At half-past five o’clock, after the closing of the gates, Delaherche,
in his eager thirst for news, now that he knew the battle lost, had
again returned to the Sous-Prefecture. He hung persistently about the
approaches of the janitor’s lodge, tramping up and down the paved
courtyard with feverish impatience, for more than three hours, watching
for every officer who came up and interviewing him, and thus it was
that he had become acquainted, piecemeal, with the rapid series of
events; how General de Wimpffen had tendered his resignation and then
withdrawn it upon the peremptory refusal of Generals Ducrot and Douay
to append their names to the articles of capitulation, how the Emperor
had thereupon invested the General with full authority to proceed to
the Prussian headquarters and treat for the surrender of the vanquished
army on the most advantageous terms obtainable; how, finally, a council
of war had been convened with the object of deciding what possibilities
there were of further protracting the struggle successfully by the
defense of the fortress. During the deliberations of this council,
which consisted of some twenty officers of the highest rank and seemed
to him as if it would never end, the cloth manufacturer climbed the
steps of the huge public building at least twenty times, and at last
his curiosity was gratified by beholding General de Wimpffen emerge,
very red in the face and his eyelids puffed and swollen with tears,
behind whom came two other generals and a colonel. They leaped into the
saddle and rode away over the Pont de Meuse. The bells had struck eight
some time before; the inevitable capitulation was now to be
accomplished, from which there was no escape.
Delaherche, somewhat relieved in mind by what he had heard and seen,
remembered that it was a long time since he had tasted food and
resolved to turn his steps homeward, but the terrific crowd that had
collected since he first came made him pause in dismay. It is no
exaggeration to say that the streets and squares were so congested, so
thronged, so densely packed with horses, men, and guns, that one would
have declared the closely compacted mass could only have been squeezed
and wedged in there thus by the effort of some gigantic mechanism.
While the ramparts were occupied by the bivouacs of such regiments as
had fallen back in good order, the city had been invaded and submerged
by an angry, surging, desperate flood, the broken remnants of the
various corps, stragglers and fugitives from all arms of the service,
and the dammed-up tide made it impossible for one to stir foot or hand.
The wheels of the guns, of the caissons, and the innumerable vehicles
of every description, had interlocked and were tangled in confusion
worse confounded, while the poor horses, flogged unmercifully by their
drivers and pulled, now in this direction, now in that, could only
dance in their bewilderment, unable to move a step either forward or
back. And the men, deaf to reproaches and threats alike, forced their
way into the houses, devoured whatever they could lay hands on, flung
themselves down to sleep wherever they could find a vacant space, it
might be in the best bedroom or in the cellar. Many of them had fallen
in doorways, where they blocked the vestibule; others, without strength
to go farther, lay extended on the sidewalks and slept the sleep of
death, not even rising when some by-passer trod on them and bruised an
arm or leg, preferring the risk of death to the fatigue of changing
their location.
These things all helped to make Delaherche still more keenly conscious
of the necessity of immediate capitulation. There were some quarters in
which numerous caissons were packed so close together that they were in
contact, and a single Prussian shell alighting on one of them must
inevitably have exploded them all, entailing the immediate destruction
of the city by conflagration. Then, too, what could be accomplished
with such an assemblage of miserable wretches, deprived of all their
powers, mental and physical, by reason of their long-endured
privations, and destitute of either ammunition or subsistence? Merely
to clear the streets and reduce them to a condition of something like
order would require a whole day. The place was entirely incapable of
defense, having neither guns nor provisions.
These were the considerations that had prevailed at the council among
those more reasonable officers who, in the midst of their grief and
sorrow for their country and the army, had retained a clear and
undistorted view of the situation as it was; and the more hot-headed
among them, those who cried with emotion that it was impossible for an
army to surrender thus, had been compelled to bow their head upon their
breast in silence and admit that they had no practicable scheme to
offer whereby the conflict might be recommenced on the morrow.
In the Place Turenne and Place du Rivage, Delaherche succeeded with the
greatest difficulty in working his way through the press. As he passed
the Hotel of the Golden Cross a sorrowful vision greeted his eyes, that
of the generals seated in the dining room, gloomily silent, around the
empty board; there was nothing left to eat in the house, not even
bread. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, however, who had been storming and
vociferating in the kitchen, appeared to have found something, for he
suddenly held his peace and ran away swiftly up the stairs, holding in
his hands a large paper parcel of a greasy aspect. Such was the crowd
assembled there, to stare through the lighted windows upon the guests
assembled around that famine-stricken _table d’hote_, that the
manufacturer was obliged to make vigorous play with his elbows, and was
frequently driven back by some wild rush of the mob and lost all the
distance, and more, that he had just gained. In the Grande Rue,
however, the obstacles became actually impassable, and there was a
moment when he was inclined to give up in despair; a complete battery
seemed to have been driven in there and the guns and _matériel_ piled,
pell-mell, on top of one another. Deciding finally to take the bull by
the horns, he leaped to the axle of a piece and so pursued his way,
jumping from wheel to wheel, straddling the guns, at the imminent risk
of breaking his legs, if not his neck. Afterward it was some horses
that blocked his way, and he made himself lowly and stooped, creeping
among the feet and underneath the bellies of the sorry jades, who were
ready to die of inanition, like their masters. Then, when after a
quarter of an hour’s laborious effort he reached the junction of the
Rue Saint-Michel, he was terrified at the prospect of the dangers and
obstacles that he had still to face, and which, instead of diminishing,
seemed to be increasing, and made up his mind to turn down the street
above mentioned, which would take him into the Rue des Laboureurs; he
hoped that by taking these usually quiet and deserted passages he
should escape the crowd and reach his home in safety. As luck would
have it he almost directly came upon a house of ill-fame to which a
band of drunken soldiers were in process of laying siege, and
considering that a stray shot, should one reach him in the fracas,
would be equally as unpleasant as one intended for him, he made haste
to retrace his steps. Resolving to have done with it he pushed on to
the end of the Grande Rue, now gaining a few feet by balancing himself,
rope-walker fashion, along the pole of some vehicle, now climbing over
an army wagon that barred his way. At the Place du Collège he was
carried along—bodily on the shoulders of the throng for a space of
thirty paces; he fell to the ground, narrowly escaped a set of
fractured ribs, and saved himself only by the proximity of a friendly
iron railing, by the bars of which he pulled himself to his feet. And
when at last he reached the Rue Maqua, inundated with perspiration, his
clothing almost torn from his back, he found that he had been more than
an hour in coming from the Sous-Prefecture, a distance which in
ordinary times he was accustomed to accomplish in less than five
minutes.
Major Bouroche, with the intention of keeping the ambulance and garden
from being overrun with intruders, had caused two sentries to be
mounted at the door. This measure was a source of great comfort to
Delaherche, who had begun to contemplate the possibilities of his house
being subjected to pillage. The sight of the ambulance in the garden,
dimly lighted by a few candles and exhaling its fetid, feverish
emanations, caused him a fresh constriction of the heart; then,
stumbling over the body of a soldier who was stretched in slumber on
the stone pavement of the walk, he supposed him to be one of the
fugitives who had managed to find his way in there from outside, until,
calling to mind the 7th corps treasure that had been deposited there
and the sentry who had been set over it, he saw how matters stood: the
poor fellow, stationed there since early morning, had been overlooked
by his superiors and had succumbed to his fatigue. Besides, the house
seemed quite deserted; the ground floor was black as Egypt, and the
doors stood wide open. The servants were doubtless all at the
ambulance, for there was no one in the kitchen, which was faintly
illuminated by the light of a wretched little smoky lamp. He lit a
candle and ascended the main staircase very softly, in order not to
awaken his wife and mother, whom he had begged to go to bed early after
a day where the stress, both mental and physical, had been so intense.
On entering his study, however, he beheld a sight that caused his eyes
to dilate with astonishment. Upon the sofa on which Captain Beaudoin
had snatched a few hours’ repose the day before a soldier lay
outstretched; and he could not understand the reason of it until he had
looked and recognized young Maurice Levasseur, Henriette’s brother. He
was still more surprised when, on turning his head, he perceived,
stretched on the floor and wrapped in a bed quilt, another soldier,
that Jean, whom he had seen for a moment just before the battle. It was
plain that the poor fellows, in their distress and fatigue after the
conflict, not knowing where else to bestow themselves, had sought
refuge there; they were crushed, annihilated, like dead men. He did not
linger there, but pushed on to his wife’s chamber, which was the next
room on the corridor. A lamp was burning on a table in a corner; the
profound silence seemed to shudder. Gilberte had thrown herself
crosswise on the bed, fully dressed, doubtless in order to be prepared
for any catastrophe, and was sleeping peacefully, while, seated on a
chair at her side with her head declined and resting lightly on the
very edge of the mattress, Henriette was also slumbering, with a
fitful, agitated sleep, while big tears welled up beneath her swollen
eyelids. He contemplated them silently for a moment, strongly tempted
to awake and question the young woman in order to ascertain what she
knew. Had she succeeded in reaching Bazeilles? and why was it that she
was back there? Perhaps she would be able to give him some tidings of
his dyehouse were he to ask her? A feeling of compassion stayed him,
however, and he was about to leave the room when his mother,
ghost-like, appeared at the threshold of the open door and beckoned him
to follow her.
As they were passing through the dining room he expressed his surprise.
“What, have you not been abed to-night?”
She shook her head, then said below her breath:
“I cannot sleep; I have been sitting in an easy-chair beside the
colonel. He is very feverish; he awakes at every instant, almost, and
then plies me with questions. I don’t know how to answer them. Come in
and see him, you.”
M. de Vineuil had fallen asleep again. His long face, now brightly red,
barred by the sweeping mustache that fell across it like a snowy
avalanche, was scarce distinguishable on the pillow. Mme. Delaherche
had placed a newspaper before the lamp and that corner of the room was
lost in semi-darkness, while all the intensity of the bright lamplight
was concentrated on her where she sat, uncompromisingly erect, in her
fauteuil, her hands crossed before her in her lap, her vague eyes bent
on space, in sorrowful reverie.
“I think he must have heard you,” she murmured; “he is awaking again.”
It was so; the colonel, without moving his head, had reopened his eyes
and bent them on Delaherche. He recognized him, and immediately asked
in a voice that his exhausted condition made tremulous:
“It is all over, is it not? We have capitulated.”
The manufacturer, who encountered the look his mother cast on him at
that moment, was on the point of equivocating. But what good would it
do? A look of discouragement passed across his face.
“What else remained to do? A single glance at the streets of the city
would convince you. General de Wimpffen has just set out for Prussian
general headquarters to discuss conditions.”
M. de Vineuil’s eyes closed again, his long frame was shaken with a
protracted shiver of supremely bitter grief, and this deep, long-drawn
moan escaped his lips:
“Ah! merciful God, merciful God!” And without opening his eyes he went
on in faltering, broken accents: “Ah! the plan I spoke of
yesterday—they should have adopted it. Yes, I knew the country; I spoke
of my apprehensions to the general, but even him they would not listen
to. Occupy all the heights up there to the north, from Saint-Menges to
Fleigneux, with your army looking down on and commanding Sedan, able at
any time to move on Vrigne-aux-Bois, mistress of Saint-Albert’s
pass—and there we are; our positions are impregnable, the Mézières road
is under our control—”
His speech became more confused as he proceeded; he stammered a few
more unintelligible words, while the vision of the battle that had been
born of his fever little by little grew blurred and dim and at last was
effaced by slumber. He slept, and in his sleep perhaps the honest
officer’s dreams were dreams of victory.
“Does the major speak favorably of his case?” Delaherche inquired in a
whisper.
Madame Delaherche nodded affirmatively.
“Those wounds in the foot are dreadful things, though,” he went on. “I
suppose he is likely to be laid up for a long time, isn’t he?”
She made him no answer this time, as if all her being, all her
faculties were concentrated on contemplating the great calamity of
their defeat. She was of another age; she was a survivor of that strong
old race of frontier burghers who defended their towns so valiantly in
the good days gone by. The clean-cut lines of her stern, set face, with
its fleshless, uncompromising nose and thin lips, which the brilliant
light of the lamp brought out in high relief against the darkness of
the room, told the full extent of her stifled rage and grief and the
wound sustained by her antique patriotism, the revolt of which refused
even to let her sleep.
About that time Delaherche became conscious of a sensation of
isolation, accompanied by a most uncomfortable feeling of physical
distress. His hunger was asserting itself again, a griping, intolerable
hunger, and he persuaded himself that it was debility alone that was
thus robbing him of courage and resolution. He tiptoed softly from the
room and, with his candle, again made his way down to the kitchen, but
the spectacle he witnessed there was even still more cheerless; the
range cold and fireless, the closets empty, the floor strewn with a
disorderly litter of towels, napkins, dish-clouts and women’s aprons;
as if the hurricane of disaster had swept through that place as well,
bearing away on its wings all the charm and cheer that appertain
naturally to the things we eat and drink. At first he thought he was
not going to discover so much as a crust, what was left over of the
bread having all found its way to the ambulance in the form of soup. At
last, however, in the dark corner of a cupboard he came across the
remainder of the beans from yesterday’s dinner, where they had been
forgotten, and ate them. He accomplished his luxurious repast without
the formality of sitting down, without the accompaniment of salt and
butter, for which he did not care to trouble himself to ascend to the
floor above, desirous only to get away as speedily as possible from
that dismal kitchen, where the blinking, smoking little lamp perfumed
the air with fumes of petroleum.
It was not much more than ten o’clock, and Delaherche had no other
occupation than to speculate on the various probabilities connected
with the signing of the capitulation. A persistent apprehension haunted
him; a dread lest the conflict might be renewed, and the horrible
thought of what the consequences must be in such an event, of which he
could not speak, but which rested on his bosom like an incubus. When he
had reascended to his study, where he found Maurice and Jean in exactly
the same position he had left them in, it was all in vain that he
settled himself comfortably in his favorite easy-chair; sleep would not
come to him; just as he was on the point of losing himself the crash of
a shell would arouse him with a great start. It was the frightful
cannonade of the day, the echoes of which were still ringing in his
ears; and he would listen breathlessly for a moment, then sit and
shudder at the equally appalling silence by which he was now
surrounded. As he could not sleep he preferred to move about; he
wandered aimlessly among the rooms, taking care to avoid that in which
his mother was sitting by the colonel’s bedside, for the steady gaze
with which she watched him as he tramped nervously up and down had
finally had the effect of disconcerting him. Twice he returned to see
if Henriette had not awakened, and he paused an instant to glance at
his wife’s pretty face, so calmly peaceful, on which seemed to be
flitting something like the faint shadow of a smile. Then, knowing not
what to do, he went downstairs again, came back, moved about from room
to room, until it was nearly two in the morning, wearying his ears with
trying to decipher some meaning in the sounds that came to him from
without.
This condition of affairs could not last. Delaherche resolved to return
once more to the Sous-Prefecture, feeling assured that all rest would
be quite out of the question for him so long as his ignorance
continued. A feeling of despair seized him, however, when he went
downstairs and looked out upon the densely crowded street, where the
confusion seemed to be worse than ever; never would he have the
strength to fight his way to the Place Turenne and back again through
obstacles the mere memory of which caused every bone in his body to
ache again. And he was mentally discussing matters, when who should
come up but Major Bouroche, panting, perspiring, and swearing.
“_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ I wonder if my head’s on my shoulders or not!”
He had been obliged to visit the Hôtel de Ville to see the mayor about
his supply of chloroform, and urge him to issue a requisition for a
quantity, for he had many operations to perform, his stock of the drug
was exhausted, and he was afraid, he said, that he should be compelled
to carve up the poor devils without putting them to sleep.
“Well?” inquired Delaherche.
“Well, they can’t even tell whether the apothecaries have any or not!”
But the manufacturer was thinking of other things than chloroform. “No,
no,” he continued. “Have they brought matters to a conclusion yet? Have
they signed the agreement with the Prussians?”
The major made a gesture of impatience. “There is nothing concluded,”
he cried. “It appears that those scoundrels are making demands out of
all reason. Ah, well; let ’em commence afresh, then, and we’ll all
leave our bones here. That will be best!”
Delaherche’s face grew very pale as he listened. “But are you quite
sure these things are so?”
“I was told them by those fellows of the municipal council, who are in
permanent session at the city hall. An officer had been dispatched from
the Sous-Prefecture to lay the whole affair before them.”
And he went on to furnish additional details. The interview had taken
place at the Château de Bellevue, near Donchery, and the participants
were General de Wimpffen, General von Moltke, and Bismarck. A stern and
inflexible man was that von Moltke, a terrible man to deal with! He
began by demonstrating that he was perfectly acquainted with the
hopeless situation of the French army; it was destitute of ammunition
and subsistence, demoralization and disorder pervaded its ranks, it was
utterly powerless to break the iron circle by which it was girt about;
while on the other hand the German armies occupied commanding positions
from which they could lay the city in ashes in two hours. Coldly,
unimpassionedly, he stated his terms: the entire French army to
surrender arms and baggage and be treated as prisoners of war. Bismarck
took no part in the discussion beyond giving the general his support,
occasionally showing his teeth, like a big mastiff, inclined to be
pacific on the whole, but quite ready to rend and tear should there be
occasion for it. General de Wimpffen in reply protested with all the
force he had at his command against these conditions, the most severe
that ever were imposed on a vanquished army. He spoke of his personal
grief and ill-fortune, the bravery of the troops, the danger there was
in driving a proud nation to extremity; for three hours he spoke with
all the energy and eloquence of despair, alternately threatening and
entreating, demanding that they should content themselves with
interning their prisoners in France, or even in Algeria; and in the end
the only concession granted was, that the officers might retain their
swords, and those among them who should enter into a solemn
arrangement, attested by a written parole, to serve no more during the
war, might return to their homes. Finally, the armistice to be
prolonged until the next morning at ten o’clock; if at that time the
terms had not been accepted, the Prussian batteries would reopen fire
and the city would be burned.
“That’s stupid!” exclaimed Delaherche; “they have no right to burn a
city that has done nothing to deserve it!”
The major gave him still further food for anxiety by adding that some
officers whom he had met at the Hotel de l’Europe were talking of
making a sortie _en masse_ just before daylight. An extremely excited
state of feeling had prevailed since the tenor of the German demands
had become known, and measures the most extravagant were proposed and
discussed. No one seemed to be deterred by the consideration that it
would be dishonorable to break the truce, taking advantage of the
darkness and giving the enemy no notification, and the wildest, most
visionary schemes were offered; they would resume the march on
Carignan, hewing their way through the Bavarians, which they could do
in the black night; they would recapture the plateau of Illy by a
surprise; they would raise the blockade of the Mézières road, or, by a
determined, simultaneous rush, would force the German lines and throw
themselves into Belgium. Others there were, indeed, who, feeling the
hopelessness of their position, said nothing; they would have accepted
any terms, signed any paper, with a glad cry of relief, simply to have
the affair ended and done with.
“Good-night!” Bouroche said in conclusion. “I am going to try to sleep
a couple of hours; I need it badly.”
When left by himself Delaherche could hardly breathe. What, could it be
true that they were going to fight again, were going to burn and raze
Sedan! It was certainly to be, soon as the morrow’s sun should be high
enough upon the hills to light the horror of the sacrifice. And once
again he almost unconsciously climbed the steep ladder that led to the
roofs and found himself standing among the chimneys, at the edge of the
narrow terrace that overlooked the city; but at that hour of the night
the darkness was intense and he could distinguish absolutely nothing
amid the swirling waves of the Cimmerian sea that lay beneath him. Then
the buildings of the factory below were the first objects which, one by
one, disentangled themselves from the shadows and stood out before his
vision in indistinct masses, which he had no difficulty in recognizing:
the engine-house, the shops, the drying rooms, the storehouses, and
when he reflected that within twenty-four hours there would remain of
that imposing block of buildings, his fortune and his pride, naught
save charred timbers and crumbling walls, he overflowed with pity for
himself. He raised his glance thence once more to the horizon, and sent
it traveling in a circuit around that profound, mysterious veil of
blackness behind which lay slumbering the menace of the morrow. To the
south, in the direction of Bazeilles, a few quivering little flames
that rose fitfully on the air told where had been the site of the
unhappy village, while toward the north the farmhouse in the wood of la
Garenne, that had been fired late in the afternoon, was burning still,
and the trees about were dyed of a deep red with the ruddy blaze.
Beyond the intermittent flashing of those two baleful fires no light to
be seen; the brooding silence unbroken by any sound save those
half-heard mutterings that pass through the air like harbingers of
evil; about them, everywhere, the unfathomable abyss, dead and
lifeless. Off there in the distance, very far away, perhaps, perhaps
upon the ramparts, was a sound of someone weeping. It was all in vain
that he strained his eyes to pierce the veil, to see something of Liry,
la Marfée, the batteries of Frenois, and Wadelincourt, that encircling
belt of bronze monsters of which he could instinctively feel the
presence there, with their outstretched necks and yawning, ravenous
muzzles. And as he recalled his glance and let it fall upon the city
that lay around and beneath him, he heard its frightened breathing. It
was not alone the unquiet slumbers of the soldiers who had fallen in
the streets, the blending of inarticulate sounds produced by that
gathering of guns, men, and horses; what he fancied he could
distinguish was the insomnia, the alarmed watchfulness of his bourgeois
neighbors, who, no more than he, could sleep, quivering with feverish
terrors, awaiting anxiously the coming of the day. They all must be
aware that the capitulation had not been signed, and were all counting
the hours, quaking at the thought that should it not be signed the sole
resource left them would be to go down into their cellars and wait for
their own walls to tumble in on them and crush the life from their
bodies. The voice of one in sore straits came up, it seemed to him,
from the Rue des Voyards, shouting: “Help! murder!” amid the clash of
arms. He bent over the terrace to look, then remained aloft there in
the murky thickness of the night where there was not a star to cheer
him, wrapped in such an ecstasy of terror that the hairs of his body
stood erect.
Below-stairs, at early daybreak, Maurice awoke upon his sofa. He was
sore and stiff as if he had been racked; he did not stir, but lay
looking listlessly at the windows, which gradually grew white under the
light of a cloudy dawn. The hateful memories of the day before all came
back to him with that distinctness that characterizes the impressions
of our first waking, how they had fought, fled, surrendered. It all
rose before his vision, down to the very least detail, and he brooded
with horrible anguish on the defeat, whose reproachful echoes seemed to
penetrate to the inmost fibers of his being, as if he felt that all the
responsibility of it was his. And he went on to reason on the cause of
the evil, analyzing himself, reverting to his old habit of bitter and
unavailing self-reproach. He would have felt so brave, so glorious had
victory remained with them! And now, in defeat, weak and nervous as a
woman, he once again gave way to one of those overwhelming fits of
despair in which the entire world, seemed to him to be foundering.
Nothing was left them; the end of France was come. His frame was shaken
by a storm of sobs, he wept hot tears, and joining his hands, the
prayers of his childhood rose to his lips in stammering accents.
“O God! take me unto Thee! O God! take unto Thyself all those who are
weary and heavy-laden!”
Jean, lying on the floor wrapped in his bed-quilt, began to show some
signs of life. Finally, astonished at what he heard, he arose to a
sitting posture.
“What is the matter, youngster? Are you ill?” Then, with a glimmering
perception of how matters stood, he adopted a more paternal tone.
“Come, tell me what the matter is. You must not let yourself be worried
by such a little thing as this, you know.”
“Ah!” exclaimed Maurice, “it is all up with us, _va_! we are Prussians
now, and we may as well make up our mind to it.”
As the peasant, with the hard-headedness of the uneducated, expressed
surprise to hear him talk thus, he endeavored to make it clear to him
that, the race being degenerate and exhausted, it must disappear and
make room for a newer and more vigorous strain. But the other, with an
obstinate shake of the head, would not listen to the explanation.
“What! would you try to make me believe that my bit of land is no
longer mine? that I would permit the Prussians to take it from me while
I am alive and my two arms are left to me? Come, come!”
Then painfully, in such terms as he could command, he went on to tell
how affairs looked to him. They had received an all-fired good basting,
that was sure as sure could be! but they were not all dead yet, he
didn’t believe; there were some left, and those would suffice to
rebuild the house if they only behaved themselves, working hard and not
drinking up what they earned. When a family has trouble, if its members
work and put by a little something, they will pull through, in spite of
all the bad luck in the world. And further, it is not such a bad thing
to get a good cuffing once in a way; it sets one thinking. And, great
heavens! if a man has something rotten about him, if he has gangrene in
his arms or legs that is spreading all the time, isn’t it better to
take a hatchet and lop them off rather than die as he would from
cholera?
“All up, all up! Ah, no, no! no, no!” he repeated several times. “It is
not all up with me, I know very well it is not.”
And notwithstanding his seedy condition and demoralized appearance, his
hair all matted and pasted to his head by the blood that had flowed
from his wound, he drew himself up defiantly, animated by a keen desire
to live, to take up the tools of his trade or put his hand to the plow,
in order, to use his own expression, to “rebuild the house.” He was of
the old soil where reason and obstinacy grow side by side, of the land
of toil and thrift.
“All the same, though,” he continued, “I am sorry for the Emperor.
Affairs seemed to be going on well; the farmers were getting a good
price for their grain. But surely it was bad judgment on his part to
allow himself to become involved in this business!”
Maurice, who was still in “the blues,” spoke regretfully: “Ah, the
Emperor! I always liked him in my heart, in spite of my republican
ideas. Yes, I had it in the blood, on account of my grandfather, I
suppose. And now that that limb is rotten and we shall have to lop it
off, what is going to become of us?”
His eyes began to wander, and his voice and manner evinced such
distress that Jean became alarmed and was about to rise and go to him,
when Henriette came into the room. She had just awakened on hearing the
sound of voices in the room adjoining hers. The pale light of a cloudy
morning now illuminated the apartment.
“You come just in time to give him a scolding,” he said, with an
affectation of liveliness. “He is not a good boy this morning.”
But the sight of his sister’s pale, sad face and the recollection of
her affliction had had a salutary effect on Maurice by determining a
sudden crisis of tenderness. He opened his arms and took her to his
bosom, and when she rested her head upon his shoulder, when he held her
locked in a close embrace, a feeling of great gentleness pervaded him
and they mingled their tears.
“Ah, my poor, poor darling, why have I not more strength and courage to
console you! for my sorrows are as nothing compared with yours. That
good, faithful Weiss, the husband who loved you so fondly! What will
become of you? You have always been the victim; always, and never a
murmur from your lips. Think of the sorrow I have already caused you,
and who can say that I shall not cause you still more in the future!”
She was silencing him, placing her hand upon his mouth, when Delaherche
came into the room, beside himself with indignation. While still on the
terrace he had been seized by one of those uncontrollable nervous fits
of hunger that are aggravated by fatigue, and had descended to the
kitchen in quest of something warm to drink, where he had found,
keeping company with his cook, a relative of hers, a carpenter of
Bazeilles, whom she was in the act of treating to a bowl of hot wine.
This person, who had been one of the last to leave the place while the
conflagrations were at their height, had told him that his dyehouse was
utterly destroyed, nothing left of it but a heap of ruins.
“The robbers, the thieves! Would you have believed it, _hein_?” he
stammered, addressing Jean and Maurice. “There is no hope left; they
mean to burn Sedan this morning as they burned Bazeilles yesterday. I’m
ruined, I’m ruined!” The scar that Henriette bore on her forehead
attracted his attention, and he remembered that he had not spoken to
her yet. “It is true, you went there, after all; you got that wound—Ah!
poor Weiss!”
And seeing by the young woman’s tears that she was acquainted with her
husband’s fate, he abruptly blurted out the horrible bit of news that
the carpenter had communicated to him among the rest.
“Poor Weiss! it seems they burned him. Yes, after shooting all the
civilians who were caught with arms in their hands, they threw their
bodies into the flames of a burning house and poured petroleum over
them.”
Henriette was horror-stricken as she listened. Her tears burst forth,
her frame was shaken by her sobs. My God, my God, not even the poor
comfort of going to claim her dear dead and give him decent sepulture;
his ashes were to be scattered by the winds of heaven! Maurice had
again clasped her in his arms and spoke to her endearingly, calling her
his poor Cinderella, beseeching her not to take the matter so to heart,
a brave woman as she was.
After a time, during which no word was spoken, Delaherche, who had been
standing at the window watching the growing day, suddenly turned and
addressed the two soldiers:
“By the way, I was near forgetting. What I came up here to tell you is
this: down in the courtyard, in the shed where the treasure chests were
deposited, there is an officer who is about to distribute the money
among the men, so as to keep the Prussians from getting it. You had
better go down, for a little money may be useful to you, that is,
provided we are all alive a few hours hence.”
The advice was good, and Maurice and Jean acted on it, having first
prevailed on Henriette to take her brother’s place on the sofa. If she
could not go to sleep again, she would at least be securing some
repose. As for Delaherche, he passed through the adjoining chamber,
where Gilberte with her tranquil, pretty face was slumbering still as
soundly as a child, neither the sound of conversation nor even
Henriette’s sobs having availed to make her change her position. From
there he went to the apartment where his mother was watching at Colonel
de Vineuil’s bedside, and thrust his head through the door; the old
lady was asleep in her fauteuil, while the colonel, his eyes closed,
was like a corpse. He opened them to their full extent and asked:
“Well, it’s all over, isn’t it?”
Irritated by the question, which detained him at the very moment when
he thought he should be able to slip away unobserved, Delaherche gave a
wrathful look and murmured, sinking his voice:
“Oh, yes, all over! until it begins again! There is nothing signed.”
The colonel went on in a voice scarcely higher than a whisper; delirium
was setting in.
“Merciful God, let me die before the end! I do not hear the guns. Why
have they ceased firing? Up there at Saint-Menges, at Fleigneux, we
have command of all the roads; should the Prussians dare turn Sedan and
attack us, we will drive them into the Meuse. The city is there, an
insurmountable obstacle between us and them; our positions, too, are
the stronger. Forward! the 7th corps will lead, the 12th will protect
the retreat—”
And his fingers kept drumming on the counterpane with a measured
movement, as if keeping time with the trot of the charger he was riding
in his vision. Gradually the motion became slower and slower as his
words became more indistinct and he sank off into slumber. It ceased,
and he lay motionless and still, as if the breath had left his body.
“Lie still and rest,” Delaherche whispered; “when I have news I will
return.”
Then, having first assured himself that he had not disturbed his
mother’s slumber, he slipped away and disappeared.
Jean and Maurice, on descending to the shed in the courtyard, had found
there an officer of the pay department, seated on a common kitchen
chair behind a little unpainted pine table, who, without pen, ink, or
paper, without taking receipts or indulging in formalities of any kind,
was dispensing fortunes. He simply stuck his hand into the open mouth
of the bags filled with bright gold pieces, and as the sergeants of the
7th corps passed in line before him he filled their _kepis_, never
counting what he bestowed with such rapid liberality. The understanding
was that the sergeants were subsequently to divide what they received
with the surviving men of their half-sections. Each of them received
his portion awkwardly, as if it had been a ration of meat or coffee,
then stalked off in an embarrassed, self-conscious sort of way,
transferring the contents of the _kepi_ to his trousers’ pockets so as
not to display his wealth to the world at large. And not a word was
spoken; there was not a sound to be heard but the crystalline chink and
rattle of the coin as it was received by those poor devils, dumfounded
to see the responsibility of such riches thrust on them when there was
not a place in the city where they could purchase a loaf of bread or a
quart of wine.
When Jean and Maurice appeared before him the officer, who was holding
outstretched his hand filled, as usual, with louis, drew it back.
“Neither of you fellows is a sergeant. No one except sergeants is
entitled to receive the money.” Then, in haste to be done with his
task, he changed his mind: “Never mind, though; here, you corporal,
take this. Step lively, now. Next man!”
And he dropped the gold coins into the _kepi_ that Jean held out to
him. The latter, oppressed by the magnitude of the amount, nearly six
hundred francs, insisted that Maurice should take one-half. No one
could say what might happen; they might be parted from each other.
They made the division in the garden, before the ambulance, and when
they had concluded their financial business they entered, having
recognized on the straw near the entrance the drummer-boy of their
company, Bastian, a fat, good-natured little fellow, who had had the
ill-luck to receive a spent ball in the groin about five o’clock the
day before, when the battle was ended. He had been dying by inches for
the last twelve hours.
In the dim, white light of morning, at that hour of awakening, the
sight of the ambulance sent a chill of horror through them. Three more
patients had died during the night, without anyone being aware of it,
and the attendants were hurriedly bearing away the corpses in order to
make room for others. Those who had been operated on the day before
opened wide their eyes in their somnolent, semi-conscious state, and
looked with dazed astonishment on that vast dormitory of suffering,
where the victims of the knife, only half-slaughtered, rested on their
straw. It was in vain that some attempts had been made the night before
to clean up the room after the bloody work of the operations; there
were great splotches of blood on the ill-swept floor; in a bucket of
water a great sponge was floating, stained with red, for all the world
like a human brain; a hand, its fingers crushed and broken, had been
overlooked and lay on the floor of the shed. It was the parings and
trimmings of the human butcher shop, the horrible waste and refuse that
ensues upon a day of slaughter, viewed in the cold, raw light of dawn.
Bouroche, who, after a few hours of repose, had already resumed his
duties, stopped in front of the wounded drummer-boy, Bastian, then
passed on with an imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. A hopeless
case; nothing to be done. The lad had opened his eyes, however, and
emerging from the comatose state in which he had been lying, was
eagerly watching a sergeant who, his _kepi_ filled with gold in his
hand, had come into the room to see if there were any of his men among
those poor wretches. He found two, and to each of them gave twenty
francs. Other sergeants came in, and the gold began to fall in showers
upon the straw, among the dying men. Bastian, who had managed to raise
himself, stretched out his two hands, even then shaking in the final
agony.
“Don’t forget me! don’t forget me!”
The sergeant would have passed on and gone his way, as Bouroche had
done. What good could money do there? Then yielding to a kindly
impulse, he threw some coins, never stopping to count them, into the
poor hands that were already cold.
“Don’t forget me! don’t forget me!”
Bastian fell backward on his straw. For a long time he groped with
stiffening fingers for the elusive gold, which seemed to avoid him. And
thus he died.
“The gentleman has blown his candle out; good-night!” said a little,
black, wizened zouave, who occupied the next bed. “It’s vexatious, when
one has the wherewithal to pay for wetting his whistle!”
He had his left foot done up in splints. Nevertheless he managed to
raise himself on his knees and elbows and in this posture crawl over to
the dead man, whom he relieved of all his money, forcing open his
hands, rummaging among his clothing and the folds of his capote. When
he got back to his place, noticing that he was observed, he simply
said:
“There’s no use letting the stuff be wasted, is there?”
Maurice, sick at heart in that atmosphere of human distress and
suffering, had long since dragged Jean away. As they passed out through
the shed where the operations were performed they saw Bouroche
preparing to amputate the leg of a poor little man of twenty, without
chloroform, he having been unable to obtain a further supply of the
anaesthetic. And they fled, running, so as not to hear the poor boy’s
shrieks.
Delaherche, who came in from the street just then, beckoned to them and
shouted:
“Come upstairs, come, quick! we are going to have breakfast. The cook
has succeeded in procuring some milk, and it is well she did, for we
are all in great need of something to warm our stomachs.” And
notwithstanding his efforts to do so, he could not entirely repress his
delight and exultation. With a radiant countenance he added, lowering
his voice: “It is all right this time. General de Wimpffen has set out
again for the German headquarters to sign the capitulation.”
Ah, how much those words meant to him, what comfort there was in them,
what relief! his horrid nightmare dispelled, his property saved from
destruction, his daily life to be resumed, under changed conditions, it
is true, but still it was to go on, it was not to cease! It was little
Rose who had told him of the occurrences of the morning at the
Sous-Prefecture; the girl had come hastening through the streets, now
somewhat less choked than they had been, to obtain a supply of bread
from an aunt of hers who kept a baker’s shop in the quarter; it was
striking nine o’clock. As early as eight General de Wimpffen had
convened another council of war, consisting of more than thirty
generals, to whom he related the results that had been reached so far,
the hard conditions imposed by the victorious foe, and his own
fruitless efforts to secure a mitigation of them. His emotion was such
that his hands shook like a leaf, his eyes were suffused with tears. He
was still addressing the assemblage when a colonel of the German staff
presented himself, on behalf of General von Moltke, to remind them
that, unless a decision were arrived at by ten o’clock, their guns
would open fire on the city of Sedan. With this horrible alternative
before them the council could do nothing save authorize the general to
proceed once more to the Château of Bellevue and accept the terms of
the victors. He must have accomplished his mission by that time, and
the entire French army were prisoners of war.
When she had concluded her narrative Rose launched out into a detailed
account of the tremendous excitement the tidings had produced in the
city. At the Sous-Prefecture she had seen officers tear the epaulettes
from their shoulders, weeping meanwhile like children. Cavalrymen had
thrown their sabers from the Pont de Meuse into the river; an entire
regiment of cuirassiers had passed, each man tossing his blade over the
parapet and sorrowfully watching the water close over it. In the
streets many soldiers grasped their muskets by the barrel and smashed
them against a wall, while there were artillerymen who removed the
mechanism from the mitrailleuses and flung it into the sewer. Some
there were who buried or burned the regimental standards. In the Place
Turenne an old sergeant climbed upon a gate-post and harangued the
throng as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses, reviling the
leaders, stigmatizing them as poltroons and cowards. Others seemed as
if dazed, shedding big tears in silence, and others also, it must be
confessed (and it is probable that they were in the majority), betrayed
by their laughing eyes and pleased expression the satisfaction they
felt at the change in affairs. There was an end to their suffering at
last; they were prisoners of war, they could not be obliged to fight
any more! For so many days they had been distressed by those long,
weary marches, with never food enough to satisfy their appetite! And
then, too, they were the weaker; what use was there in fighting? If
their chiefs had betrayed them, had sold them to the enemy, so much the
better; it would be the sooner ended! It was such a delicious thing to
think of, that they were to have white bread to eat, were to sleep
between sheets!
As Delaherche was about to enter the dining room in company with
Maurice and Jean, his mother called to him from above.
“Come up here, please; I am anxious about the colonel.”
M. de Vineuil, with wide-open eyes, was talking rapidly and excitedly
of the subject that filled his bewildered brain.
“The Prussians have cut us off from Mézières, but what matters it! See,
they have outmarched us and got possession of the plain of Donchery;
soon they will be up with the wood of la Falizette and flank us there,
while more of them are coming up along the valley of the Givonne. The
frontier is behind us; let us kill as many of them as we can and cross
it at a bound. Yesterday, yes, that is what I would have advised—”
At that moment his burning eyes lighted on Delaherche. He recognized
him; the sight seemed to sober him and dispel the hallucination under
which he was laboring, and coming back to the terrible reality, he
asked for the third time:
“It is all over, is it not?”
The manufacturer explosively blurted out the expression of his
satisfaction; he could not restrain it.
“Ah, yes, God be praised! it is all over, completely over. The
capitulation must be signed by this time.”
The colonel raised himself at a bound to a sitting posture,
notwithstanding his bandaged foot; he took his sword from the chair by
the bedside where it lay and made an attempt to break it, but his hands
trembled too violently, and the blade slipped from his fingers.
“Look out! he will cut himself!” Delaherche cried in alarm. “Take that
thing away from him; it is dangerous!”
Mme. Delaherche took possession of the sword. With a feeling of
compassionate respect for the poor colonel’s grief and despair she did
not conceal it, as her son bade her do, but with a single vigorous
effort snapped it across her knee, with a strength of which she herself
would never have supposed her poor old hands capable. The colonel laid
himself down again, casting a look of extreme gentleness upon his old
friend, who went back to her chair and seated herself in her usual
rigid attitude.
In the dining room the cook had meantime served bowls of hot coffee and
milk for the entire party. Henriette and Gilberte had awakened, the
latter, completely restored by her long and refreshing slumber, with
bright eyes and smiling face; she embraced most tenderly her friend,
whom she pitied, she said, from the bottom of her heart. Maurice seated
himself beside his sister, while Jean, who was unused to polite
society, but could not decline the invitation that was extended to him,
was Delaherche’s right-hand neighbor. It was Mme. Delaherche’s custom
not to come to the table with the family; a servant carried her a bowl,
which she drank while sitting by the colonel. The party of five,
however, who sat down together, although they commenced their meal in
silence, soon became cheerful and talkative. Why should they not
rejoice and be glad to find themselves there, safe and sound, with food
before them to satisfy their hunger, when the country round about was
covered with thousands upon thousands of poor starving wretches? In the
cool, spacious dining room the snow-white tablecloth was a delight to
the eye and the steaming _café au lait_ seemed delicious.
They conversed, Delaherche, who had recovered his assurance and was
again the wealthy manufacturer, the condescending patron courting
popularity, severe only toward those who failed to succeed, spoke of
Napoleon III., whose face as he saw it last continued to haunt his
memory. He addressed himself to Jean, having that simple-minded young
man as his neighbor. “Yes, sir, the Emperor has deceived me, and I
don’t hesitate to say so. His henchmen may put in the plea of
mitigating circumstances, but it won’t go down, sir; he is evidently
the first, the only cause of our misfortunes.”
He had quite forgotten that only a few months before he had been an
ardent Bonapartist and had labored to ensure the success of the
plebiscite, and now he who was henceforth to be known as the Man of
Sedan was not even worthy to be pitied; he ascribed to him every known
iniquity.
“A man of no capacity, as everyone is now compelled to admit; but let
that pass, I say nothing of that. A visionary, a theorist, an
unbalanced mind, with whom affairs seemed to succeed as long as he had
luck on his side. And there’s no use, don’t you see, sir, in attempting
to work on our sympathies and excite our commiseration by telling us
that he was deceived, that the opposition refused him the necessary
grants of men and money. It is he who has deceived us, he whose crimes
and blunders have landed us in the horrible muddle where we are.”
Maurice, who preferred to say nothing on the subject, could not help
smiling, while Jean, embarrassed by the political turn the conversation
had taken and fearful lest he might make some ill-timed remark, simply
replied:
“They say he is a brave man, though.”
But those few words, modestly expressed, fairly made Delaherche jump.
All his past fear and alarm, all the mental anguish he had suffered,
burst from his lips in a cry of concentrated passion, closely allied to
hatred.
“A brave man, forsooth; and what does that amount to! Are you aware,
sir, that my factory was struck three times by Prussian shells, and
that it is no fault of the Emperor’s that it was not burned! Are you
aware that I, I shall lose a hundred thousand francs by this idiotic
business! No, no; France invaded, pillaged, and laid waste, our
industries compelled to shut down, our commerce ruined; it is a little
too much, I tell you! One brave man like that is quite sufficient; may
the Lord preserve us from any more of them! He is down in the blood and
mire, and there let him remain!”
And he made a forcible gesture with his closed fist as if thrusting
down and holding under the water some poor wretch who was struggling to
save himself, then finished his coffee, smacking his lips like a true
gourmand. Gilberte waited on Henriette as if she had been a child,
laughing a little involuntary laugh when the latter made some
exhibition of absent-mindedness. And when at last the coffee had all
been drunk they still lingered on in the peaceful quiet of the great
cool dining room.
And at that same hour Napoleon III. was in the weaver’s lowly cottage
on the Donchery road. As early as five o’clock in the morning he had
insisted on leaving the Sous-Prefecture; he felt ill at ease in Sedan,
which was at once a menace and a reproach to him, and moreover he
thought he might, in some measure, alleviate the sufferings of his
tender heart by obtaining more favorable terms for his unfortunate
army. His object was to have a personal interview with the King of
Prussia. He had taken his place in a hired caleche and been driven
along the broad highway, with its row of lofty poplars on either side,
and this first stage of his journey into exile, accomplished in the
chill air of early dawn, must have reminded him forcibly of the
grandeur that had been his and that he was putting behind him forever.
It was on this road that he had his encounter with Bismarck, who came
hurrying to meet him in an old cap and coarse, greased boots, with the
sole object of keeping him occupied and preventing him from seeing the
King until the capitulation should have been signed. The King was still
at Vendresse, some nine miles away. Where was he to go? What roof would
afford him shelter while he waited? In his own country, so far away,
the Palace of the Tuileries had disappeared from his sight, swallowed
up in the bosom of a storm-cloud, and he was never to see it more.
Sedan seemed already to have receded into the distance, leagues and
leagues, and to be parted from him by a river of blood. In France there
were no longer imperial châteaus, nor official residences, nor even a
chimney-nook in the house of the humblest functionary, where he would
have dared to enter and claim hospitality. And it was in the house of
the weaver that he determined to seek shelter, the squalid cottage that
stood close to the roadside, with its scanty kitchen-garden inclosed by
a hedge and its front of a single story with little forbidding windows.
The room above-stairs was simply whitewashed and had a tiled floor; the
only furniture was a common pine table and two straw-bottomed chairs.
He spent two hours there, at first in company with Bismarck, who smiled
to hear him speak of generosity, after that alone in silent misery,
flattening his ashy face against the panes, taking his last look at
French soil and at the Meuse, winding in and out, so beautiful, among
the broad fertile fields.
Then the next day and the days that came after were other wretched
stages of that journey; the Château of Bellevue, a pretty bourgeois
retreat overlooking the river, where he rested that night, where he
shed tears after his interview with King William; the sorrowful
departure, that most miserable flight in a hired caleche over remote
roads to the north of the city, which he avoided, not caring to face
the wrath of the vanquished troops and the starving citizens, making a
wide circuit over cross-roads by Floing, Fleigneux, and Illy and
crossing the stream on a bridge of boats, laid down by the Prussians at
Iges; the tragic encounter, the story of which has been so often told,
that occurred on the corpse-cumbered plateau of Illy: the miserable
Emperor, whose state was such that his horse could not be allowed to
trot, had sunk under some more than usually violent attack of his
complaint, mechanically smoking, perhaps, his everlasting cigarette,
when a band of haggard, dusty, blood-stained prisoners, who were being
conducted from Fleigneux to Sedan, were forced to leave the road to let
the carriage pass and stood watching it from the ditch; those who were
at the head of the line merely eyed him in silence; presently a hoarse,
sullen murmur began to make itself heard, and finally, as the caleche
proceeded down the line, the men burst out with a storm of yells and
cat-calls, shaking their fists and calling down maledictions on the
head of him who had been their ruler. After that came the interminable
journey across the battlefield, as far as Givonne, amid scenes of havoc
and devastation, amid the dead, who lay with staring eyes upturned that
seemed to be full of menace; came, too, the bare, dreary fields, the
great silent forest, then the frontier, running along the summit of a
ridge, marked only by a stone, facing a wooden post that seemed ready
to fall, and beyond the soil of Belgium, the end of all, with its road
bordered with gloomy hemlocks descending sharply into the narrow
valley.
And that first night of exile, that he spent at a common inn, the Hotel
de la Poste at Bouillon, what a night it was! When the Emperor showed
himself at his window in deference to the throng of French refugees and
sight-seers that filled the place, he was greeted with a storm of
hisses and hostile murmurs. The apartment assigned him, the three
windows of which opened on the public square and on the Semoy, was the
typical tawdry bedroom of the provincial inn with its conventional
furnishings: the chairs covered with crimson damask, the mahogany
_armoire à glace_, and on the mantel the imitation bronze clock,
flanked by a pair of conch shells and vases of artificial flowers under
glass covers. On either side of the door was a little single bed, to
one of which the wearied aide-de-camp betook himself at nine o’clock
and was immediately wrapped in soundest slumber. On the other the
Emperor, to whom the god of sleep was less benignant, tossed almost the
whole night through, and if he arose to try to quiet his excited nerves
by walking, the sole distraction that his eyes encountered was a pair
of engravings that were hung to right and left of the chimney, one
depicting Rouget de Lisle singing the Marseillaise, the other a crude
representation of the Last Judgment, the dead rising from their graves
at the sound of the Archangel’s trump, the resurrection of the victims
of the battlefield, about to appear before their God to bear witness
against their rulers.
The imperial baggage train, cause in its day of so much scandal, had
been left behind at Sedan, where it rested in ignominious hiding behind
the Sous-Préfet’s lilac bushes. It puzzled the authorities somewhat to
devise means for ridding themselves of what was to them a _bête noire_,
for getting it away from the city unseen by the famishing multitude,
upon whom the sight of its flaunting splendor would have produced much
the same effect that a red rag does on a maddened bull. They waited
until there came an unusually dark night, when horses, carriages, and
baggage-wagons, with their silver stew-pans, plate, linen, and baskets
of fine wines, all trooped out of Sedan in deepest mystery and shaped
their course for Belgium, noiselessly, without beat of drum, over the
least frequented roads like a thief stealing away in the night.