Эмиль Золя
The Downfall
Silvine, having bandaged the donkey’s ear with her handkerchief, took him again by the bridle, and the mournful little procession began to retrace its steps across the plateau, to cover the two leagues that lay between it and Remilly. Prosper had turned and cast a look on the dead horses, his heart heavy within him to leave the field without having seen Zephyr.
A little below the wood of la Garenne, as they were about to turn off to the left to take the road that they had traversed that morning, they encountered another German post and were again obliged to exhibit their pass. And the officer in command, instead of telling them to avoid Sedan, ordered them to keep straight on their course and pass through the city; otherwise they would be arrested. This was the most recent order; it was not for them to question it. Moreover, their journey would be shortened by a mile and a quarter, which they did not regret, weary and foot-sore as they were.
When they were within Sedan, however, they found their progress retarded owing to a singular cause. As soon as they had passed the fortifications their nostrils were saluted by such a stench, they were obliged to wade through such a mass of abominable filth, reaching almost to their knees, as fairly turned their stomachs. The city, where for three days a hundred thousand men had lived without the slightest provision being made for decency or cleanliness, had become a cesspool, a foul sewer, and this devil’s broth was thickened by all sorts of solid matter, rotting hay and straw, stable litter, and the excreta of animals. The carcasses of the horses, too, that were knocked on the head, skinned, and cut up in the public squares, in full view of everyone, had their full share in contaminating the atmosphere; the entrails lay decaying in the hot sunshine, the bones and heads were left lying on the pavement, where they attracted swarms of flies. Pestilence would surely break out in the city unless they made haste to rid themselves of all that carrion, of that stratum of impurity, which, in the Rue de Minil, the Rue Maqua, and even on the Place Turenne, reached a depth of twelve inches. The Prussian authorities had taken the matter up, and their placards were to be seen posted about the city, requisitioning the inhabitants, irrespective of rank, laborers, merchants, bourgeois, magistrates, for the morrow; they were ordered to assemble, armed with brooms and shovels, and apply themselves to the task, and were warned that they would be subjected to heavy penalties if the city was not clean by night. The President of the Tribunal had taken time by the forelock, and might even then be seen scraping away at the pavement before his door and loading the results of his labors upon a wheelbarrow with a fire-shovel.
Silvine and Prosper, who had selected the Grande Rue as their route for traversing the city, advanced but slowly through that lake of malodorous slime. In addition to that the place was in a state of ferment and agitation that made it necessary for them to pull up almost at every moment. It was the time that the Prussians had selected for searching the houses in order to unearth those soldiers, who, determined that they would not give themselves up, had hidden themselves away. When, at about two o’clock of the preceding day, General de Wimpffen had returned from the chateau of Bellevue after signing the capitulation, the report immediately began to circulate that the surrendered troops were to be held under guard in the peninsula of Iges until such time as arrangements could be perfected for sending them off to Germany. Some few officers had expressed their intention of taking advantage of that stipulation which accorded them their liberty conditionally on their signing an agreement not to serve again during the campaign. Only one general, so it was said, Bourgain-Desfeuilles, alleging his rheumatism as a reason, had bound himself by that pledge, and when, that very morning, his carriage had driven up to the door of the Hotel of the Golden Cross and he had taken his seat in it to leave the city, the people had hooted and hissed him unmercifully. The operation of disarming had been going on since break of day; the manner of its performance was, the troops defiled by battalions on the Place Turenne, where each man deposited his musket and bayonet on the pile, like a mountain of old iron, which kept rising higher and higher, in a corner of the place. There was a Prussian detachment there under the command of a young officer, a tall, pale youth, wearing a sky-blue tunic and a cap adorned with a cock’s feather, who superintended operations with a lofty but soldier-like air, his hands encased in white gloves. A zouave, in a fit of insubordination, having refused to give up his chassepot, the officer ordered that he be taken away, adding, in the same even tone of voice: “And let him be shot forthwith!” The rest of the battalion continued to defile with a sullen and dejected air, throwing down their arms mechanically, as if in haste to have the ceremony ended. But who could estimate the number of those who had disarmed themselves voluntarily, those whose muskets lay scattered over the country, out yonder on the field of battle? And how many, too, within the last twenty-four hours had concealed themselves, flattering themselves with the hope that they might escape in the confusion that reigned everywhere! There was scarcely a house but had its crew of those headstrong idiots who refused to respond when called on, hiding away in corners and shamming death; the German patrols that were sent through the city even discovered them stowed away under beds. And as many, even after they were unearthed, stubbornly persisted in remaining in the cellars whither they had fled for shelter, the patrols were obliged to fire on them through the coal-holes. It was a man-hunt, a brutal and cruel battue, during which the city resounded with rifle-shots and outlandish oaths.
At the Pont du Meuse they found a throng which the donkey was unable to penetrate and were brought to a stand-still. The officer commanding the guard at the bridge, suspecting they were endeavoring to carry on an illicit traffic in bread or meat, insisted on seeing with his own eyes what was contained in the cart; drawing aside the covering, he gazed for an instant on the corpse with a feeling expression, then motioned them to go their way. Still, however, they were unable to get forward, the crowd momentarily grew denser and denser; one of the first detachments of French prisoners was being conducted to the peninsula of Iges under escort of a Prussian guard. The sorry band streamed on in long array, the men in their tattered, dirty uniforms crowding one another, treading on one another’s heels, with bowed heads and sidelong, hang-dog looks, the dejected gait and bearing of the vanquished to whom had been left not even so much as a knife with which to cut their throat. The harsh, curt orders of the guard urging them forward resounded like the cracking of a whip in the silence, which was unbroken save for the plashing of their coarse shoes through the semi-liquid mud. Another shower began to fall, and there could be no more sorrowful sight than that band of disheartened soldiers, shuffling along through the rain, like beggars and vagabonds on the public highway.
All at once Prosper, whose heart was beating as if it would burst his bosom with repressed sorrow and indignation, nudged Silvine and called her attention to two soldiers who were passing at the moment. He had recognized Maurice and Jean, trudging along with their companions, like brothers, side by side. They were near the end of the line, and as there was now no impediment in their way, he was enabled to keep them in view as far as the Faubourg of Torcy, as they traversed the level road which leads to Iges between gardens and truck farms.
“Ah!” murmured Silvine, distressed by what she had just seen, fixing her eyes on Honore’s body, “it may be that the dead have the better part!”
Night descended while they were at Wadelincourt, and it was pitchy dark long before they reached Remilly. Father Fouchard was greatly surprised to behold the body of his son, for he had felt certain that it would never be recovered. He had been attending to business during the day, and had completed an excellent bargain; the market price for officers’ chargers was twenty francs, and he had bought three for forty-five francs.
II
The crush was so great as the column of prisoners was leaving Torcy that Maurice, who had stopped a moment to buy some tobacco, was parted from Jean, and with all his efforts was unable thereafter to catch up with his regiment through the dense masses of men that filled the road. When he at last reached the bridge that spans the canal which intersects the peninsula of Iges at its base, he found himself in a mixed company of chasseurs d’Afrique and troops of the infanterie de marine.
There were two pieces of artillery stationed at the bridge, their muzzles turned upon the interior of the peninsula; it was a place easy of access, but from which exit would seem to be attended with some difficulties. Immediately beyond the canal was a comfortable house, where the Prussians had established a post, commanded by a captain, upon which devolved the duty of receiving and guarding the prisoners. The formalities observed were not excessive; they merely counted the men, as if they had been sheep, as they came streaming in a huddle across the bridge, without troubling themselves overmuch about uniforms or organizations, after which the prisoners were free of the fields and at liberty to select their dwelling-place wherever chance and the road they were on might direct.
The first thing that Maurice did was to address a question to a Bavarian officer, who was seated astride upon a chair, enjoying a tranquil smoke.
“The 106th of the line, sir, can you tell me where I shall find it?”
Either the officer was unlike most German officers and did not understand French, or thought it a good joke to mystify a poor devil of a soldier. He smiled and raised his hand, indicating by his motion that the other was to keep following the road he was pursuing.
Although Maurice had spent a good part of his life in the neighborhood he had never before been on the peninsula; he proceeded to explore his new surroundings, as a mariner might do when cast by a tempest on the shore of a desolate island. He first skirted the Tour a Glaire, a very handsome country-place, whose small park, situated as it was on the bank of the Meuse, possessed a peculiarly attractive charm. After that the road ran parallel with the river, of which the sluggish current flowed on the right hand at the foot of high, steep banks. The way from there was a gradually ascending one, until it wound around the gentle eminence that occupied the central portion of the peninsula, and there were abandoned quarries there and excavations in the ground, in which a network of narrow paths had their termination. A little further on was a mill, seated on the border of the stream. Then the road curved and pursued a descending course until it entered the village of Iges, which was built on the hillside and connected by a ferry with the further shore, just opposite the rope-walk at Saint-Albert. Last of all came meadows and cultivated fields, a broad expanse of level, treeless country, around which the river swept in a wide, circling bend. In vain had Maurice scrutinized every inch of uneven ground on the hillside; all he could distinguish there was cavalry and artillery, preparing their quarters for the night. He made further inquiries, applying among others to a corporal of chasseurs d’Afrique, who could give him no information. The prospect for finding his regiment looked bad; night was coming down, and, leg-weary and disheartened, he seated himself for a moment on a stone by the wayside.
As he sat there, abandoning himself to the sensation of loneliness and despair that crept over him, he beheld before him, across the Meuse, the accursed fields where he had fought the day but one before. Bitter memories rose to his mind, in the fading light of that day of gloom and rain, as he surveyed the saturated, miry expanse of country that rose from the river’s bank and was lost on the horizon. The defile of Saint-Albert, the narrow road by which the Prussians had gained their rear, ran along the bend of the stream as far as the white cliffs of the quarries of Montimont. The summits of the trees in the wood of la Falizette rose in rounded, fleecy masses over the rising ground of Seugnon. Directly before his eyes, a little to the left, was Saint-Menges, the road from which descended by a gentle slope and ended at the ferry; there, too, were the mamelon of Hattoy in the center, and Illy, in the far distance, in the background, and Fleigneux, almost hidden in its shallow vale, and Floing, less remote, on the right. He recognized the plateau where he had spent interminable hours among the cabbages, and the eminences that the reserve artillery had struggled so gallantly to hold, where he had seen Honore meet his death on his dismounted gun. And it was as if the baleful scene were again before him with all its abominations, steeping his mind in horror and disgust, until he was sick at heart.
The reflection that soon it would be quite dark and it would not do to loiter there, however, caused him to resume his researches. He said to himself that perhaps the regiment was encamped somewhere beyond the village on the low ground, but the only ones he encountered there were some prowlers, and he decided to make the circuit of the peninsula, following the bend of the stream. As he was passing through a field of potatoes he was sufficiently thoughtful to dig a few of the tubers and put them in his pockets; they were not ripe, but he had nothing better, for Jean, as luck would have it, had insisted on carrying both the two loaves of bread that Delaherche had given them when they left his house. He was somewhat surprised at the number of horses he met with, roaming about the uncultivated lands, that fell off in an easy descent from the central elevation to the Meuse, in the direction of Donchery. Why should they have brought all those animals with them? how were they to be fed? And now it was night in earnest, and quite dark, when he came to a small piece of woods on the water’s brink, in which he was surprised to find the cent-gardes of the Emperor’s escort, providing for their creature comforts and drying themselves before roaring fires. These gentlemen, who had a separate encampment to themselves, had comfortable tents; their kettles were boiling merrily, there was a milch cow tied to a tree. It did not take Maurice long to see that he was not regarded with favor in that quarter, poor devil of an infantryman that he was, with his ragged, mud-stained uniform. They graciously accorded him permission to roast his potatoes in the ashes of their fires, however, and he withdrew to the shelter of a tree, some hundred yards away, to eat them. It was no longer raining; the sky was clear, the stars were shining brilliantly in the dark blue vault. He saw that he should have to spend the night in the open air and defer his researches until the morrow. He was so utterly used up that he could go no further; the trees would afford him some protection in case it came on to rain again.
The strangeness of his situation, however, and the thought of his vast prison house, open to the winds of heaven, would not let him sleep. It had been an extremely clever move on the part of the Prussians to select that place of confinement for the eighty thousand men who constituted the remnant of the army of Chalons. The peninsula was approximately three miles long by one wide, affording abundant space for the broken fragments of the vanquished host, and Maurice could not fail to observe that it was surrounded on every side by water, the bend of the Meuse encircling it on the north, east and west, while on the south, at the base, connecting the two arms of the loop at the point where they drew together most closely, was the canal. Here alone was an outlet, the bridge, that was defended by two guns; wherefore it may be seen that the guarding of the camp was a comparatively easy task, notwithstanding its great extent. He had already taken note of the chain of sentries on the farther bank, a soldier being stationed by the waterside at every fifty paces, with orders to fire on any man who should attempt to escape by swimming. In the rear the different posts were connected by patrols of uhlans, while further in the distance, scattered over the broad fields, were the dark lines of the Prussian regiments; a threefold living, moving wall, immuring the captive army.
Maurice, in his sleeplessness, lay gazing with wide-open eyes into the blackness of the night, illuminated here and there by the smoldering watch-fires; the motionless forms of the sentinels were dimly visible beyond the pale ribbon of the Meuse. Erect they stood, duskier spots against the dusky shadows, beneath the faint light of the twinkling stars, and at regular intervals their guttural call came to his ears, a menacing watch-cry that was drowned in the hoarse murmur of the river in the distance. At sound of those unmelodious phrases in a foreign tongue, rising on the still air of a starlit night in the sunny land of France, the vision of the past again rose before him: all that he had beheld in memory an hour before, the plateau of Illy cumbered still with dead, the accursed country round about Sedan that had been the scene of such dire disaster; and resting on the ground in that cool, damp corner of a wood, his head pillowed on a root, he again yielded to the feeling of despair that had overwhelmed him the day before while lying on Delaherche’s sofa. And that which, intensifying the suffering of his wounded pride, now harassed and tortured him, was the question of the morrow, the feverish longing to know how deep had been their fall, how great the wreck and ruin sustained by their world of yesterday. The Emperor had surrendered his sword to King William; was not, therefore, the abominable war ended? But he recalled the remark he had heard made by two of the Bavarians of the guard who had escorted the prisoners to Iges: “We’re all in France, we’re all bound for Paris!” In his semi-somnolent, dreamy state the vision of what was to be suddenly rose before his eyes: the empire overturned and swept away amid a howl of universal execration, the republic proclaimed with an outburst of patriotic fervor, while the legend of ‘92 would incite men to emulate the glorious past, and, flocking to the standards, drive from the country’s soil the hated foreigner with armies of brave volunteers. He reflected confusedly upon all the aspects of the case, and speculations followed one another in swift succession through his poor wearied brain: the harsh terms imposed by the victors, the bitterness of defeat, the determination of the vanquished to resist even to the last drop of blood, the fate of those eighty thousand men, his companions, who were to be captives for weeks, months, years, perhaps, first on the peninsula and afterward in German fortresses. The foundations were giving way, and everything was going down, down to the bottomless depths of perdition.
The call of the sentinels, now loud, now low, seemed to sound more faintly in his ears and to be receding in the distance, when suddenly, as he turned on his hard couch, a shot rent the deep silence. A hollow groan rose on the calm air of night, there was a splashing in the water, the brief struggle of one who sinks to rise no more. It was some poor wretch who had attempted to escape by swimming the Meuse and had received a bullet in his brain.
The next morning Maurice was up and stirring with the sun. The sky was cloudless; he was desirous to rejoin Jean and his other comrades of the company with the least possible delay. For a moment he had an idea of going to see what there was in the interior of the peninsula, then resolved he would first complete its circuit. And on reaching the canal his eyes were greeted with the sight of the 106th – or rather what was left of it – a thousand men, encamped along the river bank among some waste lands, with no protection save a row of slender poplars. If he had only turned to the left the night before instead of pursuing a straight course he could have been with his regiment at once. And he noticed that almost all the line regiments were collected along that part of the bank that extends from the Tour a Glaire to the Chateau of Villette – another bourgeois country place, situated more in the direction of Donchery and surrounded by a few hovels – all of them having selected their bivouac near the bridge, sole issue from their prison, as sheep will instinctively huddle together close to the door of their fold, knowing that sooner or later it will be opened for them.
Jean uttered a cry of pleasure. “Ah, so it’s you, at last! I had begun to think you were in the river.”
He was there with what remained of the squad, Pache and Lapoulle, Loubet and Chouteau. The last named had slept under doorways in Sedan until the attention of the Prussian provost guard had finally restored them to their regiment. The corporal, moreover, was the only surviving officer of the company, death having taken away Sergeant Sapin, Lieutenant Rochas and Captain Beaudoin, and although the victors had abolished distinction of rank among the prisoners, deciding that obedience was due to the German officers alone, the four men had, nevertheless, rallied to him, knowing him to be a leader of prudence and experience, upon whom they could rely in circumstances of difficulty. Thus it was that peace and harmony reigned among them that morning, notwithstanding the stupidity of some and the evil designs of others. In the first place, the night before he had found them a place to sleep in that was comparatively dry, where they had stretched themselves on the ground, the only thing they had left in the way of protection from the weather being the half of a shelter-tent. After that he had managed to secure some wood and a kettle, in which Loubet made coffee for them, the comforting warmth of which had fortified their stomachs. The rain had ceased, the day gave promise of being bright and warm, they had a small supply of biscuit and bacon left, and then, as Chouteau said, it was a comfort to have no orders to obey, to have their fill of loafing. They were prisoners, it was true, but there was plenty of room to move about. Moreover, they would be away from there in two or three days. Under these circumstances the day, which was Sunday, the 4th, passed pleasantly enough.
Maurice, whose courage had returned to him now that he was with the comrades once more, found nothing to annoy him except the Prussian bands, which played all the afternoon beyond the canal. Toward evening there was vocal music, and the men sang in chorus. They could be seen outside the chain of sentries, walking to and fro in little groups and singing solemn melodies in a loud, ringing voice in honor of the Sabbath.
“Confound those bands!” Maurice at last impatiently exclaimed. “They will drive me wild!”
Jean, whose nerves were less susceptible, shrugged his shoulders.
“Dame! they have reason to feel good; and then perhaps they think it affords us pleasure. It hasn’t been such a bad day; don’t let’s find fault.”
As night approached, however, the rain began to fall again. Some of the men had taken possession of what few unoccupied houses there were on the peninsula, others were provided with tents that they erected, but by far the greater number, without shelter of any sort, destitute of blankets even, were compelled to pass the night in the open air, exposed to the pouring rain.
About one o’clock Maurice, who had been sleeping soundly as a result of his fatigue, awoke and found himself in the middle of a miniature lake. The trenches, swollen by the heavy downpour, had overflowed and inundated the ground where he lay. Chouteau’s and Loubet’s wrath vented itself in a volley of maledictions, while Pache shook Lapoulle, who, unmindful of his ducking, slept through it all as if he was never to wake again. Then Jean, remembering the row of poplars on the bank of the canal, collected his little band and ran thither for shelter; and there they passed the remainder of that wretched night, crouching with their backs to the trees, their legs doubled under them, so as to expose as little of their persons as might be to the big drops.
The next day, and the day succeeding it, the weather was truly detestable, what with the continual showers, that came down so copiously and at such frequent intervals that the men’s clothing had not time to dry on their backs. They were threatened with famine, too; there was not a biscuit left in camp, and the coffee and bacon were exhausted. During those two days, Monday and Tuesday, they existed on potatoes that they dug in the adjacent fields, and even those vegetables had become so scarce toward the end of the second day that those soldiers who had money paid as high as five sous apiece for them. It was true that the bugles sounded the call for “distribution”; the corporal had nearly run his legs off trying to be the first to reach a great shed near the Tour a Glaire, where it was reported that rations of bread were to be issued, but on the occasion of a first visit he had waited there three hours and gone away empty-handed, and on a second had become involved in a quarrel with a Bavarian. It was well known that the French officers were themselves in deep distress and powerless to assist their men; had the German staff driven the vanquished army out there in the mud and rain with the intention of letting them starve to death? Not the first step seemed to have been taken, not an effort had been made, to provide for the subsistence of those eighty thousand men in that hell on earth that the soldiers subsequently christened Camp Misery, a name that the bravest of them could never hear mentioned in later days without a shudder.
On his return from his wearisome and fruitless expedition to the shed, Jean forgot his usual placidity and gave way to anger.
“What do they mean by calling us up when there’s nothing for us? I’ll be hanged if I’ll put myself out for them another time!”
And yet, whenever there was a call, he hurried off again. It was inhuman to sound the bugles thus, merely because regulations prescribed certain calls at certain hours, and it had another effect that was near breaking Maurice’s heart. Every time that the trumpets sounded the French horses, that were running free on the other side of the canal, came rushing up and dashed into the water to rejoin their squadron, as excited at the well-known sound as they would be at the touch of the spur; but in their exhausted condition they were swept away by the current and few attained the shore. It was a cruel sight to see their struggles; they were drowned in great numbers, and their bodies, decomposing and swelling in the hot sunshine, drifted on the bosom of the canal. As for those of them that got to land, they seemed as if stricken with sudden madness, galloping wildly off and hiding among the waste places of the peninsula.
“More bones for the crows to pick!” sorrowfully said Maurice, remembering the great droves of horses that he had encountered on a previous occasion. “If we remain here a few days we shall all be devouring one another. Poor brutes!”
The night between Tuesday and Wednesday was most terrible of all, and Jean, who was beginning to feel seriously alarmed for Maurice’s feverish state, made him wrap himself in an old blanket that they had purchased from a zouave for ten francs, while he, with no protection save his water-soaked capote, cheerfully took the drenching of the deluge which that night pelted down without cessation. Their position under the poplars had become untenable; it was a streaming river of mud, the water rested in deep puddles on the surface of the saturated ground. What was worst of all was that they had to suffer on an empty stomach, the evening meal of the six men having consisted of two beets which they had been compelled to eat raw, having no dry wood to make a fire with, and the sweet taste and refreshing coolness of the vegetables had quickly been succeeded by an intolerable burning sensation. Some cases of dysentery had appeared among the men, caused by fatigue, improper food and the persistent humidity of the atmosphere. More than ten times that night did Jean stretch forth his hand to see that Maurice had not uncovered himself in the movements of his slumber, and thus he kept watch and ward over his friend – his back supported by the same tree-trunk, his legs in a pool of water – with tenderness unspeakable. Since the day that on the plateau of Illy his comrade had carried him off in his arms and saved him from the Prussians he had repaid the debt a hundred-fold. He stopped not to reason on it; it was the free gift of all his being, the total forgetfulness of self for love of the other, the finest, most delicate, grandest exhibition of friendship possible, and that, too, in a peasant, whose lot had always been the lowly one of a tiller of the soil and who had never risen far above the earth, who could not find words to express what he felt, acting purely from instinct, in all simplicity of soul. Many a time already he had taken the food from his mouth, as the men of the squad were wont to say; now he would have divested himself of his skin if with it he might have covered the other, to protect his shoulders, to warm his feet. And in the midst of the savage egoism that surrounded them, among that aggregation of suffering humanity whose worst appetites were inflamed and intensified by hunger, he perhaps owed it to his complete abnegation of self that he had preserved thus far his tranquillity of mind and his vigorous health, for he among them all, his great strength unimpaired, alone maintained his composure and something like a level head.
