The Downfall Part 42

And seeing by the young woman's tears that she was acquainted with her husband's fate, he abruptly blurted out the horrible bit of news that the carpenter had communicated to him among the rest.

"Poor Weiss! it seems they burned him. Yes, after shooting all the civilians who were caught with arms in their hands, they threw their bodies into the flames of a burning house and poured petroleum over them."

Henriette was horror-stricken as she listened. Her tears burst forth, her frame was shaken by her sobs. My G.o.d, my G.o.d, not even the poor comfort of going to claim her dear dead and give him decent sepulture; his ashes were to be scattered by the winds of heaven! Maurice had again clasped her in his arms and spoke to her endearingly, calling her his poor Cinderella, beseeching her not to take the matter so to heart, a brave woman as she was.

After a time, during which no word was spoken, Delaherche, who had been standing at the window watching the growing day, suddenly turned and addressed the two soldiers:

"By the way, I was near forgetting. What I came up here to tell you is this: down in the courtyard, in the shed where the treasure chests were deposited, there is an officer who is about to distribute the money among the men, so as to keep the Prussians from getting it. You had better go down, for a little money may be useful to you, that is, provided we are all alive a few hours hence."

The advice was good, and Maurice and Jean acted on it, having first prevailed on Henriette to take her brother's place on the sofa. If she could not go to sleep again, she would at least be securing some repose.

As for Delaherche, he pa.s.sed through the adjoining chamber, where Gilberte with her tranquil, pretty face was slumbering still as soundly as a child, neither the sound of conversation nor even Henriette's sobs having availed to make her change her position. From there he went to the apartment where his mother was watching at Colonel de Vineuil's bedside, and thrust his head through the door; the old lady was asleep in her fauteuil, while the colonel, his eyes closed, was like a corpse.

He opened them to their full extent and asked:

"Well, it's all over, isn't it?"

Irritated by the question, which detained him at the very moment when he thought he should be able to slip away un.o.bserved, Delaherche gave a wrathful look and murmured, sinking his voice:

"Oh, yes, all over! until it begins again! There is nothing signed."

The colonel went on in a voice scarcely higher than a whisper; delirium was setting in.

"Merciful G.o.d, let me die before the end! I do not hear the guns. Why have they ceased firing? Up there at Saint-Menges, at Fleigneux, we have command of all the roads; should the Prussians dare turn Sedan and attack us, we will drive them into the Meuse. The city is there, an insurmountable obstacle between us and them; our positions, too, are the stronger. Forward! the 7th corps will lead, the 12th will protect the retreat--"

And his fingers kept drumming on the counterpane with a measured movement, as if keeping time with the trot of the charger he was riding in his vision. Gradually the motion became slower and slower as his words became more indistinct and he sank off into slumber. It ceased, and he lay motionless and still, as if the breath had left his body.

"Lie still and rest," Delaherche whispered; "when I have news I will return."

Then, having first a.s.sured himself that he had not disturbed his mother's slumber, he slipped away and disappeared.

Jean and Maurice, on descending to the shed in the courtyard, had found there an officer of the pay department, seated on a common kitchen chair behind a little unpainted pine table, who, without pen, ink, or paper, without taking receipts or indulging in formalities of any kind, was dispensing fortunes. He simply stuck his hand into the open mouth of the bags filled with bright gold pieces, and as the sergeants of the 7th corps pa.s.sed in line before him he filled their _kepis_, never counting what he bestowed with such rapid liberality. The understanding was that the sergeants were subsequently to divide what they received with the surviving men of their half-sections. Each of them received his portion awkwardly, as if it had been a ration of meat or coffee, then stalked off in an embarra.s.sed, self-conscious sort of way, transferring the contents of the _kepi_ to his trousers' pockets so as not to display his wealth to the world at large. And not a word was spoken; there was not a sound to be heard but the crystalline c.h.i.n.k and rattle of the coin as it was received by those poor devils, dumfounded to see the responsibility of such riches thrust on them when there was not a place in the city where they could purchase a loaf of bread or a quart of wine.

When Jean and Maurice appeared before him the officer, who was holding outstretched his hand filled, as usual, with louis, drew it back.

"Neither of you fellows is a sergeant. No one except sergeants is ent.i.tled to receive the money." Then, in haste to be done with his task, he changed his mind: "Never mind, though; here, you corporal, take this.

Step lively, now. Next man!"

And he dropped the gold coins into the _kepi_ that Jean held out to him.

The latter, oppressed by the magnitude of the amount, nearly six hundred francs, insisted that Maurice should take one-half. No one could say what might happen; they might be parted from each other.

They made the division in the garden, before the ambulance, and when they had concluded their financial business they entered, having recognized on the straw near the entrance the drummer-boy of their company, Bastian, a fat, good-natured little fellow, who had had the ill-luck to receive a spent ball in the groin about five o'clock the day before, when the battle was ended. He had been dying by inches for the last twelve hours.

In the dim, white light of morning, at that hour of awakening, the sight of the ambulance sent a chill of horror through them. Three more patients had died during the night, without anyone being aware of it, and the attendants were hurriedly bearing away the corpses in order to make room for others. Those who had been operated on the day before opened wide their eyes in their somnolent, semi-conscious state, and looked with dazed astonishment on that vast dormitory of suffering, where the victims of the knife, only half-slaughtered, rested on their straw. It was in vain that some attempts had been made the night before to clean up the room after the b.l.o.o.d.y work of the operations; there were great splotches of blood on the ill-swept floor; in a bucket of water a great sponge was floating, stained with red, for all the world like a human brain; a hand, its fingers crushed and broken, had been overlooked and lay on the floor of the shed. It was the parings and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of the human butcher shop, the horrible waste and refuse that ensues upon a day of slaughter, viewed in the cold, raw light of dawn.

Bouroche, who, after a few hours of repose, had already resumed his duties, stopped in front of the wounded drummer-boy, Bastian, then pa.s.sed on with an imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. A hopeless case; nothing to be done. The lad had opened his eyes, however, and emerging from the comatose state in which he had been lying, was eagerly watching a sergeant who, his _kepi_ filled with gold in his hand, had come into the room to see if there were any of his men among those poor wretches.

He found two, and to each of them gave twenty francs. Other sergeants came in, and the gold began to fall in showers upon the straw, among the dying men. Bastian, who had managed to raise himself, stretched out his two hands, even then shaking in the final agony.

"Don't forget me! don't forget me!"

The sergeant would have pa.s.sed on and gone his way, as Bouroche had done. What good could money do there? Then yielding to a kindly impulse, he threw some coins, never stopping to count them, into the poor hands that were already cold.

"Don't forget me! don't forget me!"

Bastian fell backward on his straw. For a long time he groped with stiffening fingers for the elusive gold, which seemed to avoid him. And thus he died.

"The gentleman has blown his candle out; good-night!" said a little, black, wizened zouave, who occupied the next bed. "It's vexatious, when one has the wherewithal to pay for wetting his whistle!"

He had his left foot done up in splints. Nevertheless he managed to raise himself on his knees and elbows and in this posture crawl over to the dead man, whom he relieved of all his money, forcing open his hands, rummaging among his clothing and the folds of his capote. When he got back to his place, noticing that he was observed, he simply said:

"There's no use letting the stuff be wasted, is there?"

Maurice, sick at heart in that atmosphere of human distress and suffering, had long since dragged Jean away. As they pa.s.sed out through the shed where the operations were performed they saw Bouroche preparing to amputate the leg of a poor little man of twenty, without chloroform, he having been unable to obtain a further supply of the anaesthetic. And they fled, running, so as not to hear the poor boy's shrieks.

Delaherche, who came in from the street just then, beckoned to them and shouted:

"Come upstairs, come, quick! we are going to have breakfast. The cook has succeeded in procuring some milk, and it is well she did, for we are all in great need of something to warm our stomachs." And notwithstanding his efforts to do so, he could not entirely repress his delight and exultation. With a radiant countenance he added, lowering his voice: "It is all right this time. General de Wimpffen has set out again for the German headquarters to sign the capitulation."

Ah, how much those words meant to him, what comfort there was in them, what relief! his horrid nightmare dispelled, his property saved from destruction, his daily life to be resumed, under changed conditions, it is true, but still it was to go on, it was not to cease! It was little Rose who had told him of the occurrences of the morning at the Sous-Prefecture; the girl had come hastening through the streets, now somewhat less choked than they had been, to obtain a supply of bread from an aunt of hers who kept a baker's shop in the quarter; it was striking nine o'clock. As early as eight General de Wimpffen had convened another council of war, consisting of more than thirty generals, to whom he related the results that had been reached so far, the hard conditions imposed by the victorious foe, and his own fruitless efforts to secure a mitigation of them. His emotion was such that his hands shook like a leaf, his eyes were suffused with tears. He was still addressing the a.s.semblage when a colonel of the German staff presented himself, on behalf of General von Moltke, to remind them that, unless a decision were arrived at by ten o'clock, their guns would open fire on the city of Sedan. With this horrible alternative before them the council could do nothing save authorize the general to proceed once more to the Chateau of Bellevue and accept the terms of the victors. He must have accomplished his mission by that time, and the entire French army were prisoners of war.

When she had concluded her narrative Rose launched out into a detailed account of the tremendous excitement the tidings had produced in the city. At the Sous-Prefecture she had seen officers tear the epaulettes from their shoulders, weeping meanwhile like children. Cavalrymen had thrown their sabers from the Pont de Meuse into the river; an entire regiment of cuira.s.siers had pa.s.sed, each man tossing his blade over the parapet and sorrowfully watching the water close over it. In the streets many soldiers grasped their muskets by the barrel and smashed them against a wall, while there were artillerymen who removed the mechanism from the mitrailleuses and flung it into the sewer. Some there were who buried or burned the regimental standards. In the Place Turenne an old sergeant climbed upon a gate-post and harangued the throng as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses, reviling the leaders, stigmatizing them as poltroons and cowards. Others seemed as if dazed, shedding big tears in silence, and others also, it must be confessed (and it is probable that they were in the majority), betrayed by their laughing eyes and pleased expression the satisfaction they felt at the change in affairs. There was an end to their suffering at last; they were prisoners of war, they could not be obliged to fight any more! For so many days they had been distressed by those long, weary marches, with never food enough to satisfy their appet.i.te! And then, too, they were the weaker; what use was there in fighting? If their chiefs had betrayed them, had sold them to the enemy, so much the better; it would be the sooner ended! It was such a delicious thing to think of, that they were to have white bread to eat, were to sleep between sheets!

As Delaherche was about to enter the dining room in company with Maurice and Jean, his mother called to him from above.

"Come up here, please; I am anxious about the colonel."

M. de Vineuil, with wide-open eyes, was talking rapidly and excitedly of the subject that filled his bewildered brain.

"The Prussians have cut us off from Mezieres, but what matters it! See, they have outmarched us and got possession of the plain of Donchery; soon they will be up with the wood of la Falizette and flank us there, while more of them are coming up along the valley of the Givonne. The frontier is behind us; let us kill as many of them as we can and cross it at a bound. Yesterday, yes, that is what I would have advised--"

At that moment his burning eyes lighted on Delaherche. He recognized him; the sight seemed to sober him and dispel the hallucination under which he was laboring, and coming back to the terrible reality, he asked for the third time:

"It is all over, is it not?"

The manufacturer explosively blurted out the expression of his satisfaction; he could not restrain it.

"Ah, yes, G.o.d be praised! it is all over, completely over. The capitulation must be signed by this time."

The colonel raised himself at a bound to a sitting posture, notwithstanding his bandaged foot; he took his sword from the chair by the bedside where it lay and made an attempt to break it, but his hands trembled too violently, and the blade slipped from his fingers.

"Look out! he will cut himself!" Delaherche cried in alarm. "Take that thing away from him; it is dangerous!"

Mme. Delaherche took possession of the sword. With a feeling of compa.s.sionate respect for the poor colonel's grief and despair she did not conceal it, as her son bade her do, but with a single vigorous effort snapped it across her knee, with a strength of which she herself would never have supposed her poor old hands capable. The colonel laid himself down again, casting a look of extreme gentleness upon his old friend, who went back to her chair and seated herself in her usual rigid att.i.tude.

In the dining room the cook had meantime served bowls of hot coffee and milk for the entire party. Henriette and Gilberte had awakened, the latter, completely restored by her long and refres.h.i.+ng slumber, with bright eyes and smiling face; she embraced most tenderly her friend, whom she pitied, she said, from the bottom of her heart. Maurice seated himself beside his sister, while Jean, who was unused to polite society, but could not decline the invitation that was extended to him, was Delaherche's right-hand neighbor. It was Mme. Delaherche's custom not to come to the table with the family; a servant carried her a bowl, which she drank while sitting by the colonel. The party of five, however, who sat down together, although they commenced their meal in silence, soon became cheerful and talkative. Why should they not rejoice and be glad to find themselves there, safe and sound, with food before them to satisfy their hunger, when the country round about was covered with thousands upon thousands of poor starving wretches? In the cool, s.p.a.cious dining room the snow-white tablecloth was a delight to the eye and the steaming _cafe au lait_ seemed delicious.

They conversed, Delaherche, who had recovered his a.s.surance and was again the wealthy manufacturer, the condescending patron courting popularity, severe only toward those who failed to succeed, spoke of Napoleon III., whose face as he saw it last continued to haunt his memory. He addressed himself to Jean, having that simple-minded young man as his neighbor. "Yes, sir, the Emperor has deceived me, and I don't hesitate to say so. His henchmen may put in the plea of mitigating circ.u.mstances, but it won't go down, sir; he is evidently the first, the only cause of our misfortunes."

He had quite forgotten that only a few months before he had been an ardent Bonapartist and had labored to ensure the success of the plebiscite, and now he who was henceforth to be known as the Man of Sedan was not even worthy to be pitied; he ascribed to him every known iniquity.