Complete Works of Emile Zola (1152 page)

“I know some folks who talk of shooting us,” Chouteau continued, with an ugly look at Jean; “dirty, miserable skunks, who treat us worse than beasts, and, when a man’s back is broken with the weight of his knapsack and Brownbess,
aie
!
aie
! object to his planting them in the fields to see if a new crop will grow from them. What do you suppose they would say, comrades,
hein
! now that we are masters, if we should pitch them all out upon the track, and teach them better manners? That’s the way to do,
hein
! We’ll show ‘em that we won’t be bothered any longer with their mangy wars. Down with Badinguet’s bed-bugs! Death to the curs who want to make us fight!”

Jean’s face was aflame with the crimson tide that never failed to rush to his cheeks in his infrequent fits of anger. He rose, wedged in though as he was between his neighbors as firmly as in a vise, and his blazing eyes and doubled fists had such a look of business about them that the other quailed.

“
Tonnerre de Dieu!
will you be silent, pig! For hours I have sat here without saying anything, because we have no longer any leaders, and I could not even send you to the guard-house. Yes, there’s no doubt of it, it would be a good thing to shoot such men as you and rid the regiment of the vermin. But see here, as there’s no longer any discipline, I will attend to your case myself. There’s no corporal here now, but a hard-fisted fellow who is tired of listening to your jaw, and he’ll see if he can’t make you keep your potato-trap shut. Ah! you d —— d coward! You won’t fight yourself and you want to keep others from fighting! Repeat your words once and I’ll knock your head off!”

By this time the whole car, won over by Jean’s manly attitude, had deserted Chouteau, who cowered back in his seat as if not anxious to face his opponent’s big fists.

“And I care no more for Badinguet than I do for you, do you understand? I despise politics, whether they are republican or imperial, and now, as in the past, when I used to cultivate my little farm, there is but one thing that I wish for, and that is the happiness of all, peace and good-order, freedom for every man to attend to his affairs. No one denies that war is a terrible business, but that is no reason why a man should not be treated to the sight of a firing-party when he comes trying to dishearten people who already have enough to do to keep their courage up. Good Heavens, friends, how it makes a man’s pulses leap to be told that the Prussians are in the land and that he is to go help drive them out!”

Then, with the customary fickleness of a mob, the soldiers applauded the corporal, who again announced his determination to thrash the first man of his squad who should declare non-combatant principles. Bravo, the corporal! they would soon settle old Bismarck’s hash! And, in the midst of the wild ovation of which he was the object, Jean, who had recovered his self-control, turned politely to Maurice and addressed him as if he had not been one of his men:

“Monsieur, you cannot have anything in common with those poltroons. Come, we haven’t had a chance at them yet; we are the boys who will give them a good basting yet, those Prussians!”

It seemed to Maurice at that moment as if a ray of cheering sunshine had penetrated his heart. He was humiliated, vexed with himself. What! that man was nothing more than an uneducated rustic! And he remembered the fierce hatred that had burned in his bosom the day he was compelled to pick up the musket that he had thrown away in a moment of madness. But he also remembered his emotion at seeing the two big tears that stood in the corporal’s eyes when the old grandmother, her gray hairs streaming in the wind, had so bitterly reproached them and pointed to the Rhine that lay beneath the horizon in the distance. Was it the brotherhood of fatigue and suffering endured in common that had served thus to dissipate his wrathful feelings? He was Bonapartist by birth, and had never thought of the Republic except in a speculative, dreamy way; his feeling toward the Emperor, personally, too, inclined to friendliness, and he was favorable to the war, the very condition of national existence, the great regenerative school of nationalities. Hope, all at once, with one of those fitful impulses of the imagination, that were common in his temperament, revived in him, while the enthusiastic ardor that had impelled him to enlist one night again surged through his veins and swelled his heart with confidence of victory.

“Why, of course, Corporal,” he gayly replied, “we shall give them a basting!”

And still the car kept rolling onward with its load of human freight, filled with reeking smoke of pipes and emanations of the crowded men, belching its ribald songs and drunken shouts among the expectant throngs of the stations through which it passed, among the rows of white-faced peasants who lined the iron-way. On the 20th of August they were at the Pantin Station in Paris, and that same evening boarded another train which landed them next day at Rheims
en route
for the camp at Chalons.

III.

Maurice was greatly surprised when the 106th, leaving the cars at Rheims, received orders to go into camp there. So they were not to go to Chalons, then, and unite with the army there? And when, two hours later, his regiment had stacked muskets a league or so from the city over in the direction of Courcelles, in the broad plain that lies along the canal between the Aisne and Marne, his astonishment was greater still to learn that the entire army of Chalons had been falling back all that morning and was about to bivouac at that place. From one extremity of the horizon to the other, as far as Saint Thierry and Menvillette, even beyond the Laon road, the tents were going up, and when it should be night the fires of four army-corps would be blazing there. It was evident that the plan now was to go and take a position under the walls of Paris and there await the Prussians; and it was fortunate that that plan had received the approbation of the government, for was it not the wisest thing they could do?

Maurice devoted the afternoon of the 21st to strolling about the camp in search of news. The greatest freedom prevailed; discipline appeared to have been relaxed still further, the men went and came at their own sweet will. He found no obstacle in the way of his return to the city, where he desired to cash a money-order for a hundred francs that his sister Henriette had sent him. While in a cafe he heard a sergeant telling of the disaffection that existed in the eighteen battalions of the garde mobile of the Seine, which had just been sent back to Paris; the 6th battalion had been near killing their officers. Not a day passed at the camp that the generals were not insulted, and since Froeschwiller the soldiers had ceased to give Marshal MacMahon the military salute. The cafe resounded with the sound of voices in excited conversation; a violent dispute arose between two sedate burghers in respect to the number of men that MacMahon would have at his disposal. One of them made the wild assertion that there would be three hundred thousand; the other, who seemed to be more at home upon the subject, stated the strength of the four corps: the 12th, which had just been made complete at the camp with great difficulty with the assistance of provisional regiments and a division of infanterie de marine; the 1st, which had been coming straggling in in fragments ever since the 14th of the month and of which they were doing what they could to perfect the organization; the 5th, defeated before it had ever fought a battle, swept away and broken up in the general panic, and finally, the 7th, then landing from the cars, demoralized like all the rest and minus its 1st division, of which it had just recovered the remains at Rheims; in all, one hundred and twenty thousand at the outside, including the cavalry, Bonnemain’s and Margueritte’s divisions. When the sergeant took a hand in the quarrel, however, speaking of the army in terms of the utmost contempt, characterizing it as a ruffianly rabble, with no
esprit de corps
, with nothing to keep it together, — a pack of greenhorns with idiots to conduct them, to the slaughter, — the two bourgeois began to be uneasy, and fearing there might be trouble brewing, made themselves scarce.

When outside upon the street Maurice hailed a newsboy and purchased a copy of every paper he could lay hands on, stuffing some in his pockets and reading others as he walked along under the stately trees that line the pleasant avenues of the old city. Where could the German armies be? It seemed as if obscurity had suddenly swallowed them up. Two were over Metz way, of course: the first, the one commanded by General von Steinmetz, observing the place; the second, that of Prince Frederick Charles, aiming to ascend the right bank of the Moselle in order to cut Bazaine off from Paris. But the third army, that of the Crown Prince of Prussia, the army that had been victorious at Wissembourg and Froeschwiller and had driven our 1st and 5th corps, where was it now, where was it to be located amid the tangled mess of contradictory advices? Was it still in camp at Nancy, or was it true that it had arrived before Chalons, and was that the reason why we had abandoned our camp there in such hot haste, burning our stores, clothing, forage, provisions, everything — property of which the value to the nation was beyond compute? And when the different plans with which our generals were credited came to be taken into consideration, then there was more confusion, a fresh set of contradictory hypotheses to be encountered. Maurice had until now been cut off in a measure from the outside world, and now for the first time learned what had been the course of events in Paris; the blasting effect of defeat upon a populace that had been confident of victory, the terrible commotions in the streets, the convoking of the Chambers, the fall of the liberal ministry that had effected the plebiscite, the abrogation of the Emperor’s rank as General of the Army and the transfer of the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine. The Emperor had been present at the camp of Chalons since the 16th, and all the newspapers were filled with a grand council that had been held on the 17th, at which Prince Napoleon and some of the generals were present, but none of them were agreed upon the decisions that had been arrived at outside of the resultant facts, which were that General Trochu had been appointed governor of Paris and Marshal MacMahon given the command of the army of Chalons, and the inference from this was that the Emperor was to be shorn of all his authority. Consternation, irresolution, conflicting plans that were laid aside and replaced by fresh ones hour by hour; these were the things that everybody felt were in the air. And ever and always the question: Where were the German armies? Who were in the right, those who asserted that Bazaine had no force worth mentioning in front of him and was free to make his retreat through the towns of the north whenever he chose to do so, or those who declared that he was already besieged in Metz? There was a constantly recurring rumor of a series of engagements that had raged during an entire week, from the 14th until the 20th, but it failed to receive confirmation.

Maurice’s legs ached with fatigue; he went and sat down upon a bench. Around him the life of the city seemed to be going on as usual; there were nursemaids seated in the shade of the handsome trees watching the sports of their little charges, small property owners strolled leisurely about the walks enjoying their daily constitutional. He had taken up his papers again, when his eyes lighted on an article that had escaped his notice, the “leader” in a rabid republican sheet; then everything was made clear to him. The paper stated that at the council of the 17th at the camp of Chalons the retreat of the army on Paris had been fully decided on, and that General Trochu’s appointment to the command of the city had no other object than to facilitate the Emperor’s return; but those resolutions, the journal went on to say, were rendered unavailing by the attitude of the Empress-regent and the new ministry. It was the Empress’s opinion that the Emperor’s return would certainly produce a revolution; she was reported to have said: “He will never reach the Tuileries alive.” Starting with these premises she insisted with the utmost urgency that the army should advance, at every risk, whatever might be the cost of human life, and effect a junction with the army of Metz, in which course she was supported moreover by General de Palikao, the Minister of War, who had a plan of his own for reaching Bazaine by a rapid and victorious march. And Maurice, letting his paper fall from his hand, his eyes bent on space, believed that he now had the key to the entire mystery; the two conflicting plans, MacMahon’s hesitation to undertake that dangerous flank movement with the unreliable army at his command, the impatient orders that came to him from Paris, each more tart and imperative than its predecessor, urging him on to that mad, desperate enterprise. Then, as the central figure in that tragic conflict, the vision of the Emperor suddenly rose distinctly before his inner eyes, deprived of his imperial authority, which he had committed to the hands of the Empress-regent, stripped of his military command, which he had conferred on Marshal Bazaine; a nullity, the vague and unsubstantial shadow of an emperor, a nameless, cumbersome nonentity whom no one knew what to do with, whom Paris rejected and who had ceased to have a position in the army, for he had pledged himself to issue no further orders.

The next morning, however, after a rainy night through which he slept outside his tent on the bare ground, wrapped in his rubber blanket, Maurice was cheered by the tidings that the retreat on Paris had finally carried the day. Another council had been held during the night, it was said, at which M. Rouher, the former vice-Emperor, had been present; he had been sent by the Empress to accelerate the movement toward Verdun, and it would seem that the marshal had succeeded in convincing him of the rashness of such an undertaking. Were there unfavorable tidings from Bazaine? no one could say for certain. But the absence of news was itself a circumstance of evil omen, and all among the most influential of the generals had cast their vote for the march on Paris, for which they would be the relieving army. And Maurice, happy in the conviction that the retrograde movement would commence not later than the morrow, since the orders for it were said to be already issued, thought he would gratify a boyish longing that had been troubling him for some time past, to give the go-by for one day to soldier’s fare, to wit and eat his breakfast off a cloth, with the accompaniment of plate, knife and fork, carafe, and a bottle of good wine, things of which it seemed to him that he had been deprived for months and months. He had money in his pocket, so off he started with quickened pulse, as if going out for a lark, to search for a place of entertainment.