The Downfall
Part III
Chapter IV
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 echelon 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[*] 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.
[*] 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 Chalons, 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 Chalons
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
levee 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 Legislatif, 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 Hotel 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'Hotel 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
Etampes 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."