from the silver paper wrappings of the chocolate. She had not changed a
bit when, later, at the age of twenty, she married Maginot, the
inspector of woods and forests. Mézières, a dark, gloomy town,
surrounded by ramparts, was not to her taste, and she continued to live
at Charleville, where the gay, generous life, enlivened by many
festivities, suited her better. Her father was dead, and with a husband
whom, by reason of his inferior social position, her friends and
acquaintances treated with scant courtesy, she was absolutely mistress
of her own actions. She did not escape the censure of the stern
moralists who inhabit our provincial cities, and in those days was
credited with many lovers; but of the gay throng of officers who,
thanks to her father’s old connection and her kinship to Colonel de
Vineuil, disported themselves in her drawing-room, Captain Beaudoin was
the only one who had really produced an impression. She was light and
frivolous—nothing more—adoring pleasure and living entirely in the
present, without the least trace of perverse inclination; and if she
accepted the captain’s attentions, it is pretty certain that she did it
out of good-nature and love of admiration.
“You did very wrong to see him again,” Henriette finally said, in her
matter-of-fact way.
“Oh! my dear, since I could not possibly do otherwise, and it was only
for just that once. You know very well I would die rather than deceive
my new husband.”
She spoke with much feeling, and seemed distressed to see her friend
shake her head disapprovingly. They dropped the subject, and clasped
each other in an affectionate embrace, notwithstanding their
diametrically different natures. Each could hear the beating of the
other’s heart, and they might have understood the tongues those organs
spoke—one, the slave of pleasure, wasting and squandering all that was
best in herself; the other, with the mute heroism of a lofty soul,
devoting herself to a single ennobling affection.
“But hark! how the cannon are roaring,” Gilberte presently exclaimed.
“I must make haste and dress.”
The reports sounded more distinctly in the silent room now that their
conversation had ceased. Leaving her bed, the young woman accepted the
assistance of her friend, not caring to summon her maid, and rapidly
made her toilet for the day, in order that she might be ready to go
downstairs should she be needed there. As she was completing the
arrangement of her hair there was a knock at the door, and, recognizing
the voice of the elder Madame Delaherche, she hastened to admit her.
“Certainly, dear mother, you may come in.”
With the thoughtlessness that was part of her nature, she allowed the
old lady to enter without having first removed the gauntlets from the
table. It was in vain that Henriette darted forward to seize them and
throw them behind a chair. Madame Delaherche stood glaring for some
seconds at the spot where they had been with an expression on her face
as if she were slowly suffocating. Then her glance wandered
involuntarily from object to object in the room, stopping finally at
the great red-curtained bed, the coverings thrown back in disorder.
“I see that Madame Weiss has disturbed your slumbers. Then you were
able to sleep, daughter?”
It was plain that she had had another purpose in coming there than to
make that speech. Ah, that marriage that her son had insisted on
contracting, contrary to her wish, at the mature age of fifty, after
twenty years of joyless married life with a shrewish, bony wife; he,
who had always until then deferred so to her will, now swayed only by
his passion for this gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down! She
had promised herself to keep watch over the present, and there was the
past coming back to plague her. But ought she to speak? Her life in the
household was one of silent reproach and protest; she kept herself
almost constantly imprisoned in her chamber, devoting herself rigidly
to the observances of her austere religion. Now, however, the wrong was
so flagrant that she resolved to speak to her son.
Gilberte blushingly replied, without an excessive manifestation of
embarrassment, however:
“Oh, yes, I had a few hours of refreshing sleep. You know that Jules
has not returned—”
Madame Delaherche interrupted her with a grave nod of her head. Ever
since the artillery had commenced to roar she had been watching eagerly
for her son’s return, but she was a Spartan mother, and concealed her
gnawing anxiety under a cloak of brave silence. And then she remembered
what was the object of her visit there.
“Your uncle, the colonel, has sent the regimental surgeon with a note
in pencil, to ask if we will allow them to establish a hospital here.
He knows that we have abundance of space in the factory, and I have
already authorized the gentlemen to make use of the courtyard and the
big drying-room. But you should go down in person—”
“Oh, at once, at once!” exclaimed Henriette, hastening toward the door.
“We will do what we can to help.”
Gilberte also displayed much enthusiasm for her new occupation as
nurse; she barely took the time to throw a lace scarf over her head,
and the three women went downstairs. When they reached the bottom and
stood in the spacious vestibule, looking out through the main entrance,
of which the leaves had been thrown wide back, they beheld a crowd
collected in the street before the house. A low-hung carriage was
advancing slowly along the roadway, a sort of carriole, drawn by a
single horse, which a lieutenant of zouaves was leading by the bridle.
They took it to be a wounded man that they were bringing to them, the
first of their patients.
“Yes, yes! This is the place; this way!”
But they were quickly undeceived. The sufferer recumbent in the
carriole was Marshal MacMahon, severely wounded in the hip, who, his
hurt having been provisionally cared for in the cottage of a gardener,
was now being taken to the Sous-Prefecture. He was bareheaded and
partially divested of his clothing, and the gold embroidery on his
uniform was tarnished with dust and blood. He spoke no word, but had
raised his head from the pillow where it lay and was looking about him
with a sorrowful expression, and perceiving the three women where they
stood, wide eyed with horror, their joined hands resting on their
bosom, in presence of that great calamity, the whole army stricken in
the person of its chief at the very beginning of the conflict, he
slightly bowed his head, with a faint, paternal smile. A few of those
about him removed their hats; others, who had no time for such idle
ceremony, were circulating the report of General Ducrot’s appointment
to the command of the army. It was half-past seven o’clock.
“And what of the Emperor?” Henriette inquired of a bookseller, who was
standing at his door.
“He left the city near an hour ago,” replied the neighbor. “I was
standing by and saw him pass out at the Balan gate. There is a rumor
that his head was taken off by a cannon ball.”
But this made the grocer across the street furious. “Hold your tongue,”
he shouted, “it is an infernal lie! None but the brave will leave their
bones there to-day!”
When near the Place du Collège the marshal’s carriole was lost to sight
in the gathering crowd, among whose numbers the most strange and
contradictory reports from the field of battle were now beginning to
circulate. The fog was clearing; the streets were bright with sunshine.
A hail, in no gentle terms, was heard proceeding from the courtyard:
“Now then, ladies, here is where you are wanted, not outside!”
They all three hastened inside and found themselves in presence of
Major Bouroche, who had thrown his uniform coat upon the floor, in a
corner of the room, and donned a great white apron. Above the broad
expanse of, as yet, unspotted white, his blazing, leonine eyes and
enormous head, with shock of harsh, bristling hair, seemed to exhale
energy and determination. So terrible did he appear to them that the
women were his most humble servants from the very start, obedient to
his every sign, treading on one another to anticipate his wishes.
“There is nothing here that is needed. Get me some linen; try and see
if you can’t find some more mattresses; show my men where the pump is—”
And they ran as if their life was at stake to do his bidding; were so
active that they seemed to be ubiquitous.
The factory was admirably adapted for a hospital. The drying-room was a
particularly noticeable feature, a vast apartment with numerous and
lofty windows for light and ventilation, where they could put in a
hundred beds and yet have room to spare, and at one side was a shed
that seemed to have been built there especially for the convenience of
the operators: three long tables had been brought in, the pump was
close at hand, and a small grass-plot adjacent might serve as
ante-chamber for the patients while awaiting their turn. And the
handsome old elms, with their deliciously cool shade, roofed the spot
in most agreeably.
Bouroche had considered it would be best to establish himself in Sedan
at the commencement, foreseeing the dreadful slaughter and the
inevitable panic that would sooner or later drive the troops to the
shelter of the ramparts. All that he had deemed it necessary to leave
with the regiment was two flying ambulances and some “first aids,” that
were to send him in the casualties as rapidly as possible after
applying the primary dressings. The details of litter-bearers were all
out there, whose duty it was to pick up the wounded under fire, and
with them were the ambulance wagons and _fourgons_ of the medical
train. The two assistant-surgeons and three hospital stewards whom he
had retained, leaving two assistants on the field, would doubtless be
sufficient to perform what operations were necessary. He had also a
corps of dressers under him. But he was not gentle in manner and
language, for all he did was done impulsively, zealously, with all his
heart and soul.
“_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ how do you suppose we are going to distinguish the
cases from one another when they begin to come in presently? Take a
piece of charcoal and number each bed with a big figure on the wall
overhead, and place those mattresses closer together, do you hear? We
can strew some straw on the floor in that corner if it becomes
necessary.”
The guns were barking, preparing his work for him; he knew that at any
moment now the first carriage might drive up and discharge its load of
maimed and bleeding flesh, and he hastened to get all in readiness in
the great, bare room. Outside in the shed the preparations were of
another nature: the chests were opened and their contents arranged in
order on a table, packages of lint, bandages, compresses, rollers,
splints for fractured limbs, while on another table, alongside a great
jar of cerate and a bottle of chloroform, were the surgical cases with
their blood-curdling array of glittering instruments, probes, forceps,
bistouries, scalpels, scissors, saws, an arsenal of implements of every
imaginable shape adapted to pierce, cut, slice, rend, crush. But there
was a deficient supply of basins.
“You must have pails, pots, jars about the house—something that will
hold water. We can’t work besmeared with blood all day, that’s certain.
And sponges, try to get me some sponges.”
Madame Delaherche hurried away and returned, followed by three women
bearing a supply of the desired vessels. Gilberte, standing by the
table where the instruments were laid out, summoned Henriette to her
side by a look and pointed to them with a little shudder. They grasped
each other’s hand and stood for a moment without speaking, but their
mute clasp was eloquent of the solemn feeling of terror and pity that
filled both their souls. And yet there was a difference, for one
retained, even in her distress, the involuntary smile of her bright
youth, while in the eyes of the other, pale as death, was the grave
earnestness of the heart which, one love lost, can never love again.
“How terrible it must be, dear, to have an arm or leg cut off!”
“Poor fellows!”
Bouroche had just finished placing a mattress on each of the three
tables, covering them carefully with oil-cloth, when the sound of
horses’ hoofs was heard outside and the first ambulance wagon rolled
into the court. There were ten men in it, seated on the lateral
benches, only slightly wounded; two or three of them carrying their arm
in a sling, but the majority hurt about the head. They alighted with
but little assistance, and the inspection of their cases commenced
forthwith.
One of them, scarcely more than a boy, had been shot through the
shoulder, and as Henriette was tenderly assisting him to draw off his
greatcoat, an operation that elicited cries of pain, she took notice of
the number of his regiment.
“Why, you belong to the 106th! Are you in Captain Beaudoin’s company?”
No, he belonged to Captain Bonnaud’s company, but for all that he was
well acquainted with Corporal Macquart and felt pretty certain that his
squad had not been under fire as yet. The tidings, meager as they were,
sufficed to remove a great load from the young woman’s heart: her
brother was alive and well; if now her husband would only return, as
she was expecting every moment he would do, her mind would be quite at
rest.
At that moment, just as Henriette raised her head to listen to the
cannonade, which was then roaring with increased viciousness, she was
thunderstruck to see Delaherche standing only a few steps away in the
middle of a group of men, to whom he was telling the story of the
frightful dangers he had encountered in getting from Bazeilles to
Sedan. How did he happen to be there? She had not seen him come in. She
darted toward him.
“Is not my husband with you?”
But Delaherche, who was just then replying to the fond questions of his
wife and mother, was in no haste to answer.
“Wait, wait a moment.” And resuming his narrative: “Twenty times
between Bazeilles and Balan I just missed being killed. It was a storm,
a regular hurricane, of shot and shell! And I saw the Emperor, too. Oh!
but he is a brave man!—And after leaving Balan I ran—”
Henriette shook him by the arm.
“My husband?”
“Weiss? why, he stayed behind there, Weiss did.”
“What do you mean, behind there?”
“Why, yes; he picked up the musket of a dead soldier, and is fighting
away with the best of them.”
“He is fighting, you say?—and why?”
“He must be out of his head, I think. He would not come with me, and of
course I had to leave him.”
Henriette gazed at him fixedly, with wide-dilated eyes. For a moment no
one spoke; then in a calm voice she declared her resolution.
“It is well; I will go to him.”
What, she, go to him? But it was impossible, it was preposterous!
Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of shot and shell. Gilberte
seized her by the wrists to detain her, while Madame Delaherche used
all her persuasive powers to convince her of the folly of the mad
undertaking. In the same gentle, determined tone she repeated:
“It is useless; I will go to him.”
She would only wait to adjust upon her head the lace scarf that
Gilberte had been wearing and which the latter insisted she should
accept. In the hope that his offer might cause her to abandon her
resolve Delaherche declared that he would go with her at least as far
as the Balan gate, but just then he caught sight of the sentry, who, in
all the turmoil and confusion of the time, had been pacing
uninterruptedly up and down before the building that contained the
treasure chests of the 7th corps, and suddenly he remembered, was
alarmed, went to give a look and assure himself that the millions were
there still. In the meantime Henriette had reached the portico and was
about to pass out into the street.
“Wait for me, won’t you? Upon my word, you are as mad as your husband!”
Another ambulance had driven up, moreover, and they had to wait to let
it pass in. It was smaller than the other, having but two wheels, and
the two men whom it contained, both severely wounded, rested on
stretchers placed upon the floor. The first one whom the attendants
took out, using the most tender precaution, had one hand broken and his
side torn by a splinter of shell; he was a mass of bleeding flesh. The
second had his left leg shattered; and Bouroche, giving orders to
extend the latter on one of the oil-cloth-covered mattresses, proceeded
forthwith to operate on him, surrounded by the staring, pushing crowd
of dressers and assistants. Madame Delaherche and Gilberte were seated
near the grass-plot, employed in rolling bandages.
In the street outside Delaherche had caught up with Henriette.
“Come, my dear Madame Weiss, abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How
can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is
no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home
through the fields. I assure you that Bazeilles is inaccessible.”
But she did not even listen to him, only increasing her speed, and had
now entered the Rue de Menil, her shortest way to the Balan gate. It
was nearly nine o’clock, and Sedan no longer wore the forbidding,
funereal aspect of the morning, when it awoke to grope and shudder amid
the despair and gloom of its black fog. The shadows of the houses were
sharply defined upon the pavement in the bright sunlight, the streets
were filled with an excited, anxious throng, through which orderlies
and staff officers were constantly pushing their way at a gallop. The
chief centers of attraction were the straggling soldiers who, even at
this early hour of the day, had begun to stream into the city, minus
arms and equipments, some of them slightly wounded, others in an
extreme condition of nervous excitation, shouting and gesticulating
like lunatics. And yet the place would have had very much its every-day
aspect, had it not been for the tight-closed shutters of the shops, the
lifeless house-fronts, where not a blind was open. Then there was the
cannonade, that never-ceasing cannonade, beneath which earth and rocks,
walls and foundations, even to the very slates upon the roofs, shook
and trembled.
What between the damage that his reputation as a man of bravery and
politeness would inevitably suffer should he desert Henriette in her
time of trouble, and his disinclination to again face the iron hail on
the Bazeilles road, Delaherche was certainly in a very unpleasant
predicament. Just as they reached the Balan gate a bevy of mounted
officers, returning to the city, suddenly came riding up, and they were
parted. There was a dense crowd of people around the gate, waiting for
news. It was all in vain that he ran this way and that, looking for the
young woman in the throng; she must have been beyond the walls by that
time, speeding along the road, and pocketing his gallantry for use on
some future occasion, he said to himself aloud:
“Very well, so much the worse for her; it was too idiotic.”
Then the manufacturer strolled about the city, bourgeois-like desirous
to lose no portion of the spectacle, and at the same time tormented by
a constantly increasing feeling of anxiety. How was it all to end? and
would not the city suffer heavily should the army be defeated? The
questions were hard ones to answer; he could not give a satisfactory
solution to the conundrum when so much depended on circumstances, but
none the less he was beginning to feel very uneasy for his factory and
house in the Rue Maqua, whence he had already taken the precaution to
remove his securities and valuables and bury them in a place of safety.
He dropped in at the Hôtel de Ville, found the Municipal Council
sitting in permanent session, and loitered away a couple of hours there
without hearing any fresh news, unless that affairs outside the walls
were beginning to look very threatening. The army, under the pushing
and hauling process, pushed back to the rear by General Ducrot during
the hour and a half while the command was in his hands, hauled forward
to the front again by de Wimpffen, his successor, knew not where to
yield obedience, and the entire lack of plan and competent leadership,
the incomprehensible vacillation, the abandonment of positions only to
retake them again at terrible cost of life, all these things could not
fail to end in ruin and disaster.
From there Delaherche pushed forward to the Sous-Prefecture to
ascertain whether the Emperor had returned yet from the field of
battle. The only tidings he gleaned here were of Marshal MacMahon, who
was said to be resting comfortably, his wound, which was not dangerous,
having been dressed by a surgeon. About eleven o’clock, however, as he
was again going the rounds, his progress was arrested for a moment in
the Grande-Rue, opposite the Hotel de l’Europe, by a sorry cavalcade of
dust-stained horsemen, whose jaded nags were moving at a walk, and at
their head he recognized the Emperor, who was returning after having
spent four hours on the battle-field. It was plain that death would
have nothing to do with him. The big drops of anguish had washed the
rouge from off those painted cheeks, the waxed mustache had lost its
stiffness and drooped over the mouth, and in that ashen face, in those
dim eyes, was the stupor of one in his last agony. One of the officers
alighted in front of the hotel and proceeded to give some friends, who
were collected there, an account of their route, from la Moncelle to
Givonne, up the entire length of the little valley among the soldiers
of the 1st corps, who had already been pressed back by the Saxons
across the little stream to the right bank; and they had returned by
the sunken road of the Fond de Givonne, which was even then in such an
encumbered condition that had the Emperor desired to make his way to
the front again he would have found the greatest difficulty in doing
so. Besides, what would it have availed?
As Delaherche was drinking in these particulars with greedy ears a loud
explosion shook the quarter. It was a shell, which had demolished a
chimney in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, near the citadel. There was a general
rush and scramble; men swore and women shrieked. He had flattened
himself against the wall, when another explosion broke the windows in a
house not far away. The consequences would be dreadful if they should
shell Sedan; he made his way back to the Rue Maqua on a keen run, and
was seized by such an imperious desire to learn the truth that he did
not pause below stairs, but hurried to the roof, where there was a
terrace that commanded a view of the city and its environs.
A glance of the situation served to reassure him; the German fire was
not directed against the city; the batteries at Frenois and la Marfée
were shelling the Plateau de l’Algérie over the roofs of the houses,
and now that his alarm had subsided he could even watch with a certain
degree of admiration the flight of the projectiles as they sailed over
Sedan in a wide, majestic curve, leaving behind them a faint trail of
smoke upon the air, like gigantic birds, invisible to mortal eye and to
be traced only by the gray plumage shed by their pinions. At first it
seemed to him quite evident that what damage had been done so far was
the result of random practice by the Prussian gunners: they were not
bombarding the city yet; then, upon further consideration, he was of
opinion that their firing was intended as a response to the ineffectual
fire of the few guns mounted on the fortifications of the place.
Turning to the north he looked down from his position upon the extended
and complex system of defenses of the citadel, the frowning curtains
black with age, the green expanses of the turfed glacis, the stern
bastions that reared their heads at geometrically accurate angles,
prominent among them the three cyclopean salients, the Ecossais, the
Grand Jardin, and la Rochette, while further to the west, in extension
of the line, were Fort Nassau and Fort Palatinat, above the faubourg of
Menil. The sight produced in him a melancholy impression of immensity
and futility. Of what avail were they now against the powerful modern
guns with their immense range? Besides, the works were not manned;
cannon, ammunition, men were wanting. Some three weeks previously the
governor had invited the citizens to organize and form a National
Guard, and these volunteers were now doing duty as gunners; and thus it
was that there were three guns in service at Palatinat, while at the
Porte de Paris there may have been a half dozen. As they had only seven
or eight rounds to each gun, however, the men husbanded their
ammunition, limiting themselves to a shot every half hour, and that
only as a sort of salve to their self-respect, for none of their
missiles reached the enemy; all were lost in the meadows opposite them.
Hence the enemy’s batteries, disdainful of such small game,
contemptuously pitched a shell at them from time to time, out of
charity, as it were.
Those batteries over across the river were objects of great interest to
Delaherche. He was eagerly scanning the heights of la Marfée with his
naked eye, when all at once he thought of the spy-glass with which he
sometimes amused himself by watching the doings of his neighbors from
the terrace. He ran downstairs and got it, returned and placed it in
position, and as he was slowly sweeping the horizon and trees, fields,
houses came within his range of vision, he lighted on that group of
uniforms, at the angle of a pine wood, over the main battery at
Frenois, of which Weiss had caught a glimpse from Bazeilles. To him,
however, thanks to the excellence of his glass, it would have been no
difficult matter to count the number of officers of the staff, so
distinctly he made them out. Some of them were reclining carelessly on
the grass, others were conversing in little groups, and in front of
them all stood a solitary figure, a spare, well-proportioned man to
appearances, in an unostentatious uniform, who yet asserted in some
indefinable way his masterhood. It was the Prussian King, scarce half
finger high, one of those miniature leaden toys that afford children
such delight. Although he was not certain of this identity until later
on the manufacturer found himself, by reason of some inexplicable
attraction, constantly returning to that diminutive puppet, whose face,
scarce larger than a pin’s head, was but a pale point against the
immense blue sky.
It was not midday yet, and since nine o’clock the master had been
watching the movements, inexorable as fate, of his armies. Onward, ever
onward, they swept, by roads traced for them in advance, completing the
circle, slowly but surely closing in and enveloping Sedan in their
living wall of men and guns. The army on his left, that had come up
across the level plain of Donchery, was debouching still from the pass
of Saint-Albert and, leaving Saint-Menges in its rear, was beginning to
show its heads of columns at Fleigneux; and, in the rear of the XIth
corps, then sharply engaged with General Douay’s force, he could
discern the Vth corps, availing itself of the shelter of the woods and
advancing stealthily on Illy, while battery upon battery came wheeling
into position, an ever-lengthening line of thundering guns, until the
horizon was an unbroken ring of fire. On the right the army was now in
undisputed possession of the valley of the Givonne; the XIIth corps had
taken la Moncelle, the Guards had forced the passage of the stream at
Daigny, compelling General Ducrot to seek the protection of the wood of
la Garenne, and were pushing up the right bank, likewise in full march
upon the plateau of Illy. Their task was almost done; one effort more,
and up there at the north, among those barren fields, on the very verge
of the dark forests of the Ardennes, the Crown Prince of Prussia would
join hands with the Crown Prince of Saxony. To the south of Sedan the
village of Bazeilles was lost to sight in the dense smoke of its
burning houses, in the clouds of dun vapor that rose above the furious
conflict.
And tranquilly, ever since the morning, the King had been watching and
waiting. An hour yet, two hours, it might be three, it mattered not; it
was only a question of time. Wheel and pinion, cog and lever, were
working in harmony, the great engine of destruction was in motion, and
soon would have run its course. In the center of the immense horizon,
beneath the deep vault of sunlit sky, the bounds of the battlefield
were ever becoming narrower, the black swarms were converging, closing
in on doomed Sedan. There were fiery reflexions in the windows of the
city; to the left, in the direction of the Faubourg de la Cassine, it
seemed as if a house was burning. And outside the circle of flame and
smoke, in the fields no longer trodden by armed men, over by Donchery,
over by Carignan, peace, warm and luminous, lay upon the land; the
bright waters of the Meuse, the lusty trees rejoicing in their
strength, the broad, verdant meadows, the fertile, well-kept farms, all
rested peacefully beneath the fervid noonday sun.
Turning to his staff, the King briefly called for information upon some
point. It was the royal will to direct each move on the gigantic
chessboard; to hold in the hollow of his hand the hosts who looked to
him for guidance. At his left, a flock of swallows, affrighted by the
noise of the cannonade, rose high in air, wheeled, and vanished in the
south.