The Downfall
Part II
Chapter VIII
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withdrawn it upon the peremptory refusal of Generals Ducrot and Douay to append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
materiel 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 College 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
Mezieres 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 Hotel 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 Chateau 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 Mezieres 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 Marfee, 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
Chateau 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 Mezieres, 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 cafe 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 chateaus, 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 Chateau 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 a 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-Prefet's lilac bushes. It puzzled the authorities somewhat to devise means
for ridding themselves of what was to them a bete 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.