Complete Works of Emile Zola (1232 page)

Jean murmured in awed tone:

“Did ever mortal man look on the like of this! the very river is on fire.”

Their boat seemed to be sailing on the bosom of an incandescent stream. As the dancing lights of the mighty conflagrations were caught by the ripples of the current the Seine seemed to be pouring down torrents of living coals; flashes of intensest crimson played fitfully across its surface, the blazing brands fell in showers into the water and were extinguished with a hiss. And ever they floated downward with the tide on the bosom of that blood-red stream, between the blazing palaces on either hand, like wayfarers in some accursed city, doomed to destruction and burning on the banks of a river of molten lava.

“Ah!” exclaimed Maurice, with a fresh access of madness at the sight of the havoc he had longed for, “let it burn, let it all go up in smoke!”

But Jean silenced him with a terrified gesture, as if he feared such blasphemy might bring them evil. Where could a young man whom he loved so fondly, so delicately nurtured, so well informed, have picked up such ideas? And he applied himself more vigorously to the oars, for they had now passed the bridge of Solferino and were come out into a wide open space of water. The light was so intense that the river was illuminated as by the noonday sun when it stands vertically above men’s heads and casts no shadow. The most minute objects, such as the eddies in the stream, the stones piled on the banks, the small trees along the
quais
, stood out before their vision with wonderful distinctness. The bridges, too, were particularly noticeable in their dazzling whiteness, and so clearly defined that they could have counted every stone; they had the appearance of narrow gangways thrown across the fiery stream to connect one conflagration with the other. Amid the roar of the flames and the general clamor a loud crash occasionally announced the fall of some stately edifice. Dense clouds of soot hung in the air and settled everywhere, the wind brought odors of pestilence on its wings. And another horror was that Paris, those more distant quarters of the city that lay back from the banks of the Seine, had ceased to exist for them. To right and left of the conflagration that raged with such fierce resplendency was an unfathomable gulf of blackness; all that presented itself to their strained gaze was a vast waste of shadow, an empty void, as if the devouring element had reached the utmost limits of the city and all Paris were swallowed up in everlasting night. And the heavens, too, were dead and lifeless; the flames rose so high that they extinguished the stars.

Maurice, who was becoming delirious, laughed wildly.

“High carnival at the Consoil d’Etat and at the Tuileries to-night! They have illuminated the facades, women are dancing beneath the sparkling chandeliers. Ah, dance, dance and be merry, in your smoking petticoats, with your chignons ablaze—”

And he drew a picture of the feasts of Sodom and Gomorrah, the music, the lights, the flowers, the unmentionable orgies of lust and drunkenness, until the candles on the walls blushed at the shamelessness of the display and fired the palaces that sheltered such depravity. Suddenly there was a terrific explosion. The fire, approaching from either extremity of the Tuileries, had reached the Salle des Marechaux, the casks of powder caught, the Pavilion de l’Horloge was blown into the air with the violence of a powder mill. A column of flame mounted high in the heavens, and spreading, expanded in a great fiery plume on the inky blackness of the sky, the crowning display of the horrid
fete
.

“Bravo!” exclaimed Maurice, as at the end of the play, when the lights are extinguished and darkness settles on the stage.

Again Jean, in stammering, disconnected sentences, besought him to be quiet. No, no, it was not right to wish evils to anyone! And if they invoked destruction, would not they themselves perish in the general ruin? His sole desire was to find a landing place so that he might no longer have that horrid spectacle before his eyes. He considered it best not to attempt to land at the Pont de la Concorde, but, rounding the elbow of the Seine, pulled on until they reached the Quai de la Conference, and even at that critical moment, instead of shoving the skiff out into the stream to take its chances, he wasted some precious moments in securing it, in his instinctive respect for the property of others. While doing this he had seated Maurice comfortably on the bank; his plan was to reach the Rue des Orties through the Place de la Concorde and the Rue Saint-Honore. Before proceeding further he climbed alone to the top of the steps that ascended from the
quai
to explore the ground, and on witnessing the obstacles they would have to surmount his courage was almost daunted. There lay the impregnable fortress of the Commune, the terrace of the Tuileries bristling with cannon, the Rues Royale, Florentin, and Rivoli obstructed by lofty and massive barricades; and this state of affairs explained the tactics of the army of Versailles, whose line that night described an immense arc, the center and apex resting on the Place de la Concorde, one of the two extremities being at the freight depot of the Northern Railway on the right bank, the other on the left bank, at one of the bastions of the ramparts, near the gate of Arcueil. But as the night advanced the Communards had evacuated the Tuileries and the barricades and the regular troops had taken possession of the quartier in the midst of further conflagrations; twelve houses at the junction of the Rue Saint-Honore and the Rue Royale had been burning since nine o’clock in the evening.

When Jean descended the steps and reached the river-bank again he found Maurice in a semi-comatose condition, the effects of the reaction after his hysterical outbreak.

“It will be no easy job. I hope you are going to be able to walk, youngster?”

“Yes, yes; don’t be alarmed. I’ll get there somehow, alive or dead.”

It was not without great difficulty that he climbed the stone steps, and when he reached the level ground of the
quai
at the summit he walked very slowly, supported by his companion’s arm, with the shuffling gait of a somnambulist. The day had not dawned yet, but the reflected light from the burning buildings cast a lurid illumination on the wide Place. They made their way in silence across its deep solitude, sick at heart to behold the mournful scene of devastation it presented. At either extremity, beyond the bridge and at the further end of the Rue Royale, they could faintly discern the shadowy outlines of the Palais Bourbon and the Church of the Madeleine, torn by shot and shell. The terrace of the Tuileries had been breached by the fire of the siege guns and was partially in ruins. On the Place itself the bronze railings and ornaments of the fountains had been chipped and defaced by the balls; the colossal statue of Lille lay on the ground shattered by a projectile, while near at hand the statue of Strasbourg, shrouded in heavy veils of crape, seemed to be mourning the ruin that surrounded it on every side. And near the Obelisk, which had escaped unscathed, a gas-pipe in its trench had been broken by the pick of a careless workman, and the escaping gas, fired by some accident, was flaring up in a great undulating jet, with a roaring, hissing sound.

Jean gave a wide berth to the barricade erected across the Rue Royale between the Ministry of Marine and the Garde-Meuble, both of which the fire had spared; he could hear the voices of the soldiers behind the sand bags and casks of earth with which it was constructed. Its front was protected by a ditch, filled with stagnant, greenish water, in which was floating the dead body of a federate, and through one of its embrasures they caught a glimpse of the houses in the carrefour Saint-Honore, which were burning still in spite of the engines that had come in from the suburbs, of which they heard the roar and clatter. To right and left the trees and the kiosks of the newspaper venders were riddled by the storm of bullets to which they had been subjected. Loud cries of horror arose; the firemen, in exploring the cellar of one of the burning houses, had come across the charred bodies of seven of its inmates.

Although the barricade that closed the entrance to the Rue Saint-Florentin and the Rue de Rivoli by its skilled construction and great height appeared even more formidable than the other, Jean’s instinct told him they would have less difficulty in getting by it. It was completely evacuated, indeed, and the Versailles troops had not yet entered it. The abandoned guns were resting in the embrasures in peaceful slumber, the only living thing behind that invincible rampart was a stray dog, that scuttled away in haste. But as Jean was making what speed he could along the Rue Saint-Florentin, sustaining Maurice, whose strength was giving out, that which he had been in fear of came to pass; they fell directly into the arms of an entire company of the 88th of the line, which had turned the barricade.

“Captain,” he explained, “this is a comrade of mine, who has just been wounded by those bandits. I am taking him to the hospital.”

It was then that the capote which he had thrown over Maurice’s shoulders stood them in good stead, and Jean’s heart was beating like a trip-hammer as at last they turned into the Rue Saint-Honore. Day was just breaking, and the sound of shots reached their ears from the cross-streets, for fighting was going on still throughout the quartier. It was little short of a miracle that they finally reached the Rue des Frondeurs without sustaining any more disagreeable adventure. Their progress was extremely slow; the last four or five hundred yards appeared interminable. In the Rue des Frondeurs they struck up against a communist picket, but the federates, thinking a whole regiment was at hand, took to their heels. And now they had but a short bit of the Rue d’Argenteuil to traverse and they would be safe in the Rue des Orties.

For four long hours that seemed like an eternity Jean’s longing desire had been bent on that Rue des Orties with feverish impatience, and now they were there it appeared like a haven of safety. It was dark, silent, and deserted, as if there were no battle raging within a hundred leagues of it. The house, an old, narrow house without a concierge, was still as the grave.

“I have the keys in my pocket,” murmured Maurice. “The big one opens the street door, the little one is the key of my room, way at the top of the house.”

He succumbed and fainted dead away in Jean’s arms, whose alarm and distress were extreme. They made him forget to close the outer door, and he had to grope his way up that strange, dark staircase, bearing his lifeless burden and observing the greatest caution not to stumble or make any noise that might arouse the sleeping inmates of the rooms. When he had gained the top he had to deposit the wounded man on the floor while he searched for the chamber door by striking matches, of which he fortunately had a supply in his pocket, and only when he had found and opened it did he return and raise him in his arms again. Entering, he laid him on the little iron bed that faced the window, which he threw open to its full extent in his great need of air and light. It was broad day; he dropped on his knees beside the bed, sobbing as if his heart would break, suddenly abandoned by all his strength as the fearful thought again smote him that he had slain his friend.

Minutes passed; he was hardly surprised when, raising his eyes, he saw Henriette standing by the bed. It was perfectly natural: her brother was dying, she had come. He had not even seen her enter the room; for all he knew she might have been standing there for hours. He sank into a chair and watched her with stupid eyes as she hovered about the bed, her heart wrung with mortal anguish at sight of her brother lying there senseless, in his blood-stained garments. Then his memory began to act again; he asked:

“Tell me, did you close the street door?”

She answered with an affirmative motion of the head, and as she came toward him, extending her two hands in her great need of sympathy and support, he added:

“You know it was I who killed him.”

She did not understand; she did not believe him. He felt no flutter in the two little hands that rested confidingly in his own.

“It was I who killed him — yes, ‘twas over yonder, behind a barricade, I did it. He was fighting on one side, I on the other—”

There began to be a fluttering of the little hands.

“We were like drunken men, none of us knew what he as about — it was I who killed him.”

Then Henriette, shivering, pale as death, withdrew her hands, fixing on him a gaze that was full of horror. Father of Mercy, was the end of all things come! was her crushed and bleeding heart to know no peace for ever more! Ah, that Jean, of whom she had been thinking that very day, happy in the unshaped hope that perhaps she might see him once again! And it was he who had done that abominable thing; and yet he had saved Maurice, for was it not he who had brought him home through so many perils? She could not yield her hands to him now without a revolt of all her being, but she uttered a cry into which she threw the last hope of her tortured and distracted heart.

“Oh! I will save him; I
must
save him, now!”

She had acquired considerable experience in surgery during the long time she had been in attendance on the hospital at Remilly, and now she proceeded without delay to examine her brother’s hurt, who remained unconscious while she was undressing him. But when she undid the rude bandage of Jean’s invention, he stirred feebly and uttered a faint cry of pain, opening wide his eyes that were bright with fever. He recognized her at once and smiled.

“You here! Ah, how glad I am to see you once more before I die!”

She silenced him, speaking in a tone of cheerful confidence.

“Hush, don’t talk of dying; I won’t allow it! I mean that you shall live! There, be quiet, and let me see what is to be done.”

However, when Henriette had examined the injured arm and the wound in the side, her face became clouded and a troubled look rose to her eyes. She installed herself as mistress in the room, searching until she found a little oil, tearing up old shirts for bandages, while Jean descended to the lower regions for a pitcher of water. He did not open his mouth, but looked on in silence as she washed and deftly dressed the wounds, incapable of aiding her, seemingly deprived of all power of action by her presence there. When she had concluded her task, however, noticing her alarmed expression, he proposed to her that he should go and secure a doctor, but she was in possession of all her clear intelligence. No, no; she would not have a chance-met doctor, of whom they knew nothing, who, perhaps, would betray her brother to the authorities. They must have a man they could depend on; they could afford to wait a few hours. Finally, when Jean said he must go and report for duty with his company, it was agreed that he should return as soon as he could get away, and try to bring a surgeon with him.