Complete Works of Emile Zola (1211 page)

When daylight appeared one of the soldiers was dead, the other was lingering on in protracted agony.

“Come along, little one,” Jean gently said; “we’ll go and get a breath of fresh air; it will do us good.”

But when the pair emerged into the pure, warm morning air and, pursuing the river bank, were near the village of Iges, Maurice grew flightier still, and extending his hand toward the vast expanse of sunlit battlefield, the plateau of Illy in front of them, Saint-Menges to the left, the wood of la Garenne to the right, he cried:

“No, I cannot, I cannot bear to look on it! The sight pierces my heart and drives me mad. Take me away, oh! take me away, at once, at once!”

It was Sunday once more; the bells were pealing from the steeples of Sedan, while the music of a German military band floated on the air in the distance. There were still no orders for their regiment to move, and Jean, alarmed to see Maurice’s deliriousness increasing, determined to attempt the execution of a plan that he had been maturing in his mind for the last twenty-four hours. On the road before the tents of the Prussians another regiment, the 5th of the line, was drawn up in readiness for departure. Great confusion prevailed in the column, and an officer, whose knowledge of the French language was imperfect, had been unable to complete the roster of the prisoners. Then the two friends, having first torn from their uniform coat the collar and buttons in order that the number might not betray their identity, quietly took their place in the ranks and soon had the satisfaction of crossing the bridge and leaving the chain of sentries behind them. The same idea must have presented itself to Loubet and Chouteau, for they caught sight of them somewhat further to the rear, peering anxiously about them with the guilty eyes of murderers.

Ah, what comfort there was for them in that first blissful moment! Outside their prison the sunlight was brighter, the air more bracing; it was like a resurrection, a bright renewal of all their hopes. Whatever evil fortune might have in store for them, they dreaded it not; they snapped their fingers at it in their delight at having seen the last of the horrors of Camp Misery.

III.

That morning Maurice and Jean listened for the last time to the gay, ringing notes of the French bugles, and now they were on their way to Pont-a-Mousson, marching in the ranks of the convoy of prisoners, which was guarded front and rear by platoons of Prussian infantry, while a file of men with fixed bayonets flanked the column on either side. Whenever they came to a German post they heard only the lugubrious, ear-piercing strains of the Prussian trumpets.

Maurice was glad to observe that the column took the left-hand road and would pass through Sedan; perhaps he would have an opportunity of seeing his sister Henriette. All the pleasure, however, that he had experienced at his release from that foul cesspool where he had spent nine days of agony was dashed to the ground and destroyed during the three-mile march from the peninsula of Iges to the city. It was but another form of his old distress to behold that array of prisoners, shuffling timorously through the dust of the road, like a flock of sheep with the dog at their heels. There is no spectacle in all the world more pitiful than that of a column of vanquished troops being marched off into captivity under guard of their conquerors, without arms, their empty hands hanging idly at their sides; and these men, clad in rags and tatters, besmeared with the filth in which they had lain for more than a week, gaunt and wasted after their long fast, were more like vagabonds than soldiers; they resembled loathsome, horribly dirty tramps, whom the gendarmes would have picked up along the highways and consigned to the lockup. As they passed through the Faubourg of Torcy, where men paused on the sidewalks and women came to their doors to regard them with mournful, compassionate interest, the blush of shame rose to Maurice’s cheek, he hung his head and a bitter taste came to his mouth.

Jean, whose epidermis was thicker and mind more practical, thought only of their stupidity in not having brought off with them a loaf of bread apiece. In the hurry of their abrupt departure they had even gone off without breakfasting, and hunger soon made its presence felt by the nerveless sensation in their legs. Others among the prisoners appeared to be in the same boat, for they held out money, begging the people of the place to sell them something to eat. There was one, an extremely tall man, apparently very ill, who displayed a gold piece, extending it above the heads of the soldiers of the escort; and he was almost frantic that he could purchase nothing. Just at that time Jean, who had been keeping his eyes open, perceived a bakery a short distance ahead, before which were piled a dozen loaves of bread; he immediately got his money ready and, as the column passed, tossed the baker a five-franc piece and endeavored to secure two of the loaves; then, when the Prussian who was marching at his side pushed him back roughly into the ranks, he protested, demanding that he be allowed to recover his money from the baker. But at that juncture the captain commanding the detachment, a short, bald-headed man with a brutal expression of face, came hastening up; he raised his revolver over Jean’s head as if about to strike him with the butt, declaring with an oath that he would brain the first man that dared to lift a finger. And the rest of the captives continued to shamble on, stirring up the dust of the road with their shuffling feet, with eyes averted and shoulders bowed, cowed and abjectly submissive as a drove of cattle.

“Oh! how good it would seem to slap the fellow’s face just once!” murmured Maurice, as if he meant it. “How I should like to let him have just one from the shoulder, and drive his teeth down his dirty throat!”

And during the remainder of their march he could not endure to look on that captain, with his ugly, supercilious face.

They had entered Sedan and were crossing the Pont de Meuse, and the scenes of violence and brutality became more numerous than ever. A woman darted forward and would have embraced a boyish young sergeant — likely she was his mother — and was repulsed with a blow from a musket-butt that felled her to the ground. On the Place Turenne the guards hustled and maltreated some citizens because they cast provisions to the prisoners. In the Grande Rue one of the convoy fell in endeavoring to secure a bottle that a lady extended to him, and was assisted to his feet with kicks. For a week now Sedan had witnessed the saddening spectacle of the defeated driven like cattle through its streets, and seemed no more accustomed to it than at the beginning; each time a fresh detachment passed the city was stirred to its very depths by a movement of pity and indignation.

Jean had recovered his equanimity; his thoughts, like Maurice’s, reverted to Henriette, and the idea occurred to him that they might see Delaherche somewhere among the throng. He gave his friend a nudge of the elbow.

“Keep your eyes open if we pass through their street presently, will you?”

They had scarce more than struck into the Rue Maqua, indeed, when they became aware of several pairs of eyes turned on the column from one of the tall windows of the factory, and as they drew nearer recognized Delaherche and his wife Gilberte, their elbows resting on the railing of the balcony, and behind them the tall, rigid form of old Madame Delaherche. They had a supply of bread with them, and the manufacturer was tossing the loaves down into the hands that were upstretched with tremulous eagerness to receive them. Maurice saw at once that his sister was not there, while Jean anxiously watched the flying loaves, fearing there might none be left for them. They both had raised their arms and were waving them frantically above their head, shouting meanwhile with all the force of their lungs:

“Here we are! This way, this way!”

The Delaherches seemed delighted to see them in the midst of their surprise. Their faces, pallid with emotion, suddenly brightened, and they displayed by the warmth of their gestures the pleasure they experienced in the encounter. There was one solitary loaf left, which Gilberte insisted on throwing with her own hands, and pitched it into Jean’s extended arms in such a charmingly awkward way that she gave a winsome laugh at her own expense. Maurice, unable to stop on account of the pressure from the rear, turned his head and shouted, in a tone of anxious inquiry:

“And Henriette? Henriette?”

Delaherche replied with a long farrago, but his voice was inaudible in the shuffling tramp of so many feet. He seemed to understand that the young man had failed to catch his meaning, for he gesticulated like a semaphore; there was one gesture in particular that he repeated several times, extending his arm with a sweeping motion toward the south, apparently intending to convey the idea of some point in the remote distance: Off there, away off there. Already the head of the column was wheeling into the Rue du Minil, the facade of the factory was lost to sight, together with the kindly faces of the three Delaherches; the last the two friends saw of them was the fluttering of the white handkerchief with which Gilberte waved them a farewell.

“What did he say?” asked Jean.

Maurice, in a fever of anxiety, was still looking to the rear where there was nothing to be seen. “I don’t know; I could not understand him; I shall have no peace of mind until I hear from her.”

And the trailing, shambling line crept slowly onward, the Prussians urging on the weary men with the brutality of conquerors; the column left the city by the Minil gate in straggling, long-drawn array, hastening their steps, like sheep at whose heels the dogs are snapping.

When they passed through Bazeilles Jean and Maurice thought of Weiss, and cast their eyes about in an effort to distinguish the site of the little house that had been defended with such bravery. While they were at Camp Misery they had heard the woeful tale of slaughter and conflagration that had blotted the pretty village from existence, and the abominations that they now beheld exceeded all they had dreamed of or imagined. At the expiration of twelve days the ruins were smoking still; the tottering walls had fallen in, there were not ten houses standing. It afforded them some small comfort, however, to meet a procession of carts and wheelbarrows loaded with Bavarian helmets and muskets that had been collected after the conflict. That evidence of the chastisement that had been inflicted on those murderers and incendiaries went far toward mitigating the affliction of defeat.

The column was to halt at Douzy to give the men an opportunity to eat breakfast. It was not without much suffering that they reached that place; already the prisoners’ strength was giving out, exhausted as they were by their ten days of fasting. Those who the day before had availed of the abundant supplies to gorge themselves were seized with vertigo, their enfeebled legs refused to support their weight, and their gluttony, far from restoring their lost strength, was a further source of weakness to them. The consequence was that, when the train was halted in a meadow to the left of the village, these poor creatures flung themselves upon the ground with no desire to eat. Wine was wanting; some charitable women who came, bringing a few bottles, were driven off by the sentries. One of them in her affright fell and sprained her ankle, and there ensued a painful scene of tears and hysterics, during which the Prussians confiscated the bottles and drank their contents amid jeers and insulting laughter. This tender compassion of the peasants for the poor soldiers who were being led away into captivity was manifested constantly along the route, while it was said the harshness they displayed toward the generals amounted almost to cruelty. At that same Douzy, only a few days previously, the villagers had hooted and reviled a number of paroled officers who were on their way to Pont-a-Mousson. The roads were not safe for general officers; men wearing the blouse — escaped soldiers, or deserters, it may be — fell on them with pitch-forks and endeavored to take their life as traitors, credulously pinning their faith to that legend of bargain and sale which, even twenty years later, was to continue to shed its opprobrium upon those leaders who had commanded armies in that campaign.

Maurice and Jean ate half their bread, and were so fortunate as to have a mouthful of brandy with which to wash it down, thanks to the kindness of a worthy old farmer. When the order was given to resume their advance, however, the distress throughout the convoy was extreme. They were to halt for the night at Mouzon, and although the march was a short one, it seemed as if it would tax the men’s strength more severely than they could bear; they could not get on their feet without giving utterance to cries of pain, so stiff did their tired legs become the moment they stopped to rest. Many removed their shoes to relieve their galled and bleeding feet. Dysentery continued to rage; a man fell before they had gone half a mile, and they had to prop him against a wall and leave him. A little further on two others sank at the foot of a hedge, and it was night before an old woman came along and picked them up. All were stumbling, tottering, and dragging themselves along, supporting their forms with canes, which the Prussians, perhaps in derision, had suffered them to cut at the margin of a wood. They were a straggling array of tramps and beggars, covered with sores, haggard, emaciated, and footsore; a sight to bring tears to the eyes of the most stony-hearted. And the guards continued to be as brutally strict as ever; those who for any purpose attempted to leave the ranks were driven back with blows, and the platoon that brought up the rear had orders to prod with their bayonets those who hung back. A sergeant having refused to go further, the captain summoned two of his men and instructed them to seize him, one by either arm, and in this manner the wretched man was dragged over the ground until he agreed to walk. And what made the whole thing more bitter and harder to endure was the utter insignificance of that little pimply-faced, bald-headed officer, so insufferably consequential in his brutality, who took advantage of his knowledge of French to vituperate the prisoners in it in curt, incisive words that cut and stung like the lash of a whip.

“Oh!” Maurice furiously exclaimed, “to get the puppy in my hands and drain him of his blood, drop by drop!”