Complete Works of Emile Zola (1184 page)

The laughter ceased; an old sergeant extricated her from the crowd that had collected around her, and forced her to retrace her steps.

“My poor child, you see it is impossible to get through. Bazeilles is no place for you. You will find your husband by and by. Come, listen to reason!”

She had to obey, and stood aside beneath the trees, raising herself on her toes at every moment to peer before her, firm in her resolve to continue her journey as soon as she should be allowed to pass. She learned the condition of affairs from the conversation that went on around her. Some officers were criticising with great acerbity the order for the abandonment of Bazeilles, which had occurred at a quarter-past eight, at the time when General Ducrot, taking over the command from the marshal, had considered it best to concentrate the troops on the plateau of Illy. What made matters worse was, that the valley of the Givonne having fallen into the hands of the Germans through the premature retirement of the 1st corps, the 12th corps, which was even then sustaining a vigorous attack in front, was overlapped on its left flank. Now that General de Wimpffen had relieved General Ducrot, it seemed that the original plan was to be carried out. Orders had been received to retake Bazeilles at every cost, and drive the Bavarians into the Meuse. And so, in the ranks of that regiment that had been halted there in full retreat at the entrance of the village and ordered to resume the offensive, there was much bitter feeling, and angry words were rife. Was ever such stupidity heard of? to make them abandon a position, and immediately tell them to turn round and retake it from the enemy! They were willing enough to risk their life in the cause, but no one cared to throw it away for nothing!

A body of mounted men dashed up the street and General de Wimpffen appeared among them, and raising himself erect on his stirrups, with flashing eyes, he shouted, in ringing tones:

“Friends, we cannot retreat; it would be ruin to us all. And if we do have to retreat, it shall be on Carignan, and not on Mezieres. But we shall be victorious! You beat the enemy this morning; you will beat them again!”

He galloped off on a road that conducted to la Moncelle. It was said that there had been a violent altercation between him and General Ducrot, each upholding his own plan, and decrying the plan of the other — one asserting that retreat by way of Mezieres had been impracticable all that morning; the other predicting that, unless they fell back on Illy, the army would be surrounded before night. And there was a great deal of bitter recrimination, each taxing the other with ignorance of the country and of the situation of the troops. The pity of it was that both were right.

But Henriette, meantime, had made an encounter that caused her to forget her project for a moment. In some poor outcasts; stranded by the wayside, she had recognized a family of honest weavers from Bazeilles, father, mother, and three little girls, of whom the largest was only nine years old. They were utterly disheartened and forlorn, and so weary and footsore that they could go no further, and had thrown themselves down at the foot of a wall.

“Alas! dear lady,” the wife and mother said to Henriette, “we have lost our all. Our house — you know where our house stood on the Place de l’Eglise — well, a shell came and burned it. Why we and the children did not stay and share its fate I do not know—”

At these words the three little ones began to cry and sob afresh, while the mother, in distracted language, gave further details of the catastrophe.

“The loom, I saw it burn like seasoned kindling wood, and the bed, the chairs and tables, they blazed like so much straw. And even the clock — yes, the poor old clock that I tried to save and could not.”

“My God! my God!” the man exclaimed, his eyes swimming with tears, “what is to become of us?”

Henriette endeavored to comfort them, but it was in a voice that quavered strangely.

“You have been preserved to each other, you are safe and unharmed; your three little girls are left you. What reason have you to complain?”

Then she proceeded to question them to learn how matters stood in Bazeilles, whether they had seen her husband, in what state they had left her house, but in their half-dazed condition they gave conflicting answers. No, they had not seen M. Weiss. One of the little girls, however, declared that she had seen him, and that he was lying on the ground with a great hole in his head, whereon the father gave her a box on the ear, bidding her hold her tongue and not tell such lies to the lady. As for the house, they could say with certainty that it was intact at the time of their flight; they even remembered to have observed, as they passed it, that the doors and windows were tightly secured, as if it was quite deserted. At that time, moreover, the only foothold that the Bavarians had secured for themselves was in the Place de l’Eglise, and to carry the village they would have to fight for it, street by street, house by house. They must have been gaining ground since then, though; all Bazeilles was in flames by that time, like enough, and not a wall left standing, thanks to the fierceness of the assailants and the resolution of the defenders. And so the poor creatures went on, with trembling, affrighted gestures, evoking the horrid sights their eyes had seen and telling their dreadful tale of slaughter and conflagration and corpses lying in heaps upon the ground.

“But my husband?” Henriette asked again.

They made no answer, only continued to cover their face with their hands and sob. Her cruel anxiety, as she stood there erect, with no outward sign of weakness, was only evinced by a slight quivering of the lips. What was she to believe? Vainly she told herself the child was mistaken; her mental vision pictured her husband lying there dead before her in the street with a bullet wound in the head. Again, that house, so securely locked and bolted, was another source of alarm; why was it so? was he no longer in it? The conviction that he was dead sent an icy chill to her heart; but perhaps he was only wounded, perhaps he was breathing still; and so sudden and imperious was the need she felt of flying to his side that she would again have attempted to force her passage through the troops had not the bugles just then sounded the order for them to advance.

The regiment was largely composed of raw, half-drilled recruits from Toulon, Brest, and Rochefort, men who had never fired a shot, but all that morning they had fought with a bravery and firmness that would not have disgraced veteran troops. They had not shown much aptitude for marching on the road from Rheims to Mouzon, weighted as they were with their unaccustomed burdens, but when they came to face the enemy their discipline and sense of duty made themselves felt, and notwithstanding the righteous anger that was in their hearts, the bugle had but to sound and they returned to brave the fire and encounter the foe. Three several times they had been promised a division to support them; it never came. They felt that they were deserted, sacrificed; it was the offering of their life that was demanded of them by those who, having first made them evacuate the place, were now sending them back into the fiery furnace of Bazeilles. And they knew it, and they gave their life, freely, without a murmur, closing up their ranks and leaving the shelter of the trees to meet afresh the storm of shell and bullets.

Henriette gave a deep sigh of relief; at last they were about to move! She followed them, with the hope that she might enter the village unperceived in their rear, prepared to run with them should they take the double-quick. But they had scarcely begun to move when they came to a halt again. The projectiles were now falling thick and fast; to regain possession of Bazeilles it would be necessary to dispute every inch of the road, occupying the cross-streets, the houses and gardens on either side of the way. A brisk fire of musketry proceeded from the head of the column, the advance was irregular, by fits and starts, every petty obstacle entailed a delay of many minutes. She felt that she would never attain her end by remaining there at the rear of the column, waiting for it to fight its way through, and with prompt decision she bent her course to the right and took a path that led downward between two hedges to the meadows.

Henriette’s plan now was to reach Bazeilles by those broad levels that border the Meuse. She was not very clear about it in her mind, however, and continued to hasten onward in obedience to that blind instinct which had originally imparted to her its impulse. She had not gone far before she found herself standing and gazing in dismay at a miniature ocean which barred her further progress in that direction. It was the inundated fields, the low-lying lands that a measure of defense had converted into a lake, which had escaped her memory. For a single moment she thought of turning back; then, at the risk of leaving her shoes behind, she pushed on, hugging the bank, through the water that covered the grass and rose above her ankles. For a hundred yards her way, though difficult, was not impracticable; then she encountered a garden-wall directly in her front; the ground fell off sharply, and where the wall terminated the water was six feet deep. Her path was closed effectually; she clenched her little fists and had to summon up all her resolution to keep from bursting into tears. When the first shock of disappointment had passed over she made her way along the enclosure and found a narrow lane that pursued a tortuous course among the scattered houses. She believed that now her troubles were at an end, for she was acquainted with that labyrinth, that tangled maze of passages, which, to one who had the key to them, ended at the village.

But the missiles seemed to be falling there even more thickly than elsewhere. Henriette stopped short in her tracks and all the blood in her body seemed to flow back upon her heart at a frightful detonation, so close that she could feel the wind upon her cheek. A shell had exploded directly before her and only a few yards away. She turned her head and scrutinized for a moment the heights of the left bank, above which the smoke from the German batteries was curling upward; she saw what she must do, and when she started on her way again it was with eyes fixed on the horizon, watching for the shells in order to avoid them. There was method in the rash daring of her proceeding, and all the brave tranquillity that the prudent little housewife had at her command. She was not going to be killed if she could help it; she wished to find her husband and bring him back with her, that they might yet have many days of happy life together. The projectiles still came tumbling frequently as ever; she sped along behind walls, made a cover of boundary stones, availed herself of every slight depression. But presently she came to an open space, a bit of unprotected road where splinters and fragments of exploded shells lay thick, and she was watching behind a shed for a chance to make a dash when she perceived, emerging from a sort of cleft in the ground in front of her, a human head and two bright eyes that peered about inquisitively. It was a little, bare-footed, ten-year-old boy, dressed in a shirt and ragged trousers, an embryonic tramp, who was watching the battle with huge delight. At every report his small black beady eyes would snap and sparkle, and he jubilantly shouted:

“Oh my! aint it bully! — Look out, there comes another one! don’t stir! Boom! that was a rouser! — Don’t stir! don’t stir!”

And each time there came a shell he dived to the bottom of his hole, then reappeared, showing his dirty, elfish face, until it was time to duck again.

Henriette now noticed that the projectiles all came from Liry, while the batteries at Pont-Maugis and Noyers were confining their attention to Balan. At each discharge she could see the smoke distinctly, immediately afterward she heard the scream of the shell, succeeded by the explosion. Just then the gunners afforded them a brief respite; the bluish haze above the heights drifted slowly away upon the wind.

“They’ve stopped to take a drink, you can go your money on it,” said the urchin. “Quick, quick, give me your hand! Now’s the time to skip!”

He took her by the hand and dragged her along with him, and in this way they crossed the open together, side by side, running for dear life, with head and shoulders down. When they were safely ensconced behind a stack that opportunely offered its protection at the end of their course and turned to look behind them, they beheld another shell come rushing through the air and alight upon the shed at the very spot they had occupied so lately. The crash was fearful; the shed was knocked to splinters. The little ragamuffin considered that a capital joke, and fairly danced with glee.

“Bravo, hit ‘em agin! that’s the way to do it! — But it was time for us to skip, though, wasn’t it?”

But again Henriette struck up against insurmountable obstacles in the shape of hedges and garden-walls, that offered absolutely no outlet. Her irrepressible companion, still wearing his broad grin and remarking that where there was a will there was a way, climbed to the coping of a wall and assisted her to scale it. On reaching the further side they found themselves in a kitchen garden among beds of peas and string-beans and surrounded by fences on every side; their sole exit was through the little cottage of the gardener. The boy led the way, swinging his arms and whistling unconcernedly, with an expression on his face of most profound indifference. He pushed open a door that admitted him to a bedroom, from which he passed on into another room, where there was an old woman, apparently the only living being upon the premises. She was standing by a table, in a sort of dazed stupor; she looked at the two strangers who thus unceremoniously made a highway of her dwelling, but addressed them no word, nor did they speak a word to her. They vanished as quickly as they had appeared, emerging by the exit opposite their entrance upon an alley that they followed for a moment. After that there were other difficulties to be surmounted, and thus they went on for more than half a mile, scaling walls, struggling through hedges, availing themselves of every short cut that offered, it might be the door of a stable or the window of a cottage, as the exigencies of the case demanded. Dogs howled mournfully; they had a narrow escape from being run down by a cow that was plunging along, wild with terror. It seemed as if they must be approaching the village, however; there was an odor of burning wood in the air, and momentarily volumes of reddish smoke, like veils of finest gauze floating in the wind, passed athwart the sun and obscured his light.