Jean’s chamber was a large room, with floor of brick and whitewashed
walls, that had once done duty as a store-room for the fruit grown on
the farm. A faint, pleasant odor of pears and apples lingered there
still, and for furniture there was an iron bedstead, a pine table and
two chairs, to say nothing of a huge old walnut clothes-press,
tremendously deep and wide, that looked as if it might hold an army. A
lazy, restful quiet reigned there all day long, broken only by the
deadened sounds that came from the adjacent stables, the faint lowing
of the cattle, the occasional thud of a hoof upon the earthen floor.
The window, which had a southern aspect, let in a flood of cheerful
sunlight; all the view it afforded was a bit of hillside and a wheat
field, edged by a little wood. And this mysterious chamber was so well
hidden from prying eyes that never a one in all the world would have
suspected its existence.
As it was to be her kingdom, Henriette constituted herself lawmaker
from the beginning. The regulation was that no one save she and the
doctor should have access to Jean; this in order to avert suspicion.
Silvine, even, was never to set foot in the room unless by direction.
Early each morning the two women came in and put things to rights, and
after that, all the long day, the door was as impenetrable as if it had
been a wall of stone. And thus it was that Jean found himself suddenly
secluded from the world, after many weeks of tumultuous activity,
seeing no face save that of the gentle woman whose footfall on the
floor gave back no sound. She appeared to him, as he had beheld her for
the first time down yonder in Sedan, like an apparition, with her
somewhat large mouth, her delicate, small features, her hair the hue of
ripened grain, hovering about his bedside and ministering to his wants
with an air of infinite goodness.
The patient’s fever was so violent during the first few days that
Henriette scarce ever left him. Doctor Dalichamp dropped in every
morning on his way to the hospital and examined and dressed the wound.
As the ball had passed out, after breaking the tibia, he was surprised
that the case presented no better aspect; he feared there was a
splinter of the bone remaining there that he had not succeeded in
finding with the probe, and that might make resection necessary. He
mentioned the matter to Jean, but the young man could not endure the
thought of an operation that would leave him with one leg shorter than
the other and lame him permanently. No, no! he would rather die than be
a cripple for life. So the good doctor, leaving the wound to develop
further symptoms, confined himself for the present to applying a
dressing of lint saturated with sweet oil and phenic acid having first
inserted a drain—an India rubber tube—to carry off the pus. He frankly
told his patient, however, that unless he submitted to an operation he
must not hope to have the use of his limb for a very long time. Still,
after the second week, the fever subsided and the young man’s general
condition was improved, so long as he could be content to rest quiet in
his bed.
Then Jean’s and Henriette’s relations began to be established on a more
systematic basis. Fixed habits commenced to prevail; it seemed to them
that they had never lived otherwise—that they were to go on living
forever in that way. All the hours and moments that she did not devote
to the ambulance were spent with him; she saw to it that he had his
food and drink at proper intervals. She assisted him to turn in bed
with a strength of wrist that no one, seeing her slender arms, would
have supposed was in her. At times they would converse; but as a
general thing, especially in the earlier days, they had not much to
say. They never seemed to tire of each other’s company, though. On the
whole it was a very pleasant life they led in that calm, restful
atmosphere, he with the horrible scenes of the battlefield still fresh
in his memory, she in her widow’s weeds, her heart bruised and bleeding
with the great loss she had sustained. At first he had experienced a
sensation of embarrassment, for he felt she was his superior, almost a
lady, indeed, while he had never been aught more than a common soldier
and a peasant. He could barely read and write. When finally he came to
see that she affected no airs of superiority, but treated him on the
footing of an equal, his confidence returned to him in a measure and he
showed himself in his true colors, as a man of intelligence by reason
of his sound, unpretentious common sense. Besides, he was surprised at
times to think he could note a change was gradually coming over him; it
seemed to him that his mind was less torpid than it had been, that it
was clearer and more active, that he had novel ideas in his head, and
more of them; could it be that the abominable life he had been leading
for the last two months, his horrible sufferings, physical and moral,
had exerted a refining influence on him? But that which assisted him
most to overcome his shyness was to find that she was really not so
very much wiser than he. She was but a little child when, at her
mother’s death, she became the household drudge, with her three men to
care for, as she herself expressed it—her grandfather, her father, and
her brother—and she had not had the time to lay in a large stock of
learning. She could read and write, could spell words that were not too
long, and “do sums,” if they were not too intricate; and that was the
extent of her acquirement. And if she continued to intimidate him
still, if he considered her far and away the superior of all other
women upon earth, it was because he knew the ineffable tenderness, the
goodness of heart, the unflinching courage, that animated that frail
little body, who went about her duties silently and met them as if they
had been pleasures.
They had in Maurice a subject of conversation that was of common
interest to them both and of which they never wearied. It was to
Maurice’s friend, his brother, to whom she was devoting herself thus
tenderly, the brave, kind man, so ready with his aid in time of
trouble, who she felt had made her so many times his debtor. She was
full to overflowing with a sentiment of deepest gratitude and
affection, that went on widening and deepening as she came to know him
better and recognize his sterling qualities of head and heart, and he,
whom she was tending like a little child, was actuated by such grateful
sentiments that he would have liked to kiss her hands each time she
gave him a cup of bouillon. Day by day did this bond of tender sympathy
draw them nearer to each other in that profound solitude amid which
they lived, harassed by an anxiety that they shared in common. When he
had utterly exhausted his recollections of the dismal march from Rheims
to Sedan, to the particulars of which she never seemed to tire of
listening, the same question always rose to their lips: what was
Maurice doing then? why did he not write? Could it be that the blockade
of Paris was already complete, and was that the reason why they
received no news? They had as yet had but one letter from him, written
at Rouen, three days after his leaving them, in which he briefly stated
that he had reached that city on his way to Paris, after a long and
devious journey. And then for a week there had been no further word;
the silence had remained unbroken.
In the morning, after Doctor Dalichamp had attended to his patient, he
liked to sit a while and chat, putting his cares aside for the moment.
Sometimes he also returned at evening and made a longer visit, and it
was in this way that they learned what was going on in the great world
outside their peaceful solitude and the terrible calamities that were
desolating their country. He was their only source of intelligence; his
heart, which beat with patriotic ardor, overflowed with rage and grief
at every fresh defeat, and thus it was that his sole topic of
conversation was the victorious progress of the Prussians, who, since
Sedan, had spread themselves over France like the waves of some black
ocean. Each day brought its own tidings of disaster, and resting
disconsolately on one of the two chairs that stood by the bedside, he
would tell in mournful tones and with trembling gestures of the
increasing gravity of the situation. Oftentimes he came with his
pockets stuffed with Belgian newspapers, which he would leave behind
him when he went away. And thus the echoes of defeat, days, weeks,
after the event, reverberated in that quiet room, serving to unite yet
more closely in community of sorrow the two poor sufferers who were
shut within its walls.
It was from some of those old newspapers that Henriette read to Jean
the occurrences at Metz, the Titanic struggle that was three times
renewed, separated on each occasion by a day’s interval. The story was
already five weeks old, but it was new to him, and he listened with a
bleeding heart to the repetition of the miserable narrative of defeat
to which he was not a stranger. In the deathly stillness of the room
the incidents of the woeful tale unfolded themselves as Henriette, with
the sing-song enunciation of a schoolgirl, picked out her words and
sentences. When, after Froeschwiller and Spickeren, the 1st corps,
routed and broken into fragments, had swept away with it the 5th, the
other corps stationed along the frontier _en échelon_ from Metz to
Bitche, first wavering, then retreating in their consternation at those
reverses, had ultimately concentrated before the intrenched camp on the
right bank of the Moselle. But what waste of precious time was there,
when they should not have lost a moment in retreating on Paris, a
movement that was presently to be attended with such difficulty! The
Emperor had been compelled to turn over the supreme command to Marshal
Bazaine, to whom everyone looked with confidence for a victory. Then,
on the 14th[3] came the affair of Borny, when the army was attacked at
the moment when it was at last about to cross the stream, having to
sustain the onset of two German armies: Steinmetz’s, which was encamped
in observation in front of the intrenched camp, and Prince Frederick
Charles’s, which had passed the river higher up and come down along the
left bank in order to bar the French from access to their country;
Borny, where the firing did not begin until it was three o’clock;
Borny, that barren victory, at the end of which the French remained
masters of their positions, but which left them astride the Moselle,
tied hand and foot, while the turning movement of the second German
army was being successfully accomplished. After that, on the 16th, was
the battle of Rezonville; all our corps were at last across the stream,
although, owing to the confusion that prevailed at the junction of the
Mars-la-Tour and Etain roads, which the Prussians had gained possession
of early in the morning by a brilliant movement of their cavalry and
artillery, the 3d and 4th corps were hindered in their march and unable
to get up; a slow, dragging, confused battle, which, up to two o’clock,
Bazaine, with only a handful of men opposed to him, should have won,
but which he wound up by losing, thanks to his inexplicable fear of
being cut off from Metz; a battle of immense extent, spreading over
leagues of hill and plain, where the French, attacked in front and
flank, seemed willing to do almost anything except advance, affording
the enemy time to concentrate and to all appearances co-operating with
them to ensure the success of the Prussian plan, which was to force
their withdrawal to the other side of the river. And on the 18th, after
their retirement to the intrenched camp, Saint-Privat was fought, the
culmination of the gigantic struggle, where the line of battle extended
more than eight miles in length, two hundred thousand Germans with
seven hundred guns arrayed against a hundred and twenty thousand French
with but five hundred guns, the Germans facing toward Germany, the
French toward France, as if invaders and invaded had inverted their
roles in the singular tactical movements that had been going on; after
two o’clock the conflict was most sanguinary, the Prussian Guard being
repulsed with tremendous slaughter and Bazaine, with a left wing that
withstood the onsets of the enemy like a wall of adamant, for a long
time victorious, up to the moment, at the approach of evening, when the
weaker right wing was compelled by the terrific losses it had sustained
to abandon Saint-Privat, involving in its rout the remainder of the
army, which, defeated and driven back under the walls of Metz, was
thenceforth to be imprisoned in a circle of flame and iron.
[3] August.—TR.
As Henriette pursued her reading Jean momentarily interrupted her to
say:
“Ah, well! and to think that we fellows, after leaving Rheims, were
looking for Bazaine! They were always telling us he was coming; now I
can see why he never came!”
The marshal’s despatch, dated the 19th, after the battle of
Saint-Privat, in which he spoke of resuming his retrograde movement by
way of Montmedy, that despatch which had for its effect the advance of
the army of Châlons, would seem to have been nothing more than the
report of a defeated general, desirous to present matters under their
most favorable aspect, and it was not until a considerably later
period, the 29th, when the tidings of the approach of this relieving
army had reached him through the Prussian lines, that he attempted a
final effort, on the right bank this time, at Noiseville, but in such a
feeble, half-hearted way that on the 1st of September, the day when the
army of Châlons was annihilated at Sedan, the army of Metz fell back to
advance no more, and became as if dead to France. The marshal, whose
conduct up to that time may fairly be characterized as that of a leader
of only moderate ability, neglecting his opportunities and failing to
move when the roads were open to him, after that blockaded by forces
greatly superior to his own, was now about to be seduced by alluring
visions of political greatness and become a conspirator and a traitor.
But in the papers that Doctor Dalichamp brought them Bazaine was still
the great man and the gallant soldier, to whom France looked for her
salvation.
And Jean wanted certain passages read to him again, in order that he
might more clearly understand how it was that while the third German
army, under the Crown Prince of Prussia, had been leading them such a
dance, and the first and second were besieging Metz, the latter were so
strong in men and guns that it had been possible to form from them a
fourth army, which, under the Crown Prince of Saxony, had done so much
to decide the fortune of the day at Sedan. Then, having obtained the
information he desired, resting on that bed of suffering to which his
wound condemned him, he forced himself to hope in spite of all.
“That’s how it is, you see; we were not so strong as they! No one can
ever get at the rights of such matters while the fighting is going on.
Never mind, though; you have read the figures as the newspapers give
them: Bazaine has a hundred and fifty thousand men with him, he has
three hundred thousand small arms and more than five hundred pieces of
artillery; take my word for it, he is not going to let himself be
caught in such a scrape as we were. The fellows all say he is a tough
man to deal with; depend on it he’s fixing up a nasty dose for the
enemy, and he’ll make ’em swallow it.”
Henriette nodded her head and appeared to agree with him, in order to
keep him in a cheerful frame of mind. She could not follow those
complicated operations of the armies, but had a presentiment of coming,
inevitable evil. Her voice was fresh and clear; she could have gone on
reading thus for hours; only too glad to have it in her power to
relieve the tedium of his long day, though at times, when she came to
some narrative of slaughter, her eyes would fill with tears that made
the words upon the printed page a blur. She was doubtless thinking of
her husband’s fate, how he had been shot down at the foot of the wall
and his body desecrated by the touch of the Bavarian officer’s boot.
“If it gives you such pain,” Jean said in surprise, “you need not read
the battles; skip them.”
But, gentle and self-sacrificing as ever, she recovered herself
immediately.
“No, no; don’t mind my weakness; I assure you it is a pleasure to me.”
One evening early in October, when the wind was blowing a small
hurricane outside, she came in from the ambulance and entered the room
with an excited air, saying:
“A letter from Maurice! the doctor just gave it me.”
With each succeeding morning the twain had been becoming more and more
alarmed that the young man sent them no word, and now that for a whole
week it had been rumored everywhere that the investment of Paris was
complete, they were more disturbed in mind than ever, despairing of
receiving tidings, asking themselves what could have happened him after
he left Rouen. And now the reason of the long silence was made clear to
them: the letter that he had addressed from Paris to Doctor Dalichamp
on the 18th, the very day that ended railway communication with Havre,
had gone astray and had only reached them at last by a miracle, after a
long and circuitous journey.
“Ah, the dear boy!” said Jean, radiant with delight. “Read it to me,
quick!”
The wind was howling and shrieking more dismally than ever, the window
of the apartment strained and rattled as if someone were trying to
force an entrance. Henriette went and got the little lamp, and placing
it on the table beside the bed applied herself to the reading of the
missive, so close to Jean that their faces almost touched. There was a
sensation of warmth and comfort in the peaceful room amid the roaring
of the storm that raged without.
It was a long letter of eight closely filled pages, in which Maurice
first told how, soon after his arrival on the 16th, he had had the good
fortune to get into a line regiment that was being recruited up to its
full strength. Then, reverting to facts of history, he described in
brief but vigorous terms the principal events of that month of terror:
how Paris, recovering her sanity in a measure after the madness into
which the disasters of Wissembourg and Froeschwiller had driven her,
had comforted herself with hopes of future victories, had cheered
herself with fresh illusions, such as lying stories of the army’s
successes, the appointment of Bazaine to the chief command, the _levée
en masse_, bogus dispatches, which the ministers themselves read from
the tribune, telling of hecatombs of slaughtered Prussians. And then he
went on to tell how, on the 3d of September, the thunderbolt had a
second time burst over the unhappy capital: all hope gone, the
misinformed, abused, confiding city dazed by that crushing blow of
destiny, the cries: “Down with the Empire!” that resounded at night
upon the boulevards, the brief and gloomy session of the Chamber at
which Jules Favre read the draft of the bill that conceded the popular
demand. Then on the next day, the ever-memorable 4th of September, was
the upheaval of all things, the second Empire swept from existence in
atonement for its mistakes and crimes, the entire population of the
capital in the streets, a torrent of humanity a half a million strong
filling the Place de la Concorde and streaming onward in the bright
sunshine of that beautiful Sabbath day to the great gates of the Corps
Législatif, feebly guarded by a handful of troops, who up-ended their
muskets in the air in token of sympathy with the populace—smashing in
the doors, swarming into the assembly chambers, whence Jules Favre,
Gambetta and other deputies of the Left were even then on the point of
departing to proclaim the Republic at the Hôtel de Ville; while on the
Place Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois a little wicket of the Louvre opened
timidly and gave exit to the Empress-regent, attired in black garments
and accompanied by a single female friend, both the women trembling
with affright and striving to conceal themselves in the depths of the
public cab, which went jolting with its scared inmates from the
Tuileries, through whose apartments the mob was at that moment
streaming. On the same day Napoleon III. left the inn at Bouillon,
where he had passed his first night of exile, bending his way toward
Wilhelmshohe.
Here Jean, a thoughtful expression on his face, interrupted Henriette.
“Then we have a republic now? So much the better, if it is going to
help us whip the Prussians!”
But he shook his head; he had always been taught to look distrustfully
on republics when he was a peasant. And then, too, it did not seem to
him a good thing that they should be of differing minds when the enemy
was fronting them. After all, though, it was manifest there had to be a
change of some kind, since everyone knew the Empire was rotten to the
core and the people would have no more of it.
Henriette finished the letter, which concluded with a mention of the
approach of the German armies. On the 13th, the day when a committee of
the Government of National Defense had established its quarters at
Tours, their advanced guards had been seen at Lagny, to the east of
Paris. On the 14th and 15th they were at the very gates of the city, at
Creteil and Joinville-le-Pont. On the 18th, however, the day when
Maurice wrote, he seemed to have ceased to believe in the possibility
of maintaining a strict blockade of Paris; he appeared to be under the
influence of one of his hot fits of blind confidence, characterising
the siege as a senseless and impudent enterprise that would come to an
ignominious end before they were three weeks older, relying on the
armies that the provinces would surely send to their relief, to say
nothing of the army of Metz, that was already advancing by way of
Verdun and Rheims. And the links of the iron chain that their enemies
had forged for them had been riveted together; it encompassed Paris,
and now Paris was a city shut off from all the world, whence no letter,
no word of tidings longer came, the huge prison-house of two millions
of living beings, who were to their neighbors as if they were not.
Henriette was oppressed by a sense of melancholy. “Ah, merciful
heaven!” she murmured, “how long will all this last, and shall we ever
see him more!”
A more furious blast bent the sturdy trees out-doors and made the
timbers of the old farmhouse creak and groan. Think of the sufferings
the poor fellows would have to endure should the winter be severe,
fighting in the snow, without bread, without fire!
“Bah!” rejoined Jean, “that’s a very nice letter of his, and it’s a
comfort to have heard from him. We must not despair.”
Thus, day by day, the month of October ran its course, with gray
melancholy skies, and if ever the wind went down for a short space it
was only to bring the clouds back in darker, heavier masses. Jean’s
wound was healing very slowly; the outflow from the drain was not the
“laudable pus” which would have permitted the doctor to remove the
appliance, and the patient was in a very enfeebled state, refusing,
however, to be operated on in his dread of being left a cripple. An
atmosphere of expectant resignation, disturbed at times by transient
misgivings for which there was no apparent cause, pervaded the
slumberous little chamber, to which the tidings from abroad came in
vague, indeterminate shape, like the distorted visions of an evil
dream. The hateful war, with its butcheries and disasters, was still
raging out there in the world, in some quarter unknown to them, without
their ever being able to learn the real course of events, without their
being conscious of aught save the wails and groans that seemed to fill
the air from their mangled, bleeding country. And the dead leaves
rustled in the paths as the wind swept them before it beneath the
gloomy sky, and over the naked fields brooded a funereal silence,
broken only by the cawing of the crows, presage of a bitter winter.
A principal subject of conversation between them at this time was the
hospital, which Henriette never left except to come and cheer Jean with
her company. When she came in at evening he would question her, making
the acquaintance of each of her charges, desirous to know who would die
and who recover; while she, whose heart and soul were in her
occupation, never wearied, but related the occurrences of the day in
their minutest details.
“Ah,” she would always say, “the poor boys, the poor boys!”
It was not the ambulance of the battlefield, where the blood from the
wounded came in a fresh, bright stream, where the flesh the surgeon’s
knife cut into was firm and healthy; it was the decay and rottenness of
the hospital, where the odor of fever and gangrene hung in the air,
damp with the exhalations of the lingering convalescents and those who
were dying by inches. Doctor Dalichamp had had the greatest difficulty
in procuring the necessary beds, sheets and pillows, and every day he
had to accomplish miracles to keep his patients alive, to obtain for
them bread, meat and desiccated vegetables, to say nothing of bandages,
compresses and other appliances. As the Prussian officers in charge of
the military hospital in Sedan had refused him everything, even
chloroform, he was accustomed to send to Belgium for what he required.
And yet he had made no discrimination between French and Germans; he
was even then caring for a dozen Bavarian soldiers who had been brought
in there from Bazeilles. Those bitter adversaries who but a short time
before had been trying to cut each other’s throat now lay side by side,
their passions calmed by suffering. And what abodes of distress and
misery they were, those two long rooms in the old schoolhouse of
Remilly, where, in the crude light that streamed through the tall
windows, some thirty beds in each were arranged on either side of a
narrow passage.
As late even as ten days after the battle wounded men had been
discovered in obscure corners, where they had been overlooked, and
brought in for treatment. There were four who had crawled into a vacant
house at Balan and remained there, without attendance, kept from
starving in some way, no one could tell how, probably by the charity of
some kind-hearted neighbor, and their wounds were alive with maggots;
they were as dead men, their system poisoned by the corruption that
exuded from their wounds. There was a purulency, that nothing could
check or overcome, that hovered over the rows of beds and emptied them.
As soon as the door was passed one’s nostrils were assailed by the odor
of mortifying flesh. From drains inserted in festering sores fetid
matter trickled, drop by drop. Oftentimes it became necessary to reopen
old wounds in order to extract a fragment of bone that had been
overlooked. Then abscesses would form, to break out after an interval
in some remote portion of the body. Their strength all gone, reduced to
skeletons, with ashen, clayey faces, the miserable wretches suffered
the torments of the damned. Some, so weakened they could scarcely draw
their breath, lay all day long upon their back, with tight shut,
darkened eyes, like corpses in which decomposition had already set in;
while others, denied the boon of sleep, tossing in restless
wakefulness, drenched with the cold sweat that streamed from every
pore, raved like lunatics, as if their suffering had made them mad. And
whether they were calm or violent, it mattered not; when the contagion
of the fever reached them, then was the end at hand, the poison doing
its work, flying from bed to bed, sweeping them all away in one mass of
corruption.
But worst of all was the condemned cell, the room to which were
assigned those who were attacked by dysentery, typhus or small-pox.
There were many cases of black small-pox. The patients writhed and
shrieked in unceasing delirium, or sat erect in bed with the look of
specters. Others had pneumonia and were wasting beneath the stress of
their frightful cough. There were others again who maintained a
continuous howling and were comforted only when their burning,
throbbing wound was sprayed with cold water. The great hour of the day,
the one that was looked forward to with eager expectancy, was that of
the doctor’s morning visit, when the beds were opened and aired and an
opportunity was afforded their occupants to stretch their limbs,
cramped by remaining long in one position. And it was the hour of dread
and terror as well, for not a day passed that, as the doctor went his
rounds, he was not pained to see on some poor devil’s skin the bluish
spots that denoted the presence of gangrene. The operation would be
appointed for the following day, when a few more inches of the leg or
arm would be sliced away. Often the gangrene kept mounting higher and
higher, and amputation had to be repeated until the entire limb was
gone.
Every evening on her return Henriette answered Jean’s questions in the
same tone of compassion:
“Ah, the poor boys, the poor boys!”
And her particulars never varied; they were the story of the daily
recurring torments of that earthly hell. There had been an amputation
at the shoulder-joint, a foot had been taken off, a humerus resected;
but would gangrene or purulent contagion be clement and spare the
patient? Or else they had been burying some one of their inmates, most
frequently a Frenchman, now and then a German. Scarcely a day passed
but a coarse coffin, hastily knocked together from four pine boards,
left the hospital at the twilight hour, accompanied by a single one of
the attendants, often by the young woman herself, that a
fellow-creature might not be laid away in his grave like a dog. In the
little cemetery at Remilly two trenches had been dug, and there they
slumbered, side by side, French to the right, Germans to the left,
their enmity forgotten in their narrow bed.
Jean, without ever having seen them, had come to feel an interest in
certain among the patients. He would ask for tidings of them.
“And ‘Poor boy,’ how is he getting on to-day?”
This was a little soldier, a private in the 5th of the line, not yet
twenty years old, who had doubtless enlisted as a volunteer. The
by-name: “Poor boy” had been given him and had stuck because he always
used the words in speaking of himself, and when one day he was asked
the reason he replied that that was the name by which his mother had
always called him. Poor boy he was, in truth, for he was dying of
pleurisy brought on by a wound in his left side.
“Ah, poor fellow,” replied Henriette, who had conceived a special
fondness for this one of her charges, “he is no better; he coughed all
the afternoon. It pained my heart to hear him.”
“And your bear, Gutman, how about him?” pursued Jean, with a faint
smile. “Is the doctor’s report more favorable?”
“Yes, he thinks he may be able to save his life. But the poor man
suffers dreadfully.”
Although they both felt the deepest compassion for him, they never
spoke of Gutman but a smile of gentle amusement came to their lips.
Almost immediately upon entering on her duties at the hospital the
young woman had been shocked to recognize in that Bavarian soldier the
features: big blue eyes, red hair and beard and massive nose, of the
man who had carried her away in his arms the day they shot her husband
at Bazeilles. He recognized her as well, but could not speak; a musket
ball, entering at the back of the neck, had carried away half his
tongue. For two days she recoiled with horror, an involuntary shudder
passed through her frame, each time she had to approach his bed, but
presently her heart began to melt under the imploring, very gentle
looks with which he followed her movements in the room. Was he not the
blood-splashed monster, with eyes ablaze with furious rage, whose
memory was ever present to her mind? It cost her an effort to recognize
him now in that submissive, uncomplaining creature, who bore his
terrible suffering with such cheerful resignation. The nature of his
affliction, which is not of frequent occurrence, enlisted for him the
sympathies of the entire hospital. It was not even certain that his
name was Gutman; he was called so because the only sound he succeeded
in articulating was a word of two syllables that resembled that more
than it did anything else. As regarded all other particulars concerning
him everyone was in the dark; it was generally believed, however, that
he was married and had children. He seemed to understand a few words of
French, for he would answer questions that were put to him with an
emphatic motion of the head: “Married?” yes, yes! “Children?” yes, yes!
The interest and excitement he displayed one day that he saw some flour
induced them to believe he might have been a miller. And that was all.
Where was the mill, whose wheel had ceased to turn? In what distant
Bavarian village were the wife and children now weeping their lost
husband and father? Was he to die, nameless, unknown, in that foreign
country, and leave his dear ones forever ignorant of his fate?
“To-day,” Henriette told Jean one evening, “Gutman kissed his hand to
me. I cannot give him a drink of water, or render him any other
trifling service, but he manifests his gratitude by the most
extravagant demonstrations. Don’t smile; it is too terrible to be
buried thus alive before one’s time has come.”
Toward the end of October Jean’s condition began to improve. The doctor
thought he might venture to remove the drain, although he still looked
apprehensive whenever he examined the wound, which, nevertheless
appeared to be healing as rapidly as could be expected. The
convalescent was able to leave his bed, and spent hours at a time
pacing his room or seated at the window, looking out on the cheerless,
leaden sky. Then time began to hang heavy on his hands; he spoke of
finding something to do, asked if he could not be of service on the
farm. Among the secret cares that disturbed his mind was the question
of money, for he did not suppose he could have lain there for six long
weeks and not exhaust his little fortune of two hundred francs, and if
Father Fouchard continued to afford him hospitality it must be that
Henriette had been paying his board. The thought distressed him
greatly; he did not know how to bring about an explanation with her,
and it was with a feeling of deep satisfaction that he accepted the
position of assistant at the farm, with the understanding that he was
to help Silvine with the housework, while Prosper was to be continued
in charge of the out-door labors.
Notwithstanding the hardness of the times Father Fouchard could well
afford to take on another hand, for his affairs were prospering. While
the whole country was in the throes of dissolution and bleeding at
every limb, he had succeeded in so extending his butchering business
that he was now slaughtering three and even four times as many animals
as he had ever done before. It was said that since the 31st of August
he had been carrying on a most lucrative business with the Prussians.
He who on the 30th had stood at his door with his cocked gun in his
hand and refused to sell a crust of bread to the starving soldiers of
the 7th corps had on the following day, upon the first appearance of
the enemy, opened up as dealer in all kinds of supplies, had
disinterred from his cellar immense stocks of provisions, had brought
back his flocks and herds from the fastnesses where he had concealed
them; and since that day he had been one of the heaviest purveyors of
meat to the German armies, exhibiting consummate address in bargaining
with them and in getting his money promptly for his merchandise. Other
dealers at times suffered great inconvenience from the insolent
arbitrariness of the victors, whereas he never sold them a sack of
flour, a cask of wine or a quarter of beef that he did not get his pay
for it as soon as delivered in good hard cash. It made a good deal of
talk in Remilly; people said it was scandalous on the part of a man
whom the war had deprived of his only son, whose grave he never
visited, but left to be cared for by Silvine; but nevertheless they all
looked up to him with respect as a man who was making his fortune while
others, even the shrewdest, were having a hard time of it to keep body
and soul together. And he, with a sly leer out of his small red eyes,
would shrug his shoulders and growl in his bull-headed way:
“Who talks of patriotism! I am more a patriot than any of them. Would
you call it patriotism to fill those bloody Prussians’ mouths gratis?
What they get from me they have to pay for. Folks will see how it is
some of these days!”
On the second day of his employment Jean remained too long on foot, and
the doctor’s secret fears proved not to be unfounded; the wound opened,
the leg became greatly inflamed and swollen, he was compelled to take
to his bed again. Dalichamp suspected that the mischief was due to a
spicule of bone that the two consecutive days of violent exercise had
served to liberate. He explored the wound and was so fortunate as to
find the fragment, but there was a shock attending the operation,
succeeded by a high fever, which exhausted all Jean’s strength. He had
never in his life been reduced to a condition of such debility: his
recovery promised to be a work of time, and faithful Henriette resumed
her position as nurse and companion in the little chamber, where winter
with icy breath now began to make its presence felt. It was early
November, already the east wind had brought on its wings a smart flurry
of snow, and between those four bare walls, on the uncarpeted floor
where even the tall, gaunt old clothes-press seemed to shiver with
discomfort, the cold was extreme. As there was no fireplace in the room
they determined to set up a stove, of which the purring, droning murmur
assisted to brighten their solitude a bit.
The days wore on, monotonously, and that first week of the relapse was
to Jean and Henriette the dreariest and saddest in all their long,
unsought intimacy. Would their suffering never end? were they to hope
for no surcease of misery, the danger always springing up afresh? At
every moment their thoughts sped away to Maurice, from whom they had
received no further word. They were told that others were getting
letters, brief notes written on tissue paper and brought in by
carrier-pigeons. Doubtless the bullet of some hated German had slain
the messenger that, winging its way through the free air of heaven, was
bringing them their missive of joy and love. Everything seemed to
retire into dim obscurity, to die and be swallowed up in the depths of
the premature winter. Intelligence of the war only reached them a long
time after the occurrence of events, the few newspapers that Doctor
Dalichamp still continued to supply them with were often a week old by
the time they reached their hands. And their dejection was largely
owing to their want of information, to what they did not know and yet
instinctively felt to be the truth, to the prolonged death-wail that,
spite of all, came to their ears across the frozen fields in the deep
silence that lay upon the country.
One morning the doctor came to them in a condition of deepest
discouragement. With a trembling hand he drew from his pocket a Belgian
newspaper and threw it on the bed, exclaiming:
“Alas, my friends, poor France is murdered; Bazaine has played the
traitor!”
Jean, who had been dozing, his back supported by a couple of pillows,
suddenly became wide-awake.
“What, a traitor?”
“Yes, he has surrendered Metz and the army. It is the experience of
Sedan over again, only this time they drain us of our last drop of
life-blood.” Then taking up the paper and reading from it: “One hundred
and fifty thousand prisoners, one hundred and fifty-three eagles and
standards, one hundred and forty-one field guns, seventy-six machine
guns, eight hundred casemate and barbette guns, three hundred thousand
muskets, two thousand military train wagons, material for eighty-five
batteries—”
And he went on giving further particulars: how Marshal Bazaine had been
blockaded in Metz with the army, bound hand and foot, making no effort
to break the wall of adamant that surrounded him; the doubtful
relations that existed between him and Prince Frederick Charles, his
indecision and fluctuating political combinations, his ambition to play
a great role in history, but a role that he seemed not to have fixed
upon himself; then all the dirty business of parleys and conferences,
and the communications by means of lying, unsavory emissaries with
Bismarck, King William and the Empress-regent, who in the end put her
foot down and refused to negotiate with the enemy on the basis of a
cession of territory; and, finally, the inevitable catastrophe, the
completion of the web that destiny had been weaving, famine in Metz, a
compulsory capitulation, officers and men, hope and courage gone,
reduced to accept the bitter terms of the victor. France no longer had
an army.
“In God’s name!” Jean ejaculated in a deep, low voice. He had not fully
understood it all, but until then Bazaine had always been for him the
great captain, the one man to whom they were to look for salvation.
“What is left us to do now? What will become of them at Paris?”
The doctor was just coming to the news from Paris, which was of a
disastrous character. He called their attention to the fact that the
paper from which he was reading was dated November 5. The surrender of
Metz had been consummated on the 27th of October, and the tidings were
not known in Paris until the 30th. Coming, as it did, upon the heels of
the reverses recently sustained at Chevilly, Bagneux and la Malmaison,
after the conflict at Bourget and the loss of that position, the
intelligence had burst like a thunderbolt over the desperate populace,
angered and disgusted by the feebleness and impotency of the government
of National Defense. And thus it was that on the following day, the
31st, the city was threatened with a general insurrection, an immense
throng of angry men, a mob ripe for mischief, collecting on the Place
de l’Hôtel de Ville, whence they swarmed into the halls and public
offices, making prisoners the members of the Government, whom the
National Guard rescued later in the day only because they feared the
triumph of those incendiaries who were clamoring for the commune. And
the Belgian journal wound up with a few stinging comments on the great
City of Paris, thus torn by civil war when the enemy was at its gates.
Was it not the presage of approaching decomposition, the puddle of
blood and mire that was to engulf a world?
“That’s true enough!” said Jean, whose face was very white. “They’ve no
business to be squabbling when the Prussians are at hand!”
But Henriette, who had said nothing as yet, always making it her rule
to hold her tongue when politics were under discussion, could not
restrain a cry that rose from her heart. Her thoughts were ever with
her brother.
“_Mon Dieu_, I hope that Maurice, with all the foolish ideas he has in
his head, won’t let himself get mixed up in this business!”
They were all silent in their distress; and it was the doctor, who was
ardently patriotic, who resumed the conversation.
“Never mind; if there are no more soldiers, others will grow. Metz has
surrendered, Paris may surrender, even; but it don’t follow from that
that France is wiped out. Yes, the strong-box is all right, as our
peasants say, and we will live on in spite of all.”
It was clear, however, that he was hoping against hope. He spoke of the
army that was collecting on the Loire, whose initial performances, in
the neighborhood of Arthenay, had not been of the most promising; it
would become seasoned and would march to the relief of Paris. His
enthusiasm was aroused to boiling pitch by the proclamations of
Gambetta, who had left Paris by balloon on the 7th of October and two
days later established his headquarters at Tours, calling on every
citizen to fly to arms, and instinct with a spirit at once so virile
and so sagacious that the entire country gave its adhesion to the
dictatorial powers assumed for the public safety. And was there not
talk of forming another army in the North, and yet another in the East,
of causing soldiers to spring from the ground by sheer force of faith?
It was to be the awakening of the provinces, the creation of all that
was wanting by exercise of indomitable will, the determination to
continue the struggle until the last sou was spent, the last drop of
blood shed.
“Bah!” said the doctor in conclusion as he arose to go, “I have many a
time given up a patient, and a week later found him as lively as a
cricket.”
Jean smiled. “Doctor, hurry up and make a well man of me, so I can go
back to my post down yonder.”
But those evil tidings left Henriette and him in a terribly
disheartened state. There came another cold wave, with snow, and when
the next day Henriette came in shivering from the hospital she told her
friend that Gutman was dead. The intense cold had proved fatal to many
among the wounded; it was emptying the rows of beds. The miserable man
whom the loss of his tongue had condemned to silence had lain two days
in the throes of death. During his last hour she had remained seated at
his bedside, unable to resist the supplication of his pleading gaze. He
seemed to be speaking to her with his tearful eyes, trying to tell, it
may be, his real name and the name of the village, so far away, where a
wife and little ones were watching for his return. And he had gone from
them a stranger, known of none, sending her a last kiss with his
uncertain, stiffening fingers, as if to thank her once again for all
her gentle care. She was the only one who accompanied the remains to
the cemetery, where the frozen earth, the unfriendly soil of the
stranger’s country, rattled with a dull, hollow sound on the pine
coffin, mingled with flakes of snow.
The next day, again, Henriette said upon her return at evening:
“‘Poor boy’ is dead.” She could not keep back her tears at mention of
his name. “If you could but have seen and heard him in his pitiful
delirium! He kept calling me: ‘Mamma! mamma!’ and stretched his poor
thin arms out to me so entreatingly that I had to take him on my lap.
His suffering had so wasted him that he was no heavier than a boy of
ten, poor fellow. And I held and soothed him, so that he might die in
peace; yes, I held him in my arms, I whom he called his mother and who
was but a few years older than himself. He wept, and I myself could not
restrain my tears; you can see I am weeping still—” Her utterance was
choked with sobs; she had to pause. “Before his death he murmured
several times the name which he had given himself: ‘Poor boy, poor
boy!’ Ah, how just the designation! poor boys they are indeed, some of
them so young and all so brave, whom your hateful war maims and mangles
and causes to suffer so before they are laid away at last in their
narrow bed!”
Never a day passed now but Henriette came in at night in this anguished
state, caused by some new death, and the suffering of others had the
effect of bringing them together even more closely still during the
sorrowful hours that they spent, secluded from all the world, in the
silent, tranquil chamber. And yet those hours were full of sweetness,
too, for affection, a feeling which they believed to be a brother’s and
sister’s love, had sprung up in those two hearts which little by little
had come to know each other’s worth. To him, with his observant,
thoughtful nature, their long intimacy had proved an elevating
influence, while she, noting his unfailing kindness of heart and
evenness of temper, had ceased to remember that he was one of the lowly
of the earth and had been a tiller of the soil before he became a
soldier. Their understanding was perfect; they made a very good couple,
as Silvine said with her grave smile. There was never the least
embarrassment between them; when she dressed his leg the calm serenity
that dwelt in the eyes of both was undisturbed. Always attired in
black, in her widow’s garments, it seemed almost as if she had ceased
to be a woman.
But during those long afternoons when Jean was left to himself he could
not help giving way to speculation. The sentiment he experienced for
his friend was one of boundless gratitude, a sort of religious
reverence, which would have made him repel the idea of love as if it
were a sort of sacrilege. And yet he told himself that had he had a
wife like her, so gentle, so loving, so helpful, his life would have
been an earthly paradise. His great misfortune, his unhappy marriage,
the evil years he had spent at Rognes, his wife’s tragic end, all the
sad past, arose before him with a softened feeling of regret, with an
undefined hope for the future, but without distinct purpose to try
another effort to master happiness. He closed his eyes and dropped off
into a doze, and then he had a confused vision of being at Remilly,
married again and owner of a bit of land, sufficient to support a
family of honest folks whose wants were not extravagant. But it was all
a dream, lighter than thistle-down; he knew it could never, never be.
He believed his heart to be capable of no emotion stronger than
friendship, he loved Henriette as he did solely because he was
Maurice’s brother. And then that vague dream of marriage had come to be
in some measure a comfort to him, one of those fancies of the
imagination that we know is never to be realized and with which we
fondle ourselves in our hours of melancholy.
For her part, such thoughts had never for a moment presented themselves
to Henriette’s mind. Since the day of the horrible tragedy at Bazeilles
her bruised heart had lain numb and lifeless in her bosom, and if
consolation in the shape of a new affection had found its way thither,
it could not be otherwise than without her knowledge; the latent
movement of the seed deep-buried in the earth, which bursts its sheath
and germinates, unseen of human eye. She failed even to perceive the
pleasure it afforded her to remain for hours at a time by Jean’s
bedside, reading to him those newspapers that never brought them
tidings save of evil. Never had her pulses beat more rapidly at the
touch of his hand, never had she dwelt in dreamy rapture on the vision
of the future with a longing to be loved once more. And yet it was in
that chamber alone that she found comfort and oblivion. When she was
there, busying herself with noiseless diligence for her patient’s
well-being, she was at peace; it seemed to her that soon her brother
would return and all would be well, they would all lead a life of
happiness together and never more be parted. And it appeared to her so
natural that things should end thus that she talked of their relations
without the slightest feeling of embarrassment, without once thinking
to question her heart more closely, unaware that she had already made
the chaste surrender of it.
But as she was on the point of leaving for the hospital one afternoon
she looked into the kitchen as she passed and saw there a Prussian
captain and two other officers, and the icy terror that filled her at
the sight, then, for the first time, opened her eyes to the deep
affection she had conceived for Jean. It was plain that the men had
heard of the wounded man’s presence at the farm and were come to claim
him; he was to be torn from them and led away captive to the dungeon of
some dark fortress deep in Germany. She listened tremblingly, her heart
beating tumultuously.
The captain, a big, stout man, who spoke French with scarce a trace of
foreign accent, was rating old Fouchard soundly.
“Things can’t go on in this way; you are not dealing squarely by us. I
came myself to give you warning, once for all, that if the thing
happens again I shall take other steps to remedy it; and I promise you
the consequences will not be agreeable.”
Though entirely master of all his faculties the old scamp assumed an
air of consternation, pretending not to understand, his mouth agape,
his arms describing frantic circles on the air.
“How is that, sir, how is that?”
“Oh, come, there’s no use attempting to pull the wool over my eyes; you
know perfectly well that the three beeves you sold me on Sunday last
were rotten—yes, diseased, and rotten through and through; they must
have been where there was infection, for they poisoned my men; there
are two of them in such a bad way that they may be dead by this time
for all I know.”
Fouchard’s manner was expressive of virtuous indignation. “What, my
cattle diseased! why, there’s no better meat in all the country; a sick
woman might feed on it to build her up!” And he whined and sniveled,
thumping himself on the chest and calling God to witness he was an
honest man; he would cut off his right hand rather than sell bad meat.
For more than thirty years he had been known throughout the
neighborhood, and not a living soul could say he had ever been wronged
in weight or quality. “They were as sound as a dollar, sir, and if your
men had the belly-ache it was because they ate too much—unless some
villain hocussed the pot—”
And so he ran on, with such a flux of words and absurd theories that
finally the captain, his patience exhausted, cut him short.
“Enough! You have had your warning; see you profit by it! And there is
another matter: we have our suspicions that all you people of this
village give aid and comfort to the francs-tireurs of the wood of
Dieulet, who killed another of our sentries day before yesterday. Mind
what I say; be careful!”
When the Prussians were gone Father Fouchard shrugged his shoulders
with a contemptuous sneer. Why, yes, of course he sold them carcasses
that had never been near the slaughter house; that was all they would
ever get to eat from him. If a peasant had a cow die on his hands of
the rinderpest, or if he found a dead ox lying in the ditch, was not
the carrion good enough for those dirty Prussians? To say nothing of
the pleasure there was in getting a big price out of them for tainted
meat at which a dog would turn up his nose. He turned and winked slyly
at Henriette, who was glad to have her fears dispelled, muttering
triumphantly:
“Say, little girl, what do you think now of the wicked people who go
about circulating the story that I am not a patriot? Why don’t they do
as I do, eh? sell the blackguards carrion and put their money in their
pocket. Not a patriot! why, good Heavens! I shall have killed more of
them with my diseased cattle than many a soldier with his chassepot!”
When the story reached Jean’s ears, however, he was greatly disturbed.
If the German authorities suspected that the people of Remilly were
harboring the francs-tireurs from Dieulet wood they might at any time
come and beat up his quarters and unearth him from his retreat. The
idea that he should be the means of compromising his hosts or bringing
trouble to Henriette was unendurable to him. Yielding to the young
woman’s entreaties, however, he consented to delay his departure yet
for a few days, for his wound was very slow in healing and he was not
strong enough to go away and join one of the regiments in the field,
either in the North or on the Loire.
From that time forward, up to the middle of December, the stress of
their anxiety and mental suffering exceeded even what had gone before.
The cold was grown to be so intense that the stove no longer sufficed
to heat the great, barn-like room. When they looked from their window
on the crust of snow that covered the frozen earth they thought of
Maurice, entombed down yonder in distant Paris, that was now become a
city of death and desolation, from which they scarcely ever received
reliable intelligence. Ever the same questions were on their lips: what
was he doing, why did he not let them hear from him? They dared not
voice their dreadful doubts and fears; perhaps he was ill, or wounded;
perhaps even he was dead. The scanty and vague tidings that continued
to reach them occasionally through the newspapers were not calculated
to reassure them. After numerous lying reports of successful sorties,
circulated one day only to be contradicted the next, there was a rumor
of a great victory gained by General Ducrot at Champigny on the 2d of
December; but they speedily learned that on the following day the
general, abandoning the positions he had won, had been forced to
recross the Marne and send his troops into cantonments in the wood of
Vincennes. With each new day the Parisians saw themselves subjected to
fresh suffering and privation: famine was beginning to make itself
felt; the authorities, having first requisitioned horned cattle, were
now doing the same with potatoes, gas was no longer furnished to
private houses, and soon the fiery flight of the projectiles could be
traced as they tore through the darkness of the unlighted streets. And
so it was that neither of them could draw a breath or eat a mouthful
without being haunted by the image of Maurice and those two million
living beings, imprisoned in their gigantic sepulcher.
From every quarter, moreover, from the northern as well as from the
central districts, most discouraging advices continued to arrive. In
the north the 22d army corps, composed of gardes mobiles, depot
companies from various regiments and such officers and men as had not
been involved in the disasters of Sedan and Metz, had been forced to
abandon Amiens and retreat on Arras, and on the 5th of December Rouen
had also fallen into the hands of the enemy, after a mere pretense of
resistance on the part of its demoralized, scanty garrison. In the
center the victory of Coulmiers, achieved on the 3d of November by the
army of the Loire, had resuscitated for a moment the hopes of the
country: Orleans was to be reoccupied, the Bavarians were to be put to
flight, the movement by way of Étampes was to culminate in the relief
of Paris; but on December 5 Prince Frederick Charles had retaken
Orleans and cut in two the army of the Loire, of which three corps fell
back on Bourges and Vierzon, while the remaining two, commanded by
General Chanzy, retired to Mans, fighting and falling back alternately
for a whole week, most gallantly. The Prussians were everywhere, at
Dijon and at Dieppe, at Vierzon as well as at Mans. And almost every
morning came the intelligence of some fortified place that had
capitulated, unable longer to hold out under the bombardment.
Strasbourg had succumbed as early as the 28th of September, after
standing forty-six days of siege and thirty-seven of shelling, her
walls razed and her buildings riddled by more than two hundred thousand
projectiles. The citadel of Laon had been blown into the air; Toul had
surrendered; and following them, a melancholy catalogue, came Soissons
with its hundred and twenty-eight pieces of artillery, Verdun, which
numbered a hundred and thirty-six, Neufbrisach with a hundred, La Fere
with seventy, Montmedy, sixty-five. Thionville was in flames,
Phalsbourg had only opened her gates after a desperate resistance that
lasted eighty days. It seemed as if all France were doomed to burn and
be reduced to ruins by the never-ceasing cannonade.
One morning that Jean manifested a fixed determination to be gone,
Henriette seized both his hands and held them tight clasped in hers.
“Ah, no! I beg you, do not go and leave me here alone. You are not
strong enough; wait a few days yet, only a few days. I will let you go,
I promise you I will, whenever the doctor says you are well enough to
go and fight.”