Эмиль Золя
The Downfall
From every quarter, moreover, from the northern as well as from the central districts, most discouraging advices continued to arrive. In the north the 22d army corps, composed of gardes mobiles, depot companies from various regiments and such officers and men as had not been involved in the disasters of Sedan and Metz, had been forced to abandon Amiens and retreat on Arras, and on the 5th of December Rouen had also fallen into the hands of the enemy, after a mere pretense of resistance on the part of its demoralized, scanty garrison. In the center the victory of Coulmiers, achieved on the 3d of November by the army of the Loire, had resuscitated for a moment the hopes of the country: Orleans was to be reoccupied, the Bavarians were to be put to flight, the movement by way of Etampes was to culminate in the relief of Paris; but on December 5 Prince Frederick Charles had retaken Orleans and cut in two the army of the Loire, of which three corps fell back on Bourges and Vierzon, while the remaining two, commanded by General Chanzy, retired to Mans, fighting and falling back alternately for a whole week, most gallantly. The Prussians were everywhere, at Dijon and at Dieppe, at Vierzon as well as at Mans. And almost every morning came the intelligence of some fortified place that had capitulated, unable longer to hold out under the bombardment. Strasbourg had succumbed as early as the 28th of September, after standing forty-six days of siege and thirty-seven of shelling, her walls razed and her buildings riddled by more than two hundred thousand projectiles. The citadel of Laon had been blown into the air; Toul had surrendered; and following them, a melancholy catalogue, came Soissons with its hundred and twenty-eight pieces of artillery, Verdun, which numbered a hundred and thirty-six, Neufbrisach with a hundred, La Fere with seventy, Montmedy, sixty-five. Thionville was in flames, Phalsbourg had only opened her gates after a desperate resistance that lasted eighty days. It seemed as if all France were doomed to burn and be reduced to ruins by the never-ceasing cannonade.
One morning that Jean manifested a fixed determination to be gone, Henriette seized both his hands and held them tight clasped in hers.
“Ah, no! I beg you, do not go and leave me here alone. You are not strong enough; wait a few days yet, only a few days. I will let you go, I promise you I will, whenever the doctor says you are well enough to go and fight.”
V
The cold was intense on that December evening. Silvine and Prosper, together with little Charlot, were alone in the great kitchen of the farmhouse, she busy with her sewing, he whittling away at a whip that he proposed should be more than usually ornate. It was seven o’clock; they had dined at six, not waiting for Father Fouchard, who they supposed had been detained at Raucourt, where there was a scarcity of meat, and Henriette, whose turn it was to watch that night at the hospital, had just left the house, after cautioning Silvine to be sure to replenish Jean’s stove with coal before she went to bed.
Outside a sky of inky blackness overhung the white expanse of snow. No sound came from the village, buried among the drifts; all that was to be heard in the kitchen was the scraping of Prosper’s knife as he fashioned elaborate rosettes and lozenges on the dogwood stock. Now and then he stopped and cast a glance at Charlot, whose flaxen head was nodding drowsily. When the child fell asleep at last the silence seemed more profound than ever. The mother noiselessly changed the position of the candle that the light might not strike the eyes of her little one; then sitting down to her sewing again, she sank into a deep reverie. And Prosper, after a further period of hesitation, finally mustered up courage to disburden himself of what he wished to say.
“Listen, Silvine; I have something to tell you. I have been watching for an opportunity to speak to you in private – ”
Alarmed by his preface, she raised her eyes and looked him in the face.
“This is what it is. You’ll forgive me for frightening you, but it is best you should be forewarned. In Remilly this morning, at the corner by the church, I saw Goliah; I saw him as plain as I see you sitting there. Oh, no! there can be no mistake; I was not dreaming!”
Her face suddenly became white as death; all she was capable of uttering was a stifled moan:
“My God! my God!”
Prosper went on, in words calculated to give her least alarm, and related what he had learned during the day by questioning one person and another. No one doubted now that Goliah was a spy, that he had formerly come and settled in the country with the purpose of acquainting himself with its roads, its resources, the most insignificant details pertaining to the life of its inhabitants. Men reminded one another of the time when he had worked for Father Fouchard on his farm and of his sudden disappearance; they spoke of the places he had had subsequently to that over toward Beaumont and Raucourt. And now he was back again, holding a position of some sort at the military post of Sedan, its duties apparently not very well defined, going about from one village to another, denouncing this man, fining that, keeping an eye to the filling of the requisitions that made the peasants’ lives a burden to them. That very morning he had frightened the people of Remilly almost out of their wits in relation to a delivery of flour, alleging it was short in weight and had not been furnished within the specified time.
“You are forewarned,” said Prosper in conclusion, “and now you’ll know what to do when he shows his face here – ”
She interrupted him with a terrified cry.
“Do you think he will come here?”
“Dame! it appears to me extremely probable he will. It would show great lack of curiosity if he didn’t, since he knows he has a young one here that he has never seen. And then there’s you, besides, and you’re not so very homely but he might like to have another look at you.”
She gave him an entreating glance that silenced his rude attempt at gallantry. Charlot, awakened by the sound of their voices, had raised his head. With the blinking eyes of one suddenly aroused from slumber he looked about the room, and recalled the words that some idle fellow of the village had taught him; and with the solemn gravity of a little man of three he announced:
“Dey’re loafers, de Prussians!”
His mother went and caught him frantically in her arms and seated him on her lap. Ah! the poor little waif, at once her delight and her despair, whom she loved with all her soul and who brought the tears to her eyes every time she looked on him, flesh of her flesh, whom it wrung her heart to hear the urchins with whom he consorted in the street tauntingly call “the little Prussian!” She kissed him, as if she would have forced the words back into his mouth.
“Who taught my darling such naughty words? It’s not nice; you must not say them again, my loved one.”
Whereon Charlot, with the persistency of childhood, laughing and squirming, made haste to reiterate:
“Dey’re dirty loafers, de Prussians!”
And when his mother burst into tears he clung about her neck and also began to howl dismally. Mon Dieu, what new evil was in store for her! Was it not enough that she had lost in Honore the one single hope of her life, the assured promise of oblivion and future happiness? and was that man to appear upon the scene again to make her misery complete?
“Come,” she murmured, “come along, darling, and go to bed. Mamma will kiss her little boy all the same, for he does not know the sorrow he causes her.”
And she went from the room, leaving Prosper alone. The good fellow, not to add to her embarrassment, had averted his eyes from her face and was apparently devoting his entire attention to his carving.
Before putting Charlot to bed it was Silvine’s nightly custom to take him in to say good-night to Jean, with whom the youngster was on terms of great friendship. As she entered the room that evening, holding her candle before her, she beheld the convalescent seated upright in bed, his open eyes peering into the obscurity. What, was he not asleep? Faith, no; he had been ruminating on all sorts of subjects in the silence of the winter night; and while she was cramming the stove with coal he frolicked for a moment with Charlot, who rolled and tumbled on the bed like a young kitten. He knew Silvine’s story, and had a very kindly feeling for the meek, courageous girl whom misfortune had tried so sorely, mourning the only man she had ever loved, her sole comfort that child of shame whose existence was a daily reproach to her. When she had replaced the lid on the stove, therefore, and came to the bedside to take the boy from his arms, he perceived by her red eyes that she had been weeping. What, had she been having more trouble? But she would not answer his question: some other day she would tell him what it was if it seemed worth the while. Mon Dieu! was not her life one of continual suffering now?
Silvine was at last lugging Charlot away in her arms when there arose from the courtyard of the farm a confused sound of steps and voices. Jean listened in astonishment.
“What is it? It can’t be Father Fouchard returning, for I did not hear his wagon wheels.” Lying on his back in his silent chamber, with nothing to occupy his mind, he had become acquainted with every detail of the routine of home life on the farm, of which the sounds were all familiar to his ears. Presently he added: “Ah, I see; it is those men again, the francs-tireurs from Dieulet, after something to eat.”
“Quick, I must be gone!” said Silvine, hurrying from the room and leaving him again in darkness. “I must make haste and see they get their loaves.”
A loud knocking was heard at the kitchen door and Prosper, who was beginning to tire of his solitude, was holding a hesitating parley with the visitors. He did not like to admit strangers when the master was away, fearing he might be held responsible for any damage that might ensue. His good luck befriended him in this instance, however, for just then Father Fouchard’s carriole came lumbering up the acclivity, the tramp of the horse’s feet resounding faintly on the snow that covered the road. It was the old man who welcomed the newcomers.
“Ah, good! it’s you fellows. What have you on that wheelbarrow?”
Sambuc, lean and hungry as a robber and wrapped in the folds of a blue woolen blouse many times too large for him, did not even hear the farmer; he was storming angrily at Prosper, his honest brother, as he called him, who had only then made up his mind to unbar the door.
“Say, you! do you take us for beggars that you leave us standing in the cold in weather such as this?”
But Prosper did not trouble himself to make any other reply than was expressed in a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders, and while he was leading the horse off to the stable old Fouchard, bending over the wheelbarrow, again spoke up.
“So, it’s two dead sheep you’ve brought me. It’s lucky it’s freezing weather, otherwise we should know what they are by the smell.”
Cabasse and Ducat, Sambuc’s two trusty henchmen, who accompanied him in all his expeditions, raised their voices in protest.
“Oh!” cried the first, with his loud-mouthed Provencal volubility, “they’ve only been dead three days. They’re some of the animals that died on the Raffins farm, where the disease has been putting in its fine work of late.”
“Procumbit humi bos,” spouted the other, the ex-court officer whose excessive predilection for the ladies had got him into difficulties, and who was fond of airing his Latin on occasion.
Father Fouchard shook his head and continued to disparage their merchandise, declaring it was too “high.” Finally he took the three men into the kitchen, where he concluded the business by saying:
“After all, they’ll have to take it and make the best of it. It comes just in season, for there’s not a cutlet left in Raucourt. When a man’s hungry he’ll eat anything, won’t he?” And very well pleased at heart, he called to Silvine, who just then came in from putting Charlot to bed: “Let’s have some glasses; we are going to drink to the downfall of old Bismarck.”
Fouchard maintained amicable relations with these francs-tireurs from Dieulet wood, who for some three months past had been emerging at nightfall from the fastnesses where they made their lurking place, killing and robbing a Prussian whenever they could steal upon him unawares, descending on the farms and plundering the peasants when there was a scarcity of the other kind of game. They were the terror of all the villages in the vicinity, and the more so that every time a provision train was attacked or a sentry murdered the German authorities avenged themselves on the adjacent hamlets, the inhabitants of which they accused of abetting the outrages, inflicting heavy penalties on them, carrying off their mayors as prisoners, burning their poor hovels. Nothing would have pleased the peasants more than to deliver Sambuc and his band to the enemy, and they were only deterred from doing so by their fear of being shot in the back at a turn in the road some night should their attempt fail of success.
It had occurred to Fouchard to inaugurate a traffic with them. Roaming about the country in every direction, peering with their sharp eyes into ditches and cattle sheds, they had become his purveyors of dead animals. Never an ox or a sheep within a radius of three leagues was stricken down by disease but they came by night with their barrow and wheeled it away to him, and he paid them in provisions, most generally in bread, that Silvine baked in great batches expressly for the purpose. Besides, if he had no great love for them, he experienced a secret feeling of admiration for the francs-tireurs, a set of handy rascals who went their way and snapped their fingers at the world, and although he was making a fortune from his dealings with the Prussians, he could never refrain from chuckling to himself with grim, savage laughter as often as he heard that one of them had been found lying at the roadside with his throat cut.
“Your good health!” said he, touching glasses with the three men. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand: “Say, have you heard of the fuss they’re making over the two headless uhlans that they picked up over there near Villecourt? Villecourt was burned yesterday, you know; they say it was the penalty the village had to pay for harboring you. You’ll have to be prudent, don’t you see, and not show yourselves about here for a time. I’ll see the bread is sent you somewhere.”
Sambuc shrugged his shoulders and laughed contemptuously. What did he care for the Prussians, the dirty cowards! And all at once he exploded in a fit of anger, pounding the table with his fist.
“Tonnerre de Dieu! I don’t mind the uhlans so much; they’re not so bad, but it’s the other one I’d like to get a chance at once – you know whom I mean, the other fellow, the spy, the man who used to work for you.”
“Goliah?” said Father Fouchard.
Silvine, who had resumed her sewing, dropped it in her lap and listened with intense interest.
“That’s his name, Goliah! Ah, the brigand! he is as familiar with every inch of the wood of Dieulet as I am with my pocket, and he’s like enough to get us pinched some fine morning. I heard of him to-day at the Maltese Cross making his boast that he would settle our business for us before we’re a week older. A dirty hound, he is, and he served as guide to the Prussians the day before the battle of Beaumont; I leave it to these fellows if he didn’t.”
“It’s as true as there’s a candle standing on that table!” attested Cabasse.
“Per silentia amica lunoe,” added Ducat, whose quotations were not always conspicuous for their appositeness.
But Sambuc again brought his heavy fist down upon the table. “He has been tried and adjudged guilty, the scoundrel! If ever you hear of his being in the neighborhood just send me word, and his head shall go and keep company with the heads of the two uhlans in the Meuse; yes, by G-d! I pledge you my word it shall.”
There was silence. Silvine was very white, and gazed at the men with unwinking, staring eyes.
“Those are things best not be talked too much about,” old Fouchard prudently declared. “Your health, and good-night to you.”
They emptied the second bottle, and Prosper, who had returned from the stable, lent a hand to load upon the wheelbarrow, whence the dead sheep had been removed, the loaves that Silvine had placed in an old grain-sack. But he turned his back and made no reply when his brother and the other two men, wheeling the barrow before them through the snow, stalked away and were lost to sight in the darkness, repeating:
“Good-night, good-night! an plaisir!”
They had breakfasted the following morning, and Father Fouchard was alone in the kitchen when the door was thrown open and Goliah in the flesh entered the room, big and burly, with the ruddy hue of health on his face and his tranquil smile. If the old man experienced anything in the nature of a shock at the suddenness of the apparition he let no evidence of it escape him. He peered at the other through his half-closed lids while he came forward and shook his former employer warmly by the hand.
“How are you, Father Fouchard?”
Then only the old peasant seemed to recognize him.
“Hallo, my boy, is it you? You’ve been filling out; how fat you are!”
And he eyed him from head to foot as he stood there, clad in a sort of soldier’s greatcoat of coarse blue cloth, with a cap of the same material, wearing a comfortable, prosperous air of self-content. His speech betrayed no foreign accent, moreover; he spoke with the slow, thick utterance of the peasants of the district.
“Yes, Father Fouchard, it’s I in person. I didn’t like to be in the neighborhood without dropping in just to say how-do-you-do to you.”
The old man could not rid himself of a feeling of distrust. What was the fellow after, anyway? Could he have heard of the francs-tireurs’ visit to the farmhouse the night before? That was something he must try to ascertain. First of all, however, it would be best to treat him politely, as he seemed to have come there in a friendly spirit.
“Well, my lad, since you are so pleasant we’ll have a glass together for old times’ sake.”
He went himself and got a bottle and two glasses. Such expenditure of wine went to his heart, but one must know how to be liberal when he has business on hand. The scene of the preceding night was repeated, they touched glasses with the same words, the same gestures.
“Here’s to your good health, Father Fouchard.”
“And here’s to yours, my lad.”
Then Goliah unbent and his face assumed an expression of satisfaction; he looked about him like a man pleased with the sight of objects that recalled bygone times. He did not speak of the past, however, nor, for the matter of that, did he speak of the present. The conversation ran on the extremely cold weather, which would interfere with farming operations; there was one good thing to be said for the snow, however: it would kill off the insects. He barely alluded, with a slightly pained expression, to the partially concealed hatred, the affright and scorn, with which he had been received in the other houses of Remilly. Every man owes allegiance to his country, doesn’t he? It is quite clear he should serve his country as well as he knows how. In France, however, no one looked at the matter in that light; there were things about which people had very queer notions. And as the old man listened and looked at that broad, innocent, good-natured face, beaming with frankness and good-will, he said to himself that surely that excellent fellow had had no evil designs in coming there.
“So you are all alone to-day, Father Fouchard?”
“Oh, no; Silvine is out at the barn, feeding the cows. Would you like to see her?”
Goliah laughed. “Well, yes. To be quite frank with you, it was on Silvine’s account that I came.”
Old Fouchard felt as if a great load had been taken off his mind; he went to the door and shouted at the top of his voice:
“Silvine! Silvine! There’s someone here to see you.”
And he went away about his business without further apprehension, since the lass was there to look out for the property. A man must be in a bad way, he reflected, to let a fancy for a girl keep such a hold on him after such a length of time, years and years.
When Silvine entered the room she was not surprised to find herself in presence of Goliah, who remained seated and contemplated her with his broad smile, in which, however, there was a trace of embarrassment. She had been expecting him, and stood stock-still immediately she stepped across the doorsill, nerving herself and bracing all her faculties. Little Charlot came running up and hid among her petticoats, astonished and frightened to see a strange man there. Then succeeded a few seconds of awkward silence.
“And this is the little one, then?” Goliah asked at last in his most dulcet tone.
“Yes,” was Silvine’s curt, stern answer.
Silence again settled down upon the room. He had known there was a child, although he had gone away before the birth of his offspring, but this was the first time he had laid eyes on it. He therefore wished to explain matters, like a young man of sense who is confident he can give good reasons for his conduct.
“Come, Silvine, I know you cherish bitter feelings against me – and yet there is no reason why you should. If I went away, if I have been cause to you of so much suffering, you might have told yourself that perhaps it was because I was not my own master. When a man has masters over him he must obey them, mustn’t he? If they had sent me off on foot to make a journey of a hundred leagues I should have been obliged to go. And, of course, I couldn’t say a word to you about it; you have no idea how bad it made me feel to go away as I did without bidding you good-by. I won’t say to you now that I felt certain I should return to you some day; still, I always fully expected that I should, and, as you see, here I am again – ”
She had turned away her head and was looking through the window at the snow that carpeted the courtyard, as if resolved to hear no word he said. Her persistent silence troubled him; he interrupted his explanations to say:
“Do you know you are prettier than ever!”
True enough, she was very beautiful in her pallor, with her magnificent great eyes that illuminated all her face. The heavy coils of raven hair that crowned her head seemed the outward symbol of the inward sorrow that was gnawing at her heart.
“Come, don’t be angry! you know that I mean you no harm. If I did not love you still I should not have come back, that’s very certain. Now that I am here and everything is all right once more we shall see each other now and then, shan’t we?”
She suddenly stepped a pace backward, and looking him squarely in the face:
“Never!”
“Never! – and why? Are you not my wife, is not that child ours?”
She never once took her eyes from off his face, speaking with impressive slowness:
“Listen to me; it will be better to end that matter once for all. You knew Honore; I loved him, he was the only man who ever had my love. And now he is dead; you robbed me of him, you murdered him over there on the battlefield, and never again will I be yours. Never!”
She raised her hand aloft as if invoking heaven to record her vow, while in her voice was such depth of hatred that for a moment he stood as if cowed, then murmured:
“Yes, I heard that Honore was dead; he was a very nice young fellow. But what could you expect? Many another has died as well; it is the fortune of war. And then it seemed to me that once he was dead there would no longer be a barrier between us, and let me remind you, Silvine, that after all I was never brutal toward you – ”
But he stopped short at sight of her agitation; she seemed as if about to tear her own flesh in her horror and distress.
“Oh! that is just it; yes, it is that which seems as if it would drive me wild. Why, oh! why did I yield when I never loved you? Honore’s departure left me so broken down, I was so sick in mind and body that never have I been able to recall any portion of the circumstances; perhaps it was because you talked to me of him and appeared to love him. My God! the long nights I have spent thinking of that time and weeping until the fountain of my tears was dry! It is dreadful to have done a thing that one had no wish to do and afterward be unable to explain the reason of it. And he had forgiven me, he had told me that he would marry me in spite of all when his time was out, if those hateful Prussians only let him live. And you think I will return to you. No, never, never! not if I were to die for it!”
Goliah’s face grew dark. She had always been so submissive, and now he saw she was not to be shaken in her fixed resolve. Notwithstanding his easy-going nature he was determined he would have her, even if he should be compelled to use force, now that he was in a position to enforce his authority, and it was only his inherent prudence, the instinct that counseled him to patience and diplomacy, that kept him from resorting to violent measures now. The hard-fisted colossus was averse to bringing his physical powers into play; he therefore had recourse to another method for making her listen to reason.
“Very well; since you will have nothing more to do with me I will take away the child.”
“What do you mean?”
Charlot, whose presence had thus far been forgotten by them both, had remained hanging to his mother’s skirts, struggling bravely to keep down his rising sobs as the altercation waxed more warm. Goliah, leaving his chair, approached the group.
“You’re my boy, aren’t you? You’re a good little Prussian. Come along with me.”
But before he could lay hands on the child Silvine, all a-quiver with excitement, had thrown her arms about it and clasped it to her bosom.
“He, a Prussian, never! He’s French, was born in France!”
“You say he’s French! Look at him, and look at me; he’s my very image. Can you say he resembles you in any one of his features?”
She turned her eyes on the big, strapping lothario, with his curling hair and beard and his broad, pink face, in which the great blue eyes gleamed like globes of polished porcelain; and it was only too true, the little one had the same yellow thatch, the same rounded cheeks, the same light eyes; every feature of the hated race was reproduced faithfully in him. A tress of her jet black hair that had escaped from its confinement and wandered down upon her shoulder in the agitation of the moment showed her how little there was in common between the child and her.
“I bore him; he is mine!” she screamed in fury. “He’s French, and will grow up to be a Frenchman, knowing no word of your dirty German language; and some day he shall go and help to kill the whole pack of you, to avenge those whom you have murdered!”
Charlot, tightening his clasp about her neck, began to cry, shrieking:
“Mammy, mammy, I’m ‘fraid! take me away!”
Then Goliah, doubtless because he did not wish to create a scandal, stepped back, and in a harsh, stern voice, unlike anything she had ever heard from his lips before, made this declaration:
“Bear in mind what I am about to tell you, Silvine. I know all that happens at this farm. You harbor the francs-tireurs from the wood of Dieulet, among them that Sambuc who is brother to your hired man; you supply the bandits with provisions. And I know that that hired man, Prosper, is a chasseur d’Afrique and a deserter, and belongs to us by rights. Further, I know that you are concealing on your premises a wounded man, another soldier, whom a word from me would suffice to consign to a German fortress. What do you think: am I not well informed?”
She was listening to him now, tongue-tied and terror-stricken, while little Charlot kept piping in her ear with lisping voice:
“Oh! mammy, mammy, take me away, I’m ‘fraid!”
“Come,” resumed Goliah, “I’m not a bad fellow, and I don’t like quarrels and bickering, as you are well aware, but I swear by all that’s holy I will have them all arrested, Father Fouchard and the rest, unless you consent to admit me to your chamber on Monday next. I will take the child, too, and send him away to Germany to my mother, who will be very glad to have him; for you have no further right to him, you know, if you are going to leave me. You understand me, don’t you? The folks will all be gone, and all I shall have to do will be to come and carry him away. I am the master; I can do what pleases me – come, what have you to say?”
But she made no answer, straining the little one more closely to her breast as if fearing he might be torn from her then and there, and in her great eyes was a look of mingled terror and execration.
“It is well; I give you three days to think the matter over. See to it that your bedroom window that opens on the orchard is left open. If I do not find the window open next Monday evening at seven o’clock I will come with a detail the following day and arrest the inmates of the house and then will return and bear away the little one. Think of it well; au revoir, Silvine.”
He sauntered quietly away, and she remained standing, rooted to her place, her head filled with such a swarming, buzzing crowd of terrible thoughts that it seemed to her she must go mad. And during the whole of that long day the tempest raged in her. At first the thought occurred to her instinctively to take her child in her arms and fly with him, wherever chance might direct, no matter where; but what would become of them when night should fall and envelop them in darkness? how earn a livelihood for him and for herself? Then she determined she would speak to Jean, would notify Prosper, and Father Fouchard himself, and again she hesitated and changed her mind: was she sufficiently certain of the friendship of those people that she could be sure they would not sacrifice her to the general safety, she who was cause that they were menaced all with such misfortune? No, she would say nothing to anyone; she would rely on her own efforts to extricate herself from the peril she had incurred by braving that bad man. But what scheme could she devise; mon Dieu! how could she avert the threatened evil, for her upright nature revolted; she could never have forgiven herself had she been the instrument of bringing disaster to so many people, to Jean in particular, who had always been so good to Charlot.
