Complete Works of Emile Zola (1822 page)

“Only one, opposite, at the foot of the first willow.”

 — —”And if he sees me, if he tries calling out?”

Françoise shuddered. She put a knife she had brought down with her into his hand. There was a silence.

 — —”And your father, and you?” Dominique continued. “But no, I can’t run away. . . . When I am gone, maybe these soldiers will slaughter you. . . . You don’t know them. They proposed to show me mercy, if I would be their guide through the Sauval forest. When they find me gone they will stick at nothing.”

The young girl did not stop to discuss. She simply answered all the reasons he gave with, —

 — —”For the love of me, fly. . . . If you love me, Dominique, don’t stay here a minute longer.”

Then she promised to climb back to her room. They would not know that she had helped him. She at last took him in her arms, kissed him to convince him, in an extraordinary outburst of passion. He was beaten. He asked not a question further.

 — —”Swear to me that your father knows of what you are doing, and that he advises me to run away?”

 — —”It was my father sent me,” Françoise answered boldly.

She lied. At this moment she felt nothing but a boundless need of knowing him in safety, of escaping from this abominable thought that the sun would give the signal for his death. When he was gone, all mishaps might rush down upon her; it would seem sweet to her, as long as he was alive. The selfishness of her love wished him alive, before all else.

 — —”Very well,” said Dominique, “I will do as you please.”

Then they said nothing more. Dominique went to open the window again; but suddenly a noise chilled their blood. The door was shaken, and they thought it was being opened. Evidently a patrol had heard their voices; and both of them, standing pressed against each other, waited in unspeakable anguish. The door was shaken again, but it did not open. Each gave a stifled sigh; they saw how it was, it must have been the soldier lying across the threshold turning over. And really, silence was restored, the snoring began again.

Dominique would have it that Françoise must first climb back to her room. He took her in his arms; he bade her a mute farewell. Then he helped her to seize the ladder, and grappled hold of it in his turn. But he refused to go down a single rung before he knew she was in her room. When Françoise had climbed in, she whispered, in a voice light as a breath, —

 — —”Au revoir; I love you!”

She stopped with her elbows resting on the window-sill, and tried to follow Dominique with her eyes. The night was still very dark. She looked for the sentinel, and did not see him; only the willow made a pale spot in the midst of the darkness. For an instant she heard the rustling of Dominique’s body along the ivy. Then the wheel creaked, and there was a gentle splashing that told that the young man had found the boat. A minute later, in fact, she made out the dark outline of the boat on the gray sheet of the Morelle. Then anguish stopped her breath. At every moment she thought to hear the sentinel’s cry of alarm. The faintest sounds, scattered through the darkness, seemed to be the hurried tread of soldiers, the clatter of arms, the click of the hammers on the rifles. Yet seconds elapsed, the country slept on in sovereign peace. Dominique must have been landing on the other bank. Françoise saw nothing more. The stillness was majestic. And she heard a noise of scuffling feet, a hoarse cry, the dull thud of a falling body. Then the silence grew deeper; and, as if she had felt death passing by, she waited on, all cold, face to face with the pitch-dark night.

IV.

At daybreak, shouting voices shook the mill. Old Merlier had come to open Françoise’s door. She came down into the courtyard, pale and very calm. But there she gave a shudder before the dead body of a Prussian soldier, which was stretched out near the well, on a cloak spread on the ground.

Around the body, soldiers were gesticulating, crying aloud in fury. Many of them shook their fists at the village. Meanwhile, the officer had had old Merlier called, as mayor of the township.

 — —”See here,” said he, in a voice choking with rage, “here’s one of our men who has been found murdered by the river-side. . . . We must make a tremendous example, and I trust you will help us to find out the murderer.”

 — —”Anything you please,” answered the miller in his phlegmatic way. “Only it will not be easy.”

The officer had stooped down to throw aside a flap of the cloak that hid the dead man’s face. Then a horrible wound appeared. The sentinel had been struck in the throat, and the weapon was left in the wound. It was a kitchen knife with a black handle.

 — —”Look at this knife,” said the officer to old Merlier, “perhaps it may help us in our search.”

The old man gave a start. But he recovered himself immediately, and answered, without moving a muscle of his face, —

 — —”Everybody in these parts has knives like that. . . . Maybe your man was tired of fighting, and did the job himself. Such things have been known to happen.”

 — —”Shut up!” the officer cried furiously.

“I don’t know what keeps me from setting fire to the four corners of the village.”

His anger luckily prevented his noticing the profound change that had come over Françoise’s face. She had to sit down on the stone bench, near the well. In spite of herself her eyes never left that dead body, stretched on the ground almost at her feet. He was a big, handsome fellow, who looked like Dominique, with light hair and blue eyes. This resemblance made her heart sick. She thought of how the dead man had perhaps left some sweetheart behind, who would weep for him over there, in Germany. And she recognized her knife in the dead man’s throat. She had killed him.

Meanwhile the officer talked of taking terrible measures against Rocreuse, when some soldiers came up running. They had only just noticed Dominique’s escape. It occasioned an extreme agitation. The officer visited the premises, looked out of the window, which had been left open, understood it all, and came back exasperated.

Old Merlier seemed very much put out at Dominique’s flight.

 — —”The idiot!” he muttered, “he spoils it all.”

Françoise, who heard him, was seized with anguish. For the rest, her father did not suspect her complicity. He shook his head, saying to her in an undertone, —

 — —”Now we are in a fine scrape!”

 — —”It’s that rascal! it’s that rascal!” cried the officer. “He must have reached the woods. . . . But he must be found for us, or the village shall pay for it.”

And, addressing the miller, —

 — —”Come, you must know where he is hiding?”

Old Merlier gave a noiseless chuckle, pointing to the wide extent, of wooded hillside.

 — —”How do you expect to find a man in there?” said he.

 — —”Oh! there must be holes in there that you know of. I will give you ten men. You shall be their guide.”

 — —”All right. Only it will take us a week to beat all the woods in the neighborhood.”

The old man’s coolness infuriated the officer. In fact, he saw the ridiculousness of this battue. It was then that he caught sight of Françoise, pale and trembling, on the bench, The young girl’s anxious attitude struck him. He said nothing for an instant, looking hard at the miller and Françoise by turns.

 — —”Is n’t this man,” he at last brutally asked the old man, “your daughter’s lover?”

Old Merlier turned livid, and one would have thought him on the point of throwing himself upon the officer and strangling him. He drew himself up stiffly; he did not answer. Françoise put her face between her hands.

 — —”Yes, that’s it,” the Prussian went on, “you or your daughter have helped him to run away. You are his accomplice. . . . For the last time, will you give him up to us?”

The miller did not answer, He had turned away, looking off into the distance, as if the officer had not been speaking to him. This put the last touch to the latter’s anger.

 — —”Very well,” he said, “you shall be shot instead.”

And he once more ordered out the firing party. Old Merlier still kept cool. He hardly gave a slight shrug of his shoulders; this whole drama seemed to him in rather bad taste. No doubt, he did not believe that a man was to be shot with so little ado. Then, when the squad had come, he said gravely:

 — —”You’re in earnest, then? . . . All right. If you absolutely must have some one, I will do as well as another.”

But Françoise sprang up, half crazed, stammering out:

 — —”Mercy, monsieur, don’t do any harm to my father. Kill me instead. . . . It’s I who helped Dominique to escape. I am the only culprit.”

 — —”Be quiet, little girl,” cried old Merlier. “What are you lying for? . . . She spent the night locked up in her room, monsieur. She lies, I assure you.”

 — —”No, I am not lying,” the young girl replied ardently. “I climbed down out of the window, I urged Dominique to fly. . . . It’s the truth, the only truth. . . .”

The old man turned very pale. He saw clearly in her eyes that she was not lying, and this story appalled him. Ah! these children, with their hearts, how they spoiled everything! Then he grew angry.

 — —”She’s crazy, don’t believe her. She is telling you stupid stories. . . . Come, let’s have done with it.”

She tried to protest again. She knelt down, she clasped her hands. The officer looked quietly on at this heartrending struggle.

 — —”Good God!” he said at last, “I take your father, because I have n’t got the other one. . . . Try and find the other one, and your father shall go free.”

For a moment she looked at him, her eyes staring wide at the atrocity of this proposal.

 — —”It’s horrible,” she murmured. “Where do you expect me to find Dominique at this time? He’s gone; I don’t know where he is.”

 — —”Well, choose. Him or your father.”

 — —”Oh! my God! how can I choose? But even if I knew where Dominique was, I could not choose! . . . It is my heart you are breaking. . . . I had rather die at once. Yes, it would be soonest over so. Kill me, I beg of you, kill me. . . .”

The officer at last grew impatient at this scene of despair and tears. He cried out, —

 — —”I’ve had enough of this! I’m willing to be good-natured, I consent to give you two hours. . . . If your sweetheart is n’t here in two hours, your father shall pay for him.”

And he had old Merlier taken to the room which had been used for Dominique’s prison. The old man asked for some tobacco, and fell to smoking. No emotion was to be detected in his impassive face. Only, when he was alone, two big tears ran slowly down his cheeks. His poor, dear child; how she suffered!

Françoise had stayed in the middle of the courtyard. Some Prussian soldiers passed by, laughing. Some of them called out to her, jokes which she did not understand. She stared at the door through which her father had just disappeared. And, with a slow movement, she raised her hand to her forehead, as if to keep it from bursting.

The officer turned on his heel, repeating:

 — —”You have two hours. Try to make good use of them.”

She had two hours. This sentence kept buzzing in her head. Then, mechanically, she went out of the courtyard, she walked straight before her. Whither should she go? What should she do? She did not even try to decide, because she felt convinced of the uselessness of her efforts. Yet she would have liked to find Dominique. They would have come to an understanding together, they might perhaps have hit upon an expedient. And, amid the confusion of her thoughts, she went down to the bank of the Morelle, which she crossed below the dam, at a place where there were some large stones. Her feet led her under the first willow, at the corner of the field. As she bent down, she saw a pool of blood that made her turn pale. That was clearly the place. And she followed Dominique’s tracks in the trodden grass; he must have run, a line of long strides was to be seen cutting through the field cornerwise. Then, farther on, she lost the tracks; but, in a neighboring field, she thought she found them again. This brought her to the outskirts of the forest, where all traces were wiped out.

Françoise plunged in under the trees, notwithstanding. It was a relief to be alone. She sat down for a moment; then, remembering that her time was running out, she got up again. How long was it since she had left the mill? Five minutes? half an hour? She had lost all consciousness of time. Perhaps Dominique had gone and hidden in a copse she knew of, where, one afternoon, they had eaten filberts together. She went to the copse and searched it. Only a blackbird flew out, whistling its soft, melancholy tune. Then she thought he had taken refuge in a hollow in the rocks, where he sometimes used to lie in ambush for game; but the hollow in the rocks was empty. What was the use of looking for him? she would not find him; and, little by little, her desire to find him grew furious, she walked on faster. The notion that he might have climbed up a tree suddenly struck her. From that moment she pushed on with upturned eyes, and, that he might know she was near, she called out to him every fifteen or twenty steps. The cuckoos answered her, a breath of air passing through the branches made her think he was there, and was coming down. Once she even thought she saw him; she stopped, choking, having a good mind to run away. What would she say to him? Had she come, then, to lead him away and have him shot? Oh! no, she would not mention these things. She would cry out to him to escape, not to stay in the neighborhood. Then the thought of her father waiting for her gave her a sharp pang. She fell upon the turf, weeping, repeating aloud, —

 — —”My God! my God! why am I here?”

She was crazy to have come. And, as if seized with fright, she ran, she tried to find a way out of the forest. Three times she took the wrong path, and she thought she should not find the mill again, when she came out into a field, just opposite Rocreuse. As soon as she caught sight of the village, she stopped. Was she going to return alone?

As she stood there, a voice called to her softly, —

 — —”Françoise! Françoise!”

And she saw Dominique raising his head above the edge of a ditch. Just God! she had found him! So heaven wished his death? She held back a cry, she let herself slide down into the ditch.