The Downfall Part 40

The chin-strap had broken, releasing the spiked helmet, which had rolled away a few steps. And it was indisputable that the body was attired in the uniform of the Guard; the dark gray trousers, the blue tunic with white facings, the greatcoat rolled and worn, belt-wise, across the shoulder.

"It is the Guard uniform," she said; "I am quite certain of it. It is exactly like the colored plate I have at home, and then the photograph that Cousin Gunther sent us--" She stopped suddenly, and with her unconcerned, fearless air, before anyone could make a motion to detain her, walked up to the corpse, bent down and read the number of the regiment. "Ah, the Forty-third!" she exclaimed. "I knew it."

And she returned to her position, while a storm of bullets whistled around her ears. "Yes, the Forty-third; Cousin Gunther's regiment--something told me it must be so. Ah! if my poor husband were only here!"

After that all Jean's and Maurice's entreaties were ineffectual to make her keep quiet. She was feverishly restless, constantly protruding her head to peer into the opposite wood, evidently hara.s.sed by some anxiety that preyed upon her mind. Her companions continued to load and fire with the same blind fury, pus.h.i.+ng her back with their knee whenever she exposed herself too rashly. It looked as if the Prussians were beginning to consider that their numbers would warrant them in attacking, for they showed themselves more frequently and there were evidences of preparations going on behind the trees. They were suffering severely, however, from the fire of the French, whose bullets at that short range rarely failed to bring down their man.

"That may be your cousin," said Jean. "Look, that officer over there, who has just come out of the house with the green shutters."

He was a captain, as could be seen by the gold braid on the collar of his tunic and the golden eagle on his helmet that flashed back the level ray of the setting sun. He had discarded his epaulettes, and carrying his saber in his right hand, was shouting an order in a sharp, imperative voice; and the distance between them was so small, a scant two hundred yards, that every detail of his trim, slender figure was plainly discernible, as well as the pinkish, stern face and slight blond mustache.

Henriette scrutinized him with attentive eyes. "It is he," she replied, apparently unsurprised. "I recognize him perfectly."

With a look of concentrated rage Maurice drew his piece to his shoulder and covered him. "The cousin--Ah! sure as there is a G.o.d in heaven he shall pay for Weiss."

But, quivering with excitement, she jumped to her feet and knocked up the weapon, whose charge was wasted on the air.

"Stop, stop! we must not kill acquaintances, relatives! It is too barbarous."

And, all her womanly instincts coming back to her, she sank down behind the tree and gave way to a fit of violent weeping. The horror of it all was too much for her; in her great dread and sorrow she was forgetful of all beside.

Rochas, meantime, was in his element. He had excited the few zouaves and other troops around him to such a pitch of frenzy, their fire had become so murderously effective at sight of the Prussians, that the latter first wavered and then retreated to the shelter of their wood.

"Stand your ground, my boys! don't give way an inch! Aha, see 'em run, the cowards! we'll fix their flint for 'em!"

He was in high spirits and seemed to have recovered all his unbounded confidence, certain that victory was yet to crown their efforts. There had been no defeat. The handful of men before him stood in his eyes for the united armies of Germany, and he was going to destroy them at his leisure. All his long, lean form, all his thin, bony face, where the huge nose curved down upon the self-willed, sensual mouth, exhaled a laughing, vain-glorious satisfaction, the joy of the conquering trooper who goes through the world with his sweetheart on his arm and a bottle of good wine in his hand.

"_Parbleu_, my children, what are we here for, I'd like to know, if not to lick 'em out of their boots? and that's the way this affair is going to end, just mark my words. We shouldn't know ourselves any longer if we should let ourselves be beaten. Beaten! come, come, that is too good!

When the neighbors tread on our toes, or when we feel we are beginning to grow rusty for want of something to do, we just turn to and give 'em a thras.h.i.+ng; that's all there is to it. Come, boys, let 'em have it once more, and you'll see 'em run like so many jackrabbits!"

He bellowed and gesticulated like a lunatic, and was such a good fellow withal in the comforting illusion of his ignorance that the men were inoculated with his confidence. He suddenly broke out again:

"And we'll kick 'em, we'll kick 'em, we'll kick 'em to the frontier!

Victory, victory!"

But at that juncture, just as the enemy across the valley seemed really to be falling back, a hot fire of musketry came pouring in on them from the left. It was a repet.i.tion of the everlasting flanking movement that had done the Prussians such good service; a strong detachment of the Guards had crept around toward the French rear through the Fond de Givonne. It was useless to think of holding the position longer; the little band of men who were defending the terraces were caught between two fires and menaced with being cut off from Sedan. Men fell on every side, and for a moment the confusion was extreme; the Prussians were already scaling the wall of the park, and advancing along the pathways.

Some zouaves rushed forward to repel them, and there was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle with the bayonet. There was one zouave, a big, handsome, brown-bearded man, bare-headed and with his jacket hanging in tatters from his shoulders, who did his work with appalling thoroughness, driving his reeking bayonet home through splintering bones and yielding tissues, cleansing it of the gore that it had contracted from one man by plunging it into the flesh of another; and when it broke he laid about him, smas.h.i.+ng many a skull, with the b.u.t.t of his musket; and when finally he made a misstep and lost his weapon he sprung, bare-handed, for the throat of a burly Prussian, with such tigerish fierceness that both men rolled over and over on the gravel to the shattered kitchen door, clasped in a mortal embrace. The trees of the park looked down on many such scenes of slaughter, and the green lawn was piled with corpses. But it was before the stoop, around the sky-blue sofa and fauteuils, that the conflict raged with greatest fury; a maddened mob of savages, firing at one another at point-blank range, so that hair and beards were set on fire, tearing one another with teeth and nails when a knife was wanting to slash the adversary's throat.

Then Gaude, with his sorrowful face, the face of a man who has had his troubles of which he does not care to speak, was seized with a sort of sudden heroic madness. At that moment of irretrievable defeat, when he must have known that the company was annihilated and that there was not a man left to answer his summons, he grasped his bugle, carried it to his lips and sounded the general, in so tempestuous, ear-splitting strains that one would have said he wished to wake the dead. Nearer and nearer came the Prussians, but he never stirred, only sounding the call the louder, with all the strength of his lungs. He fell, pierced with many bullets, and his spirit pa.s.sed in one long-drawn, parting wail that died away and was lost upon the shuddering air.

Rochas made no attempt to fly; he seemed unable to comprehend. Even more erect than usual, he waited the end, stammering:

"Well, what's the matter? what's the matter?"

Such a possibility had never entered his head as that they could be defeated. They were changing everything in these degenerate days, even to the manner of fighting; had not those fellows a right to remain on their own side of the valley and wait for the French to go and attack them? There was no use killing them; as fast as they were killed more kept popping up. What kind of a d-----d war was it, anyway, where they were able to collect ten men against their opponent's one, where they never showed their face until evening, after blazing away at you all day with their artillery until you didn't know on which end you were standing? Aghast and confounded, having failed so far to acquire the first idea of the rationale of the campaign, he was dimly conscious of the existence of some mysterious, superior method which he could not comprehend, against which he ceased to struggle, although in his dogged stubbornness he kept repeating mechanically:

"Courage, my children! victory is before us!"

Meanwhile he had stooped and clutched the flag. That was his last, his only thought, to save the flag, retreating again, if necessary, so that it might not be defiled by contact with Prussian hands. But the staff, although it was broken, became entangled in his legs; he narrowly escaped falling. The bullets whistled past him, he felt that death was near; he stripped the silk from the staff and tore it into shreds, striving to destroy it utterly. And then it was that, stricken at once in the neck, chest, and legs, he sank to earth amid the bright tri-colored rags, as if they had been his pall. He survived a moment yet, gazing before him with fixed, dilated eyes, reading, perhaps, in the vision he beheld on the horizon the stern lesson that War conveys, the cruel, vital struggle that is to be accepted not otherwise than gravely, reverently, as immutable law. Then a slight tremor ran through his frame, and darkness succeeded to his infantine bewilderment; he pa.s.sed away, like some poor dumb, lowly creature of a day, a joyous insect that mighty, impa.s.sive Nature, in her relentless fatality, has caught and crushed. In him died all a legend.

When the Prussians began to draw near Jean and Maurice had retreated, retiring from tree to tree, face to the enemy, and always, as far as possible, keeping Henriette behind them. They did not give over firing, discharging their pieces and then falling back to seek a fresh cover.

Maurice knew where there was a little wicket in the wall at the upper part of the park, and they were so fortunate as to find it unfastened.

With lighter hearts when they had left it behind them, they found themselves in a narrow by-road that wound between two high walls, but after following it for some distance the sound of firing in front caused them to turn into a path on their left. As luck would have it, it ended in an _impa.s.se_; they had to retrace their steps, running the gauntlet of the bullets, and take the turning to the right. When they came to exchange reminiscences in later days they could never agree on which road they had taken. In that tangled network of suburban lanes and pa.s.sages there was firing still going on from every corner that afforded a shelter, protracted battles raged at the gates of farmyards, everything that could be converted into a barricade had its defenders, from whom the a.s.sailants tried to wrest it; all with the utmost fury and vindictiveness. And all at once they came out upon the Fond de Givonne road, not far from Sedan.

For the third time Jean raised his eyes toward the western sky, that was all aflame with a bright, rosy light; and he heaved a sigh of unspeakable relief.

"Ah, that pig of a sun! at last he is going to bed!"

And they ran with might and main, all three of them, never once stopping to draw breath. About them, filling the road in all its breadth, was the rear-guard of fugitives from the battlefield, still flowing onward with the irresistible momentum of an unchained mountain torrent. When they came to the Balan gate they had a long period of waiting in the midst of the impatient, ungovernable throng. The chains of the drawbridge had given way, and the only path across the fosse was by the foot-bridge, so that the guns and horses had to turn back and seek admission by the bridge of the chateau, where the jam was said to be even still more fearful. At the gate of la Ca.s.sine, too, people were trampled to death in their eagerness to gain admittance. From all the adjacent heights the terror-stricken fragments of the army came tumbling into the city, as into a cesspool, with the hollow roar of pent-up water that has burst its dam. The fatal attraction of those walls had ended by making cowards of the bravest; men trod one another down in their blind haste to be under cover.

Maurice had caught Henriette in his arms, and in a voice that trembled with suspense:

"It cannot be," he said, "that they will have the cruelty to close the gate and shut us out."

That was what the crowd feared would be done. To right and left, however, upon the glacis soldiers were already arranging their bivouacs, while entire batteries, guns, caissons, and horses, in confusion worse confounded, had thrown themselves pell-mell into the fosse for safety.

But now shrill, impatient bugle calls rose on the evening air, followed soon by the long-drawn strains of retreat. They were summoning the belated soldiers back to their comrades, who came running in, singly and in groups. A dropping fire of musketry still continued in the faubourgs, but it was gradually dying out. Heavy guards were stationed on the banquette behind the parapet to protect the approaches, and at last the gate was closed. The Prussians were within a hundred yards of the sally-port; they could be seen moving on the Balan road, tranquilly establis.h.i.+ng themselves in the houses and gardens.

Maurice and Jean, pus.h.i.+ng Henriette before them to protect her from the jostling of the throng, were among the last to enter Sedan. Six o'clock was striking. The artillery fire had ceased nearly an hour ago. Soon the distant musketry fire, too, was silenced. Then, to the deafening uproar, to the vengeful thunder that had been roaring since morning, there succeeded a stillness as of death. Night came, and with it came a boding silence, fraught with terror.

VIII.

At half-past five o'clock, after the closing of the gates, Delaherche, in his eager thirst for news, now that he knew the battle lost, had again returned to the Sous-Prefecture. He hung persistently about the approaches of the janitor's lodge, tramping up and down the paved courtyard with feverish impatience, for more than three hours, watching for every officer who came up and interviewing him, and thus it was that he had become acquainted, piecemeal, with the rapid series of events; how General de Wimpffen had tendered his resignation and then withdrawn it upon the peremptory refusal of Generals Ducrot and Douay to append their names to the articles of capitulation, how the Emperor had thereupon invested the General with full authority to proceed to the Prussian headquarters and treat for the surrender of the vanquished army on the most advantageous terms obtainable; how, finally, a council of war had been convened with the object of deciding what possibilities there were of further protracting the struggle successfully by the defense of the fortress. During the deliberations of this council, which consisted of some twenty officers of the highest rank and seemed to him as if it would never end, the cloth manufacturer climbed the steps of the huge public building at least twenty times, and at last his curiosity was gratified by beholding General de Wimpffen emerge, very red in the face and his eyelids puffed and swollen with tears, behind whom came two other generals and a colonel. They leaped into the saddle and rode away over the Pont de Meuse. The bells had struck eight some time before; the inevitable capitulation was now to be accomplished, from which there was no escape.

Delaherche, somewhat relieved in mind by what he had heard and seen, remembered that it was a long time since he had tasted food and resolved to turn his steps homeward, but the terrific crowd that had collected since he first came made him pause in dismay. It is no exaggeration to say that the streets and squares were so congested, so thronged, so densely packed with horses, men, and guns, that one would have declared the closely compacted ma.s.s could only have been squeezed and wedged in there thus by the effort of some gigantic mechanism. While the ramparts were occupied by the bivouacs of such regiments as had fallen back in good order, the city had been invaded and submerged by an angry, surging, desperate flood, the broken remnants of the various corps, stragglers and fugitives from all arms of the service, and the dammed-up tide made it impossible for one to stir foot or hand. The wheels of the guns, of the caissons, and the innumerable vehicles of every description, had interlocked and were tangled in confusion worse confounded, while the poor horses, flogged unmercifully by their drivers and pulled, now in this direction, now in that, could only dance in their bewilderment, unable to move a step either forward or back. And the men, deaf to reproaches and threats alike, forced their way into the houses, devoured whatever they could lay hands on, flung themselves down to sleep wherever they could find a vacant s.p.a.ce, it might be in the best bedroom or in the cellar. Many of them had fallen in doorways, where they blocked the vestibule; others, without strength to go farther, lay extended on the sidewalks and slept the sleep of death, not even rising when some by-pa.s.ser trod on them and bruised an arm or leg, preferring the risk of death to the fatigue of changing their location.

These things all helped to make Delaherche still more keenly conscious of the necessity of immediate capitulation. There were some quarters in which numerous caissons were packed so close together that they were in contact, and a single Prussian sh.e.l.l alighting on one of them must inevitably have exploded them all, entailing the immediate destruction of the city by conflagration. Then, too, what could be accomplished with such an a.s.semblage of miserable wretches, deprived of all their powers, mental and physical, by reason of their long-endured privations, and dest.i.tute of either ammunition or subsistence? Merely to clear the streets and reduce them to a condition of something like order would require a whole day. The place was entirely incapable of defense, having neither guns nor provisions.

These were the considerations that had prevailed at the council among those more reasonable officers who, in the midst of their grief and sorrow for their country and the army, had retained a clear and undistorted view of the situation as it was; and the more hot-headed among them, those who cried with emotion that it was impossible for an army to surrender thus, had been compelled to bow their head upon their breast in silence and admit that they had no practicable scheme to offer whereby the conflict might be recommenced on the morrow.

In the Place Turenne and Place du Rivage, Delaherche succeeded with the greatest difficulty in working his way through the press. As he pa.s.sed the Hotel of the Golden Cross a sorrowful vision greeted his eyes, that of the generals seated in the dining room, gloomily silent, around the empty board; there was nothing left to eat in the house, not even bread. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, however, who had been storming and vociferating in the kitchen, appeared to have found something, for he suddenly held his peace and ran away swiftly up the stairs, holding in his hands a large paper parcel of a greasy aspect. Such was the crowd a.s.sembled there, to stare through the lighted windows upon the guests a.s.sembled around that famine-stricken _table d'hote_, that the manufacturer was obliged to make vigorous play with his elbows, and was frequently driven back by some wild rush of the mob and lost all the distance, and more, that he had just gained. In the Grande Rue, however, the obstacles became actually impa.s.sable, and there was a moment when he was inclined to give up in despair; a complete battery seemed to have been driven in there and the guns and _materiel_ piled, pell-mell, on top of one another. Deciding finally to take the bull by the horns, he leaped to the axle of a piece and so pursued his way, jumping from wheel to wheel, straddling the guns, at the imminent risk of breaking his legs, if not his neck. Afterward it was some horses that blocked his way, and he made himself lowly and stooped, creeping among the feet and underneath the bellies of the sorry jades, who were ready to die of inanition, like their masters. Then, when after a quarter of an hour's laborious effort he reached the junction of the Rue Saint-Michel, he was terrified at the prospect of the dangers and obstacles that he had still to face, and which, instead of diminis.h.i.+ng, seemed to be increasing, and made up his mind to turn down the street above mentioned, which would take him into the Rue des Laboureurs; he hoped that by taking these usually quiet and deserted pa.s.sages he should escape the crowd and reach his home in safety. As luck would have it he almost directly came upon a house of ill-fame to which a band of drunken soldiers were in process of laying siege, and considering that a stray shot, should one reach him in the fracas, would be equally as unpleasant as one intended for him, he made haste to retrace his steps. Resolving to have done with it he pushed on to the end of the Grande Rue, now gaining a few feet by balancing himself, rope-walker fas.h.i.+on, along the pole of some vehicle, now climbing over an army wagon that barred his way. At the Place du College he was carried along--bodily on the shoulders of the throng for a s.p.a.ce of thirty paces; he fell to the ground, narrowly escaped a set of fractured ribs, and saved himself only by the proximity of a friendly iron railing, by the bars of which he pulled himself to his feet. And when at last he reached the Rue Maqua, inundated with perspiration, his clothing almost torn from his back, he found that he had been more than an hour in coming from the Sous-Prefecture, a distance which in ordinary times he was accustomed to accomplish in less than five minutes.

Major Bouroche, with the intention of keeping the ambulance and garden from being overrun with intruders, had caused two sentries to be mounted at the door. This measure was a source of great comfort to Delaherche, who had begun to contemplate the possibilities of his house being subjected to pillage. The sight of the ambulance in the garden, dimly lighted by a few candles and exhaling its fetid, feverish emanations, caused him a fresh constriction of the heart; then, stumbling over the body of a soldier who was stretched in slumber on the stone pavement of the walk, he supposed him to be one of the fugitives who had managed to find his way in there from outside, until, calling to mind the 7th corps treasure that had been deposited there and the sentry who had been set over it, he saw how matters stood: the poor fellow, stationed there since early morning, had been overlooked by his superiors and had succ.u.mbed to his fatigue. Besides, the house seemed quite deserted; the ground floor was black as Egypt, and the doors stood wide open. The servants were doubtless all at the ambulance, for there was no one in the kitchen, which was faintly illuminated by the light of a wretched little smoky lamp. He lit a candle and ascended the main staircase very softly, in order not to awaken his wife and mother, whom he had begged to go to bed early after a day where the stress, both mental and physical, had been so intense.

On entering his study, however, he beheld a sight that caused his eyes to dilate with astonishment. Upon the sofa on which Captain Beaudoin had s.n.a.t.c.hed a few hours' repose the day before a soldier lay outstretched; and he could not understand the reason of it until he had looked and recognized young Maurice Leva.s.seur, Henriette's brother. He was still more surprised when, on turning his head, he perceived, stretched on the floor and wrapped in a bed quilt, another soldier, that Jean, whom he had seen for a moment just before the battle. It was plain that the poor fellows, in their distress and fatigue after the conflict, not knowing where else to bestow themselves, had sought refuge there; they were crushed, annihilated, like dead men. He did not linger there, but pushed on to his wife's chamber, which was the next room on the corridor. A lamp was burning on a table in a corner; the profound silence seemed to shudder. Gilberte had thrown herself crosswise on the bed, fully dressed, doubtless in order to be prepared for any catastrophe, and was sleeping peacefully, while, seated on a chair at her side with her head declined and resting lightly on the very edge of the mattress, Henriette was also slumbering, with a fitful, agitated sleep, while big tears welled up beneath her swollen eyelids. He contemplated them silently for a moment, strongly tempted to awake and question the young woman in order to ascertain what she knew. Had she succeeded in reaching Bazeilles? and why was it that she was back there? Perhaps she would be able to give him some tidings of his dyehouse were he to ask her? A feeling of compa.s.sion stayed him, however, and he was about to leave the room when his mother, ghost-like, appeared at the threshold of the open door and beckoned him to follow her.

As they were pa.s.sing through the dining room he expressed his surprise.

"What, have you not been abed to-night?"

She shook her head, then said below her breath:

"I cannot sleep; I have been sitting in an easy-chair beside the colonel. He is very feverish; he awakes at every instant, almost, and then plies me with questions. I don't know how to answer them. Come in and see him, you."

M. de Vineuil had fallen asleep again. His long face, now brightly red, barred by the sweeping mustache that fell across it like a snowy avalanche, was scarce distinguishable on the pillow. Mme. Delaherche had placed a newspaper before the lamp and that corner of the room was lost in semi-darkness, while all the intensity of the bright lamplight was concentrated on her where she sat, uncompromisingly erect, in her fauteuil, her hands crossed before her in her lap, her vague eyes bent on s.p.a.ce, in sorrowful reverie.