Complete Works of Emile Zola (1175 page)

At the end of the street, some three hundred yards from where they stood, a strong Bavarian column had debouched from the Douzy road and was charging up the Place de l’Eglise. The square was held by a regiment of sailor-boys, who appeared to slacken their fire for a moment as if with the intention of drawing their assailants on; then, when the close-massed column was directly opposite their front, a most surprising maneuver was swiftly executed: the men abandoned their formation, some of them stepping from the ranks and flattening themselves against the house fronts, others casting themselves prone upon the ground, and down the vacant space thus suddenly formed the mitrailleuses that had been placed in battery at the farther end poured a perfect hailstorm of bullets. The column disappeared as if it had been swept bodily from off the face of the earth. The recumbent men sprang to their feet with a bound and charged the scattered Bavarians with the bayonet, driving them and making the rout complete. Twice the maneuver was repeated, each time with the same success. Two women, unwilling to abandon their home, a small house at the corner of an intersecting lane, were sitting at their window; they laughed approvingly and clapped their hands, apparently glad to have an opportunity to behold such a spectacle.

“There, confound it!” Weiss suddenly said, “I forgot to lock the cellar door! I must go back. Wait for me; I won’t be a minute.”

There was no indication that the enemy contemplated a renewal of their attack, and Delaherche, whose curiosity was reviving after the shock it had sustained, was less eager to get away. He had halted in front of his dyehouse and was conversing with the concierge, who had come for a moment to the door of the room she occupied in the
rez-de-chaussee
.

“My poor Francoise, you had better come along with us. A lone woman among such dreadful sights — I can’t bear to think of it!”

She raised her trembling hands. “Ah, sir, I would have gone when the others went, indeed I would, if it had not been for my poor sick boy. Come in, sir, and look at him.”

He did not enter, but glanced into the apartment from the threshold, and shook his head sorrowfully at sight of the little fellow in his clean, white bed, his face exhibiting the scarlet hue of the disease, and his glassy, burning eyes bent wistfully on his mother.

“But why can’t you take him with you?” he urged. “I will find quarters for you in Sedan. Wrap him up warmly in a blanket, and come along with us.”

“Oh, no, sir, I cannot. The doctor told me it would kill him. If only his poor father were alive! but we two are all that are left, and we must live for each other. And then, perhaps the Prussians will be merciful; perhaps they won’t harm a lone woman and a sick boy.”

Just then Weiss reappeared, having secured his premises to his satisfaction. “There, I think it will trouble them some to get in now. Come on! And it is not going to be a very pleasant journey, either; keep close to the houses, unless you want to come to grief.”

There were indications, indeed, that the enemy were making ready for another assault. The infantry fire was spluttering away more furiously than ever, and the screaming of the shells was incessant. Two had already fallen in the street a hundred yards away, and a third had imbedded itself, without bursting, in the soft ground of the adjacent garden.

“Ah, here is Francoise,” continued the accountant. “I must have a look at your little Charles. Come, come, you have no cause for alarm; he will be all right in a couple of days. Keep your courage up, and the first thing you do go inside, and don’t put your nose outside the door.” And the two men at last started to go.

“
Au revoir
, Francoise.”

“
Au revoir
, sirs.”

And as they spoke, there came an appalling crash. It was a shell, which, having first wrecked the chimney of Weiss’s house, fell upon the sidewalk, where it exploded with such terrific force as to break every window in the vicinity. At first it was impossible to distinguish anything in the dense cloud of dust and smoke that rose in the air, but presently this drifted away, disclosing the ruined facade of the dyehouse, and there, stretched across the threshold, Francoise, a corpse, horribly torn and mangled, her skull crushed in, a fearful spectacle.

Weiss sprang to her side. Language failed him; he could only express his feelings by oaths and imprecations.

“
Nom de Dieu!
Nom de Dieu!
”

Yes, she was dead. He had stooped to feel her pulse, and as he arose he saw before him the scarlet face of little Charles, who had raised himself in bed to look at his mother. He spoke no word, he uttered no cry; he gazed with blazing, tearless eyes, distended as if they would start from their sockets, upon the shapeless mass that was strange, unknown to him; and nothing more.

Weiss found words at last: “
Nom de Dieu!
they have taken to killing women!”

He had risen to his feet; he shook his fist at the Bavarians, whose braid-trimmed helmets were commencing to appear again in the direction of the church. The chimney, in falling, had crushed a great hole in the roof of his house, and the sight of the havoc made him furious.

“Dirty loafers! You murder women, you have destroyed my house. No, no! I will not go now, I cannot; I shall stay here.”

He darted away and came running back with the dead soldier’s rifle and ammunition. He was accustomed to carry a pair of spectacles on his person for use on occasions of emergency, when he wished to see with great distinctness, but did not wear them habitually out of respect for the wishes of his young wife. He now impatiently tore off his double eyeglass and substituted the spectacles, and the big, burly bourgeois, his overcoat flapping about his legs, his honest, kindly, round face ablaze with wrath, who would have been ridiculous had he not been so superbly heroic, proceeded to open fire, peppering away at the Bavarians at the bottom of the street. It was in his blood, he said; he had been hankering for something of the kind ever since the days of his boyhood, down there in Alsace, when he had been told all those tales of 1814. “Ah! you dirty loafers! you dirty loafers!” And he kept firing away with such eagerness that, finally, the barrel of his musket became so hot it burned his fingers.

The assault was made with great vigor and determination. There was no longer any sound of musketry in the direction of the meadows. The Bavarians had gained possession of a narrow stream, fringed with willows and poplars, and were making preparations for storming the houses, or rather fortresses, in the Place de l’Eglise. Their skirmishers had fallen back with the same caution that characterized their advance, and the wide grassy plain, dotted here and there with a black form where some poor fellow had laid down his life, lay spread in the mellow, slumbrous sunshine like a great cloth of gold. The lieutenant, knowing that the street was now to be the scene of action, had evacuated the courtyard of the dyehouse, leaving there only one man as guard. He rapidly posted his men along the sidewalk with instructions, should the enemy carry the position, to withdraw into the building, barricade the first floor, and defend themselves there as long as they had a cartridge left. The men fired at will, lying prone upon the ground, and sheltering themselves as best they might behind posts and every little projection of the walls, and the storm of lead, interspersed with tongues of flame and puffs of smoke, that tore through that broad, deserted, sunny avenue was like a downpour of hail beaten level by the fierce blast of winter. A woman was seen to cross the roadway, running with wild, uncertain steps, and she escaped uninjured. Next, an old man, a peasant, in his blouse, who would not be satisfied until he saw his worthless nag stabled, received a bullet square in his forehead, and the violence of the impact was such that it hurled him into the middle of the street. A shell had gone crashing through the roof of the church; two others fell and set fire to houses, which burned with a pale flame in the intense daylight, with a loud snapping and crackling of their timbers. And that poor woman, who lay crushed and bleeding in the doorway of the house where her sick boy was, that old man with a bullet in his brain, all that work of ruin and devastation, maddened the few inhabitants who had chosen to end their days in their native village rather than seek safety in Belgium. Other bourgeois, and workingmen as well, the neatly attired citizen alongside the man in overalls, had possessed themselves of the weapons of dead soldiers, and were in the street defending their firesides or firing vengefully from the windows.

“Ah!” suddenly said Weiss, “the scoundrels have got around to our rear. I saw them sneaking along the railroad track. Hark! don’t you hear them off there to the left?”

The heavy fire of musketry that was now audible behind the park of Montivilliers, the trees of which overhung the road, made it evident that something of importance was occurring in that direction. Should the enemy gain possession of the park Bazeilles would be at their mercy, but the briskness of the firing was in itself proof that the general commanding the 12th corps had anticipated the movement and that the position was adequately defended.

“Look out, there, you blockhead!” exclaimed the lieutenant, violently forcing Weiss up against the wall; “do you want to get yourself blown to pieces?”

He could not help laughing a little at the queer figure of the big gentleman in spectacles, but his bravery had inspired him with a very genuine feeling of respect, so, when his practiced ear detected a shell coming their way, he had acted the part of a friend and placed the civilian in a safer position. The missile landed some ten paces from where they were and exploded, covering them both with earth and debris. The citizen kept his feet and received not so much as a scratch, while the officer had both legs broken.

“It is well!” was all he said; “they have sent me my reckoning!”

He caused his men to take him across the sidewalk and place him with his back to the wall, near where the dead woman lay, stretched across her doorstep. His boyish face had lost nothing of its energy and determination.

“It don’t matter, my children; listen to what I say. Don’t fire too hurriedly; take your time. When the time comes for you to charge, I will tell you.”

And he continued to command them still, with head erect, watchful of the movements of the distant enemy. Another house was burning, directly across the street. The crash and rattle of musketry, the roar of bursting shells, rent the air, thick with dust and sulphurous smoke. Men dropped at the corner of every lane and alley; corpses scattered here and there upon the pavement, singly or in little groups, made splotches of dark color, hideously splashed with red. And over the doomed village a frightful uproar rose and swelled, the vindictive shouts of thousands, devoting to destruction a few hundred brave men, resolute to die.

Then Delaherche, who all this time had been frantically shouting to Weiss without intermission, addressed him one last appeal:

“You won’t come? Very well! then I shall leave you to your fate. Adieu!”

It was seven o’clock, and he had delayed his departure too long. So long as the houses were there to afford him shelter he took advantage of every doorway, of every bit of projecting wall, shrinking at every volley into cavities that were ridiculously small in comparison with his bulk. He turned and twisted in and out with the sinuous dexterity of the serpent; he would never have supposed that there was so much of his youthful agility left in him. When he reached the end of the village, however, and had to make his way for a space of some three hundred yards along the deserted, empty road, swept by the batteries on Liry hill, although the perspiration was streaming from his face and body, he shivered and his teeth chattered. For a minute or so he advanced cautiously along the bed of a dry ditch, bent almost double, then, suddenly forsaking the protecting shelter, burst into the open and ran for it with might and main, wildly, aimlessly, his ears ringing with detonations that sounded to him like thunder-claps. His eyes burned like coals of fire; it seemed to him that he was wrapt in flame. It was an eternity of torture. Then he suddenly caught sight of a little house to his left, and he rushed for the friendly refuge, gained it, with a sensation as if an immense load had been lifted from his breast. The place was tenanted, there were men and horses there. At first he could distinguish nothing. What he beheld subsequently filled him with amazement.

Was not that the Emperor, attended by his brilliant staff? He hesitated, although for the last two days he had been boasting of his acquaintance with him, then stood staring, open-mouthed. It was indeed Napoleon III.; he appeared larger, somehow, and more imposing on horseback, and his mustache was so stiffly waxed, there was such a brilliant color on his cheeks, that Delaherche saw at once he had been “made up” and painted like an actor. He had had recourse to cosmetics to conceal from his army the ravages that anxiety and illness had wrought in his countenance, the ghastly pallor of his face, his pinched nose, his dull, sunken eyes, and having been notified at five o’clock that there was fighting at Bazeilles, had come forth to see, sadly and silently, like a phantom with rouged cheeks.

There was a brick-kiln near by, behind which there was safety from the rain of bullets that kept pattering incessantly on its other front and the shells that burst at every second on the road. The mounted group had halted.

“Sire,” someone murmured, “you are in danger—”

But the Emperor turned and motioned to his staff to take refuge in the narrow road that skirted the kiln, where men and horses would be sheltered from the fire.

“Really, Sire, this is madness. Sire, we entreat you—”

His only answer was to repeat his gesture; probably he thought that the appearance of a group of brilliant uniforms on that deserted road would draw the fire of the batteries on the left bank. Entirely unattended he rode forward into the midst of the storm of shot and shell, calmly, unhurriedly, with his unvarying air of resigned indifference, the air of one who goes to meet his appointed fate. Could it be that he heard behind him the implacable voice that was urging him onward, that voice from Paris: “March! march! die the hero’s death on the piled corpses of thy countrymen, let the whole world look on in awe-struck admiration, so that thy son may reign!” — could that be what he heard? He rode forward, controlling his charger to a slow walk. For the space of a hundred yards he thus rode forward, then halted, awaiting the death he had come there to seek. The bullets sang in concert with a music like the fierce autumnal blast; a shell burst in front of him and covered him with earth. He maintained his attitude of patient waiting. His steed, with distended eyes and quivering frame, instinctively recoiled before the grim presence who was so close at hand and yet refused to smite horse or rider. At last the trying experience came to an end, and the Emperor, with his stoic fatalism, understanding that his time was not yet come, tranquilly retraced his steps, as if his only object had been to reconnoiter the position of the German batteries.