Complete Works of Emile Zola (1199 page)

In the Place Turenne and Place du Rivage, Delaherche succeeded with the greatest difficulty in working his way through the press. As he passed the Hotel of the Golden Cross a sorrowful vision greeted his eyes, that of the generals seated in the dining room, gloomily silent, around the empty board; there was nothing left to eat in the house, not even bread. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, however, who had been storming and vociferating in the kitchen, appeared to have found something, for he suddenly held his peace and ran away swiftly up the stairs, holding in his hands a large paper parcel of a greasy aspect. Such was the crowd assembled there, to stare through the lighted windows upon the guests assembled around that famine-stricken
table d’hote
, that the manufacturer was obliged to make vigorous play with his elbows, and was frequently driven back by some wild rush of the mob and lost all the distance, and more, that he had just gained. In the Grande Rue, however, the obstacles became actually impassable, and there was a moment when he was inclined to give up in despair; a complete battery seemed to have been driven in there and the guns and
materiel
piled, pell-mell, on top of one another. Deciding finally to take the bull by the horns, he leaped to the axle of a piece and so pursued his way, jumping from wheel to wheel, straddling the guns, at the imminent risk of breaking his legs, if not his neck. Afterward it was some horses that blocked his way, and he made himself lowly and stooped, creeping among the feet and underneath the bellies of the sorry jades, who were ready to die of inanition, like their masters. Then, when after a quarter of an hour’s laborious effort he reached the junction of the Rue Saint-Michel, he was terrified at the prospect of the dangers and obstacles that he had still to face, and which, instead of diminishing, seemed to be increasing, and made up his mind to turn down the street above mentioned, which would take him into the Rue des Laboureurs; he hoped that by taking these usually quiet and deserted passages he should escape the crowd and reach his home in safety. As luck would have it he almost directly came upon a house of ill-fame to which a band of drunken soldiers were in process of laying siege, and considering that a stray shot, should one reach him in the fracas, would be equally as unpleasant as one intended for him, he made haste to retrace his steps. Resolving to have done with it he pushed on to the end of the Grande Rue, now gaining a few feet by balancing himself, rope-walker fashion, along the pole of some vehicle, now climbing over an army wagon that barred his way. At the Place du College he was carried along — bodily on the shoulders of the throng for a space of thirty paces; he fell to the ground, narrowly escaped a set of fractured ribs, and saved himself only by the proximity of a friendly iron railing, by the bars of which he pulled himself to his feet. And when at last he reached the Rue Maqua, inundated with perspiration, his clothing almost torn from his back, he found that he had been more than an hour in coming from the Sous-Prefecture, a distance which in ordinary times he was accustomed to accomplish in less than five minutes.

Major Bouroche, with the intention of keeping the ambulance and garden from being overrun with intruders, had caused two sentries to be mounted at the door. This measure was a source of great comfort to Delaherche, who had begun to contemplate the possibilities of his house being subjected to pillage. The sight of the ambulance in the garden, dimly lighted by a few candles and exhaling its fetid, feverish emanations, caused him a fresh constriction of the heart; then, stumbling over the body of a soldier who was stretched in slumber on the stone pavement of the walk, he supposed him to be one of the fugitives who had managed to find his way in there from outside, until, calling to mind the 7th corps treasure that had been deposited there and the sentry who had been set over it, he saw how matters stood: the poor fellow, stationed there since early morning, had been overlooked by his superiors and had succumbed to his fatigue. Besides, the house seemed quite deserted; the ground floor was black as Egypt, and the doors stood wide open. The servants were doubtless all at the ambulance, for there was no one in the kitchen, which was faintly illuminated by the light of a wretched little smoky lamp. He lit a candle and ascended the main staircase very softly, in order not to awaken his wife and mother, whom he had begged to go to bed early after a day where the stress, both mental and physical, had been so intense.

On entering his study, however, he beheld a sight that caused his eyes to dilate with astonishment. Upon the sofa on which Captain Beaudoin had snatched a few hours’ repose the day before a soldier lay outstretched; and he could not understand the reason of it until he had looked and recognized young Maurice Levasseur, Henriette’s brother. He was still more surprised when, on turning his head, he perceived, stretched on the floor and wrapped in a bed quilt, another soldier, that Jean, whom he had seen for a moment just before the battle. It was plain that the poor fellows, in their distress and fatigue after the conflict, not knowing where else to bestow themselves, had sought refuge there; they were crushed, annihilated, like dead men. He did not linger there, but pushed on to his wife’s chamber, which was the next room on the corridor. A lamp was burning on a table in a corner; the profound silence seemed to shudder. Gilberte had thrown herself crosswise on the bed, fully dressed, doubtless in order to be prepared for any catastrophe, and was sleeping peacefully, while, seated on a chair at her side with her head declined and resting lightly on the very edge of the mattress, Henriette was also slumbering, with a fitful, agitated sleep, while big tears welled up beneath her swollen eyelids. He contemplated them silently for a moment, strongly tempted to awake and question the young woman in order to ascertain what she knew. Had she succeeded in reaching Bazeilles? and why was it that she was back there? Perhaps she would be able to give him some tidings of his dyehouse were he to ask her? A feeling of compassion stayed him, however, and he was about to leave the room when his mother, ghost-like, appeared at the threshold of the open door and beckoned him to follow her.

As they were passing through the dining room he expressed his surprise.

“What, have you not been abed to-night?”

She shook her head, then said below her breath:

“I cannot sleep; I have been sitting in an easy-chair beside the colonel. He is very feverish; he awakes at every instant, almost, and then plies me with questions. I don’t know how to answer them. Come in and see him, you.”

M. de Vineuil had fallen asleep again. His long face, now brightly red, barred by the sweeping mustache that fell across it like a snowy avalanche, was scarce distinguishable on the pillow. Mme. Delaherche had placed a newspaper before the lamp and that corner of the room was lost in semi-darkness, while all the intensity of the bright lamplight was concentrated on her where she sat, uncompromisingly erect, in her fauteuil, her hands crossed before her in her lap, her vague eyes bent on space, in sorrowful reverie.

“I think he must have heard you,” she murmured; “he is awaking again.”

It was so; the colonel, without moving his head, had reopened his eyes and bent them on Delaherche. He recognized him, and immediately asked in a voice that his exhausted condition made tremulous:

“It is all over, is it not? We have capitulated.”

The manufacturer, who encountered the look his mother cast on him at that moment, was on the point of equivocating. But what good would it do? A look of discouragement passed across his face.

“What else remained to do? A single glance at the streets of the city would convince you. General de Wimpffen has just set out for Prussian general headquarters to discuss conditions.”

M. de Vineuil’s eyes closed again, his long frame was shaken with a protracted shiver of supremely bitter grief, and this deep, long-drawn moan escaped his lips:

“Ah! merciful God, merciful God!” And without opening his eyes he went on in faltering, broken accents: “Ah! the plan I spoke of yesterday — they should have adopted it. Yes, I knew the country; I spoke of my apprehensions to the general, but even him they would not listen to. Occupy all the heights up there to the north, from Saint-Menges to Fleigneux, with your army looking down on and commanding Sedan, able at any time to move on Vrigne-aux-Bois, mistress of Saint-Albert’s pass — and there we are; our positions are impregnable, the Mezieres road is under our control—”

His speech became more confused as he proceeded; he stammered a few more unintelligible words, while the vision of the battle that had been born of his fever little by little grew blurred and dim and at last was effaced by slumber. He slept, and in his sleep perhaps the honest officer’s dreams were dreams of victory.

“Does the major speak favorably of his case?” Delaherche inquired in a whisper.

Madame Delaherche nodded affirmatively.

“Those wounds in the foot are dreadful things, though,” he went on. “I suppose he is likely to be laid up for a long time, isn’t he?”

She made him no answer this time, as if all her being, all her faculties were concentrated on contemplating the great calamity of their defeat. She was of another age; she was a survivor of that strong old race of frontier burghers who defended their towns so valiantly in the good days gone by. The clean-cut lines of her stern, set face, with its fleshless, uncompromising nose and thin lips, which the brilliant light of the lamp brought out in high relief against the darkness of the room, told the full extent of her stifled rage and grief and the wound sustained by her antique patriotism, the revolt of which refused even to let her sleep.

About that time Delaherche became conscious of a sensation of isolation, accompanied by a most uncomfortable feeling of physical distress. His hunger was asserting itself again, a griping, intolerable hunger, and he persuaded himself that it was debility alone that was thus robbing him of courage and resolution. He tiptoed softly from the room and, with his candle, again made his way down to the kitchen, but the spectacle he witnessed there was even still more cheerless; the range cold and fireless, the closets empty, the floor strewn with a disorderly litter of towels, napkins, dish-clouts and women’s aprons; as if the hurricane of disaster had swept through that place as well, bearing away on its wings all the charm and cheer that appertain naturally to the things we eat and drink. At first he thought he was not going to discover so much as a crust, what was left over of the bread having all found its way to the ambulance in the form of soup. At last, however, in the dark corner of a cupboard he came across the remainder of the beans from yesterday’s dinner, where they had been forgotten, and ate them. He accomplished his luxurious repast without the formality of sitting down, without the accompaniment of salt and butter, for which he did not care to trouble himself to ascend to the floor above, desirous only to get away as speedily as possible from that dismal kitchen, where the blinking, smoking little lamp perfumed the air with fumes of petroleum.

It was not much more than ten o’clock, and Delaherche had no other occupation than to speculate on the various probabilities connected with the signing of the capitulation. A persistent apprehension haunted him; a dread lest the conflict might be renewed, and the horrible thought of what the consequences must be in such an event, of which he could not speak, but which rested on his bosom like an incubus. When he had reascended to his study, where he found Maurice and Jean in exactly the same position he had left them in, it was all in vain that he settled himself comfortably in his favorite easy-chair; sleep would not come to him; just as he was on the point of losing himself the crash of a shell would arouse him with a great start. It was the frightful cannonade of the day, the echoes of which were still ringing in his ears; and he would listen breathlessly for a moment, then sit and shudder at the equally appalling silence by which he was now surrounded. As he could not sleep he preferred to move about; he wandered aimlessly among the rooms, taking care to avoid that in which his mother was sitting by the colonel’s bedside, for the steady gaze with which she watched him as he tramped nervously up and down had finally had the effect of disconcerting him. Twice he returned to see if Henriette had not awakened, and he paused an instant to glance at his wife’s pretty face, so calmly peaceful, on which seemed to be flitting something like the faint shadow of a smile. Then, knowing not what to do, he went downstairs again, came back, moved about from room to room, until it was nearly two in the morning, wearying his ears with trying to decipher some meaning in the sounds that came to him from without.

This condition of affairs could not last. Delaherche resolved to return once more to the Sous-Prefecture, feeling assured that all rest would be quite out of the question for him so long as his ignorance continued. A feeling of despair seized him, however, when he went downstairs and looked out upon the densely crowded street, where the confusion seemed to be worse than ever; never would he have the strength to fight his way to the Place Turenne and back again through obstacles the mere memory of which caused every bone in his body to ache again. And he was mentally discussing matters, when who should come up but Major Bouroche, panting, perspiring, and swearing.

“
Tonnerre de Dieu!
I wonder if my head’s on my shoulders or not!”

He had been obliged to visit the Hotel de Ville to see the mayor about his supply of chloroform, and urge him to issue a requisition for a quantity, for he had many operations to perform, his stock of the drug was exhausted, and he was afraid, he said, that he should be compelled to carve up the poor devils without putting them to sleep.

“Well?” inquired Delaherche.

“Well, they can’t even tell whether the apothecaries have any or not!”

But the manufacturer was thinking of other things than chloroform. “No, no,” he continued. “Have they brought matters to a conclusion yet? Have they signed the agreement with the Prussians?”

The major made a gesture of impatience. “There is nothing concluded,” he cried. “It appears that those scoundrels are making demands out of all reason. Ah, well; let ‘em commence afresh, then, and we’ll all leave our bones here. That will be best!”