The Human Comedy (27 page)

“These poor people!” cried the major.

“Bah! It’s this or the cold, this or the cannon!” said the grenadier, urging the horses ever on, pricking them with the point of his saber.

A calamity that should have befallen them long before, which they had thus far been spared only by miraculous good fortune, now put a sudden halt to their progress. The carriage tipped over.

“I had an idea this would happen!” cried the imperturbable grenadier. “Oh! Oh! Our friend is dead.”

“Poor Laurent,” said the major.

“Laurent! From the Fifth Cavalry?”

“Yes.”

“He’s my cousin. Ah well! Not much fun in this life at the moment. I don’t imagine he’ll miss it.”

Only after an interminable, irreparable delay was the carriage righted and the horses untangled. Awakened and wrenched from her torpor by the violent jolt, the young countess had thrown off her wraps and stood up.

“Philippe, where are we?” she whispered, looking around her.

“Five hundred paces from the bridge. We’re heading over the Berezina. And then, once we reach the other side, Stéphanie, I’ll torment you no longer, I’ll let you sleep, we’ll be safe, we can go on untroubled to Vilnius. May God grant that you never know the price paid for your life!”

“You’re wounded!”

“It’s nothing.”

The hour of the catastrophe had sounded. Daybreak was announced by the Russians’ guns. Masters of Studyanka, they unleashed a withering fire over the plain; in the first light of morning, the major spied their columns advancing, positioning themselves on the heights. A cry of alarm erupted from the multitudes; a moment later they’d all leapt to their feet. Instinctively sensing their peril, they hurtled toward the bridge like a mighty wave. The Russians poured down from the heights, fast as a brush fire. Men, women, children, horses, everything bolted onto the bridge. Happily, the major and the countess were still at some distance from the riverbank. General Éblé had just set fire to the trestles on the opposite side. The cries of warning addressed to those now packed onto that life raft fell on deaf ears; no one would turn back. Not only did the bridge give way under their weight; in their frantic race toward the murderous riverbank, a great mass of humanity poured into the Berezina like an avalanche. No shriek could be heard, only a dull sound like a stone falling into water, and a moment later, the river was clotted with corpses. So fierce was the backlash created by those retreating onto the plain in hopes of escaping that death, and so violent their collision with those still advancing, that many were asphyxiated on the spot. The Count and Countess de Vandières owed their life to the carriage. After trampling and breaking so many dying bodies, the horses were soon crushed to death in their turn, overrun by the human cyclone sweeping over the bank. The major and the grenadier survived purely by main force. They killed so as not to be killed. This hurricane of human faces, this surge of bodies animated by one single movement left the bank of the Berezina deserted for a few moments. The herd had poured back onto the plain. If some threw themselves into the river from the bank, it was less in hopes of reaching the other side, which for them meant France, than simply of fleeing the Siberian wastelands. For a few particularly audacious souls, desperation became a guardian angel. An officer reached the other bank by leaping from one lump of ice to the next; a soldier crawled miraculously over floating corpses. In the end, the vast crowd realized that the Russians would not kill twenty thousand unarmed men, numb with cold, their senses dulled, who made no attempt to defend themselves, and with a horrible resignation settled down to await their fate. The major, the grenadier, the old general, and his wife were thus left alone, just steps away from what had once been a bridge. These four stood silent and dry-eyed amid a field of dead bodies, in the company of a few able soldiers, a few officers whose fighting spirit had been revived by the circumstances, numbering perhaps fifty. Two hundred paces away, the major descried what was left of the carriage bridge, swallowed by the river two days before.

“We’ll build a raft!” he cried.

No sooner had those words been spoken than everyone sped off as one toward the ruined bridge. A mob set about gathering iron clamps, hunting for pieces of wood, for ropes, for everything required to construct a raft. Under the major’s command, some twenty armed soldiers and officers stood guard, protecting the workers against any attack the crowd might launch on realizing their intentions. An imprisoned man’s yearning for freedom can sometimes energize him and inspire him to miraculous feats, but that is as nothing next to the need compelling these pitiable Frenchmen to act.

“The Russians! The Russians are on their way!” the guards warned the workers.

And the wood creaked and groaned, the vessel grew wider, higher, deeper. Generals, soldiers, colonels, everyone helped to transport wheels, iron bars, ropes, and planks, bowing under their weight: It was a living image of the building of Noah’s ark. Beside her husband, the young countess gazed on this spectacle, regretting her inability to take part in the labors; nevertheless, she helped to tie knots to strengthen the rigging. Finally the raft was finished. Forty men heaved it into the water, a dozen soldiers holding the ropes that moored it to the bank. Seeing their craft afloat on the Berezina, the builders immediately leapt aboard, a loathsome spirit of self-interest animating them all. The major had foreseen that the first surge would be violent, and so clasped Stéphanie and the general by the hand to hold them back, but a shiver ran through him when he saw the vessel packed from one end to the other, the passengers pressed together like spectators on the parterre of a theater.

“Savages!” he cried. “It was I who gave you the idea of building a raft; I saved your lives, and you refuse to leave room for me.”

A muddled tumult of voices was the only response. By means of long poles braced against the riverbank, a group of men on the raft were preparing to cast off with one mighty thrust, hoping to propel it straight toward the other bank, cutting through the corpses and floating ice.

“By thunder! I’ll toss you overboard right enough, if you don’t make way for the major and his two friends,” cried the grenadier, raising his saber to halt the launch, and—braving awful bellows of fury—forcing those on board to further close ranks.

“I’m going to fall! I’m falling!” came the cries of his companions. “Push off! Forward!”

The major looked dry-eyed at his mistress, who gazed toward the heavens in sublime resignation.

“Better to die with you!” she said.

There was something comical in the situation of the raft’s passengers. Rage though they might, none dared disobey the grenadier, for they were pressed together so tightly that to jostle one would be to topple them all. Faced with this threat, a captain resolved to be rid of the troublesome soldier. Sensing the officer’s hostile intentions, the grenadier seized him and flung him into the water, saying, “Ah! Ah, ducky, so you want a drink? Be my guest! Room for two more!” he cried. “Come along, Major, toss that little woman this way and get yourself over here! Leave the dotard where he is, he’ll be dead by tomorrow.”

“Hurry!” roared a voice composed of a hundred voices.

“Come along now, Major! These people are getting itchy, and I don’t believe you can blame them.”

The Comte de Vandières threw off his coverings and stood on the bank, displaying his general’s uniform.

“We must save the count,” said Philippe.

Stéphanie squeezed her lover’s hand, threw herself on his neck, and embraced him with a fearsome intensity.

“Adieu!” she said.

They had understood each other perfectly. The Comte de Vandières found the strength and presence of mind to leap onto the craft. Stéphanie followed, after casting Philippe one last glance.

“Major, would you like my place?” shouted the grenadier. “Life’s nothing to me. I’ve neither wife nor child nor mother.”

“I’m leaving these two in your care,” cried the major, pointing toward the count and his wife.

“Don’t you worry, I’ll look after them like my own flesh and blood.”

Philippe stood still, watching. The raft was propelled toward the opposite bank with such force that when it touched ground a mighty shudder ran through it from one end to the other. The count tumbled into the river; as he fell, a sheet of ice sheared off his head and launched it far into the distance, like a cannonball.

“What did I tell you, Major?” cried the grenadier.

“Adieu!” cried a woman.

Philippe de Sucy fell to his knees, frozen with horror, defeated by the cold, by regret, by exhaustion.

* * *

“My poor niece’s mind was destroyed,” added the doctor after a moment of silence. “Ah! monsieur,” he went on, clasping d’Albon’s hand, “how cruel life has been to that fragile woman, so young and so delicate! Separated by an appalling misfortune from the grenadier, a man by the name of Fleuriot, for two years she had no choice but to follow after the army, a plaything for a bunch of ruffians. As I understand it, she had no shoes to wear, only the most meager dress, went for months with no one caring for her or feeding her; now sheltered in a charity house, now chased away like an animal. God alone knows what miseries that poor woman nevertheless survived. She was locked up with the mad folk in a small German town, and meanwhile her family, thinking her dead, was dividing her legacy. In 1816 Grenadier Fleuriot recognized her in a Strasbourg inn, not long after she’d escaped from her prison. The local peasants told him the countess had been living in the forest for an entire month, that they’d tracked her like an animal, hoping to capture her, but in vain. I was then staying a few leagues from Strasbourg. Hearing tell of a wild girl, I was curious to discover the truth of these ridiculous tales. What a shock when I found the countess before me! Fleuriot told me all he knew of that terrible story. I brought the poor man back to the Auvergne with my niece, and there I had the misfortune of losing him. He had a kind of power over Madame de Vandières. He alone could persuade her to dress. Only rarely, in the beginning, did she utter that word
Adieu!
, which constitutes the whole of her language. Fleuriot did all he could to reawaken her mind, but he failed, and succeeded only in making her speak that sad word a little more often. The grenadier had a gift for distracting her, for occupying her with play, and through him, I hoped, but . . .”

For a moment Stéphanie’s uncle sat silent.

“Here,” he resumed, “she found another creature, whose company seems to suit her: An idiot peasant girl, who, ugly and backward as she is, was once in love with a mason. This mason wanted to marry her, for she owns a bit of land. For a year, poor Geneviève was the happiest woman there had ever been on the face of this earth. She looked after herself, and on Sundays went off to dance with Dallot; she knew love; there was a place in her heart and her mind for emotion. But Dallot had second thoughts. He found a girl still possessed of her wits, and of more land than Geneviève, and so he left her. The poor thing lost what little intelligence love had inspired in her, and now she can only herd cows or gather hay. She and my niece are, in a sense, bound together by the invisible chain of their shared fate and by the sentiment that was the cause of their madness. Come and see for yourself,” said Stéphanie’s uncle, leading the Marquis d’Albon to the window.

And the magistrate did indeed see the pretty countess sitting on the ground between Geneviève’s legs. Armed with a huge tortoiseshell comb, the peasant girl was devoting all her attention to untangling Stéphanie’s long black hair. The countess sat patiently, now and then letting out a stifled cry whose tone betrayed a purely instinctual pleasure. Monsieur d’Albon shivered as he contemplated the countess’s unguarded pose, her animal carelessness, the signs of an utter absence of soul.

“Philippe! Philippe!” he cried. “Yesterday’s sorrows are as nothing. Is there no hope, then?”

The old doctor looked heavenward.

“Adieu, monsieur,” said Monsieur d’Albon, pressing the old man’s hand. “My friend is waiting. You shall meet him soon.”

“So it truly is her,” cried Sucy after the Marquis d’Albon had spoken a few words. “Ah, I still had my doubts!” he added, tears falling from his dark eyes, usually so severe.

“It is indeed the Countess de Vandières,” rejoined the magistrate.

The colonel leapt out of bed and threw on some clothes.

“Now hold on, Philippe!” said the magistrate, aghast. “Are you out of your mind?”

“But I’m not ill anymore,” the colonel answered, plainly. “This news has vanquished all my miseries. What ailment could possibly hope to compete with thoughts of Stéphanie? I’m off to Bons-Hommes, I’ll see her, I’ll talk to her, I’ll cure her! She’s a free woman. And joy will be ours, or there is no such thing as Providence. Do you really believe that poor woman can hear my voice and not recover her reason?”

“She’s already seen you and not recognized you,” the magistrate gently replied, noting his friend’s overly high hopes and eager to sow a few salutary doubts.

The colonel winced slightly on hearing those words, but soon his smile returned, and he brushed them aside with a quick wave. No one dared stand in his way. A few hours later he had settled into the former priory with the doctor and the Comtesse de Vandières.

“Where is she?” he cried as he entered.

“Shh!” answered Stéphanie’s uncle. “She’s asleep. Look, here she is.”

Philippe saw the poor madwoman huddled on a bench in the sun. Her head was shaded from the heat by a forest of unkempt hair draped over her face; her arms hung elegantly groundward; her body had a doe’s delicate grace; her feet were effortlessly tucked beneath her; her breast rose at regular intervals; her skin displayed that porcelain whiteness for which we admire the limpid faces of children. Motionless beside her, Geneviève held a small branch that Stéphanie must have snapped from the very top of a poplar, and she gently waved it over her dozing friend to chase off the flies and cool the air. The peasant girl looked at Monsieur Fanjat and the colonel; then, like an animal recognizing its master, she slowly turned back to the countess and went on watching over her, never showing the slightest sign of surprise or intelligence. It was a stifling hot day. The stone bench seemed to sparkle, and from the meadow rose those mischievous vapors that flutter and shimmer like gold dust over grass, but Geneviève seemed oblivious to the consuming heat. The colonel violently clasped the doctor’s hands. Tears rolled down the soldier’s virile cheeks and fell into the grass at Stéphanie’s feet.