Эмиль Золя
The Downfall
As it was beginning to be dark Pache stealthily made his way to the Tour a Glaire and slipped into the park, while the three others cautiously followed him at a distance.
“It won’t do to let him suspect anything,” said Chouteau. “Be on your guard in case he should look around.”
But when he had advanced another hundred paces Pache evidently had no idea there was anyone near, for he began to hurry forward at a swift gait, not so much as casting a look behind. They had no difficulty in tracking him to the adjacent quarries, where they fell on him as he was in the act of removing two great flat stones, to take from the cavity beneath part of a loaf of bread. It was the last of his store; he had enough left for one more meal.
“You dirty, sniveling priest’s whelp!” roared Lapoulle, “so that is why you sneak away from us! Give me that; it’s my share!”
Why should he give his bread? Weak and puny as he was, his slight form dilated with anger, while he clutched the loaf against his bosom with all the strength he could master. For he also was hungry.
“Let me alone. It’s mine.”
Then, at sight of Lapoulle’s raised fist, he broke away and ran, sliding down the steep banks of the quarries, making his way across the bare fields in the direction of Donchery, the three others after him in hot pursuit. He gained on them, however, being lighter than they, and possessed by such overmastering fear, so determined to hold on to what was his property, that his speed seemed to rival the wind. He had already covered more than half a mile and was approaching the little wood on the margin of the stream when he encountered Jean and Maurice, who were on their way back to their resting-place for the night. He addressed them an appealing, distressful cry as he passed; while they, astounded by the wild hunt that went fleeting by, stood motionless at the edge of a field, and thus it was that they beheld the ensuing tragedy.
As luck would have it, Pache tripped over a stone and fell. In an instant the others were on top of him – shouting, swearing, their passion roused to such a pitch of frenzy that they were like wolves that had run down their prey.
“Give me that,” yelled Lapoulle, “or by G-d I’ll kill you!”
And he had raised his fist again when Chouteau, taking from his pocket the penknife with which he had slaughtered the horse and opening it, placed it in his hand.
“Here, take it! the knife!”
But Jean meantime had come hurrying up, desirous to prevent the mischief he saw brewing, losing his wits like the rest of them, indiscreetly speaking of putting them all in the guardhouse; whereon Loubet, with an ugly laugh, told him he must be a Prussian, since they had no longer any commanders, and the Prussians were the only ones who issued orders.
“Nom de Dieu!” Lapoulle repeated, “will you give me that?”
Despite the terror that blanched his cheeks Pache hugged the bread more closely to his bosom, with the obstinacy of the peasant who never cedes a jot or tittle of that which is his.
“No!”
Then in a second all was over; the brute drove the knife into the other’s throat with such violence that the wretched man did not even utter a cry. His arms relaxed, the bread fell to the ground, into the pool of blood that had spurted from the wound.
At sight of the imbecile, uncalled-for murder, Maurice, who had until then been a silent spectator of the scene, appeared as if stricken by a sudden fit of madness. He raved and gesticulated, shaking his fist in the face of the three men and calling them murderers, assassins, with a violence that shook his frame from head to foot. But Lapoulle seemed not even to hear him. Squatted on the ground beside the corpse, he was devouring the bloodstained bread, an expression of stupid ferocity on his face, with a loud grinding of his great jaws, while Chouteau and Loubet, seeing him thus terrible in the gratification of his wild-beast appetite, did not even dare claim their portion.
By this time night had fallen, a pleasant night with a clear sky thick-set with stars, and Maurice and Jean, who had regained the shelter of their little wood, presently perceived Lapoulle wandering up and down the river bank. The two others had vanished, had doubtless returned to the encampment by the canal, their mind troubled by reason of the corpse they left behind them. He, on the other hand, seemed to dread going to rejoin the comrades. When he was more himself and his brutish, sluggish intellect showed him the full extent of his crime, he had evidently experienced a twinge of anguish that made motion a necessity, and not daring to return to the interior of the peninsula, where he would have to face the body of his victim, had sought the bank of the stream, where he was now tramping to and fro with uneven, faltering steps. What was going on within the recesses of that darkened mind that guided the actions of that creature, so degraded as to be scarce higher than the animal? Was it the awakening of remorse? or only the fear lest his crime might be discovered? He could not remain there; he paced his beat as a wild beast shambles up and down its cage, with a sudden and ever-increasing longing to fly, a longing that ached and pained like a physical hurt, from which he felt he should die, could he do nothing to satisfy it. Quick, quick, he must fly, must fly at once, from that prison where he had slain a fellow-being. And yet, the coward in him, it may be, gaining the supremacy, he threw himself on the ground, and for a long time lay crouched among the herbage.
And Maurice said to Jean in his horror and disgust:
“See here, I cannot remain longer in this place; I tell you plainly I should go mad. I am surprised that the physical part of me holds out as it does; my bodily health is not so bad, but the mind is going; yes! it is going, I am certain of it. If you leave me another day in this hell I am lost. I beg you, let us go away, let us start at once!”
And he went on to propound the wildest schemes for getting away. They would swim the Meuse, would cast themselves on the sentries and strangle them with a cord he had in his pocket, or would beat out their brains with rocks, or would buy them over with the money they had left and don their uniform to pass through the Prussian lines.
“My dear boy, be silent!” Jean sadly answered; “it frightens me to hear you talk so wildly. Is there any reason in what you say, are any of your plans feasible? Wait; to-morrow we’ll see about it. Be silent!”
He, although his heart, no less than his friend’s, was wrung by the horrors that surrounded them on every side, had preserved his mental balance amid the debilitating effects of famine, among the grisly visions of that existence than which none could approach more nearly the depth of human misery. And as his companion’s frenzy continued to increase and he talked of casting himself into the Meuse, he was obliged to restrain him, even to the point of using violence, scolding and supplicating, tears standing in his eyes. Then suddenly he said:
“See! look there!”
A splash was heard coming from the river, and they saw it was Lapoulle, who had finally decided to attempt to escape by the stream, first removing his capote in order that it might not hinder his movements; and his white shirt made a spot of brightness that was distinctly visible upon the dusky bosom of the moving water. He was swimming up-stream with a leisurely movement, doubtless on the lookout for a place where he might land with safety, while on the opposite shore there was no difficulty in discerning the shadowy forms of the sentries, erect and motionless in the semi-obscurity. There came a sudden flash that tore the black veil of night, a report that went with bellowing echoes and spent itself among the rocks of Montimont. The water boiled and bubbled for an instant, as it does under the wild efforts of an unpracticed oarsman. And that was all; Lapoulle’s body, the white spot on the dusky stream, floated away, lifeless, upon the tide.
The next day, which was Saturday, Jean aroused Maurice as soon as it was day and they returned to the camp of the 106th, with the hope that they might move that day, but there were no orders; it seemed as though the regiment’s existence were forgotten. Many of the troops had been sent away, the peninsula was being depopulated, and sickness was terribly prevalent among those who were left behind. For eight long days disease had been germinating in that hell on earth; the rains had ceased, but the blazing, scorching sunlight had only wrought a change of evils. The excessive heat completed the exhaustion of the men and gave to the numerous cases of dysentery an alarmingly epidemic character. The excreta of that army of sick poisoned the air with their noxious emanations. No one could approach the Meuse or the canal, owing to the overpowering stench that rose from the bodies of drowned soldiers and horses that lay festering among the weeds. And the horses, that dropped in the fields from inanition, were decomposing so rapidly and forming such a fruitful source of pestilence that the Prussians, commencing to be alarmed on their own account, had provided picks and shovels and forced the prisoners to bury them.
That day, however, was the last on which they suffered from famine. As their numbers were so greatly reduced and provisions kept pouring in from every quarter, they passed at a single bound from the extreme of destitution to the most abundant plenty. Bread, meat, and wine, even, were to be had without stint; eating went on from morning till night, until they were ready to drop. Darkness descended, and they were eating still; in some quarters the gorging was continued until the next morning. To many it proved fatal.
That whole day Jean made it his sole business to keep watch over Maurice, who he saw was ripe for some rash action. He had been drinking; he spoke of his intention of cuffing a Prussian officer in order that he might be sent away. And at night Jean, having discovered an unoccupied corner in the cellar of one of the outbuildings at the Tour a Glaire, thought it advisable to go and sleep there with his companion, thinking that a good night’s rest would do him good, but it turned out to be the worst night in all their experience, a night of terror during which neither of them closed an eye. The cellar was inhabited by other soldiers; lying in the same corner were two who were dying of dysentery, and as soon as it was fairly dark they commenced to relieve their sufferings by moans and inarticulate cries, a hideous death-rattle that went on uninterruptedly until morning. These sounds finally became so horrific there in the intense darkness, that the others who were resting there, wishing to sleep, allowed their anger to get the better of them and shouted to the dying men to be silent. They did not hear; the rattle went on, drowning all other sounds, while from without came the drunken clamor of those who were eating and drinking still, with insatiable appetite.
Then commenced for Maurice a period of agony unspeakable. He would have fled from the awful sounds that brought the cold sweat of anguish in great drops to his brow, but when he arose and attempted to grope his way out he trod on the limbs of those extended there, and finally fell to the ground, a living man immured there in the darkness with the dying. He made no further effort to escape from this last trial. The entire frightful disaster arose before his mind, from the time of their departure from Rheims to the crushing defeat of Sedan. It seemed to him that in that night, in the inky blackness of that cellar, where the groans of two dying soldiers drove sleep from the eyelids of their comrades, the ordeal of the army of Chalons had reached its climax. At each of the stations of its passion the army of despair, the expiatory band, driven forward to the sacrifice, had spent its life-blood in atonement for the faults of others; and now, unhonored amid disaster, covered with contumely, it was enduring martyrdom in that cruel scourging, the severity of which it had done nothing to deserve. He felt it was too much; he was heartsick with rage and grief, hungering for justice, burning with a fierce desire to be avenged on destiny.
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!”
His powers of endurance were almost exhausted, but it was his rage that he had to choke down, even more than his fatigue, that was cause of his suffering. Everything exasperated him and set on edge his tingling nerves; the harsh notes of the Prussian trumpets particularly, which inspired him with a desire to scream each time he heard them. He felt he should never reach the end of their cruel journey without some outbreak that would bring down on him the utmost severity of the guard. Even now, when traversing the smallest hamlets, he suffered horribly and felt as if he should die with shame to behold the eyes of the women fixed pityingly on him; what would it be when they should enter Germany, and the populace of the great cities should crowd the streets to laugh and jeer at them as they passed? And he pictured to himself the cattle cars into which they would be crowded for transportation, the discomforts and humiliations they would have to suffer on the journey, the dismal life in German fortresses under the leaden, wintry sky. No, no; he would have none of it; better to take the risk of leaving his bones by the roadside on French soil than go and rot off yonder, for months and months, perhaps, in the dark depths of a casemate.
“Listen,” he said below his breath to Jean, who was walking at his side; “we will wait until we come to a wood; then we’ll break through the guards and run for it among the trees. The Belgian frontier is not far away; we shall have no trouble in finding someone to guide us to it.”
Jean, accustomed as he was to look at things coolly and calculate chances, put his veto on the mad scheme, although he, too, in his revolt, was beginning to meditate the possibilities of an escape.
“Have you taken leave of your senses! the guard will fire on us, and we shall both be killed.”
But Maurice replied there was a chance the soldiers might not hit them, and then, after all, if their aim should prove true, it would not matter so very much.
“Very well!” rejoined Jean, “but what is going to become of us afterward, dressed in uniform as we are? You know perfectly well that the country is swarming in every direction with Prussian troops; we could not go far unless we had other clothes to put on. No, no, my lad, it’s too risky; I’ll not let you attempt such an insane project.”
And he took the young man’s arm and held it pressed against his side, as if they were mutually sustaining each other, continuing meanwhile to chide and soothe him in a tone that was at once rough and affectionate.
Just then the sound of a whispered conversation close behind them caused them to turn and look around. It was Chouteau and Loubet, who had left the peninsula of Iges that morning at the same time as they, and whom they had managed to steer clear of until the present moment. Now the two worthies were close at their heels, and Chouteau must have overheard Maurice’s words, his plan for escaping through the mazes of a forest, for he had adopted it on his own behalf. His breath was hot upon their neck as he murmured:
