Six Women And The Invasion Part 26

"Milk! I haven't any! I keep no cows in my house!" and the doctor burst out laughing, thinking himself very witty.

"Anyhow," the mother said with her teeth ground, "when he stays at home there is a brute beast in his house worse than a cow."

Another beggar woman had twins about two years old. One of them ate soup and bread, and throve like couch-gra.s.s. The other, who ever since the family had left their native hamlet had fed on indigestible things, and had nowhere to lay her head, had grown pale and sickly. She had ceased to run alone, took no food, and pined away visibly. Her mother brought her to the doctor.

"That child! What should I prescribe her? She is ailing on account of her being French. French children are all rickety and weakly. How am I to help it? Lay the blame on your race."

Before leaving, the little doctor sometimes gave a glance--a single one--at the rooms of the hospital, then stepped into his carriage, took up the reins, cracked his whip, and as harsh-featured as ever put his horse to a gallop.

However, some attention had to be paid to the sick. The orderly was there for that purpose. He was a big stout man, whose eyes seemed starting from their sockets. He did not like to be called up in the afternoon--he took a nap--and still less in the night. His remedies--the same for every sickness--were most economical: "Keep on low diet, apply cold compresses." Yet he understood his business well enough.

Our hostess, Mme. Charvet, a wealthy landowner, suddenly fell ill of a disquieting haemorrhage. No doctor in the village, not even in the neighbourhood. We ran in haste to fetch "Goggle-eyes."

"Oh, please, please, come!..."

"Goggle-eyes" lost no time in coming, showed a.s.siduous attention to the patient, punctured her, and rode on a bicycle to Marle in order to fetch medicines. A few days after, a poor emigrant, mother of six small children, was attacked by the same disease. He was sent for in vain; and left her forty-eight hours without help. It was indeed a miracle that she did not depart this life.

This proves clearly that to the mind of a German, even though he be a _Sozial-Democrat_, the skin of a capitalist will ever be superior to the skin of a starveling.

The physician was not our sole caller. A few other ones came when the straw was still clean, and when we received a pound of bread a day. A stout commandant, and three days after, a thin commandant came to visit the camp. Both the stout and the thin looked extremely well satisfied, and seemed to say:

"What splendid organisation! How perfectly everything is getting on!

Really, n.o.body but Germans could settle things like that!"

The thin commandant was escorted by the official interpreter of the camp. He never asked a question of the people, for many reasons, the princ.i.p.al being that he did know the language of Voltaire. The very first day he had given a sample of his talents by asking a youth:

"He ... vous ... combien hannees vous havoir?"

And the boy, stretching his legs and hands, stood there gazing, gaping at his interlocutor, and his whole countenance answered:

"I don't understand German!"

Therefore mimicry and loud cries bore a great part in the relations between soldiers and emigrants.

The stout commandant piqued himself on French. In one of the rooms of the farm he asked:

"You are comfortable here, aren't you?"

And the women, pickled in respect, answered all with one voice:

"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"

"You get good soup, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"

"You get a lot of bread, don't you?"

"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"

"When you reach France you will tell the French you have been leniently dealt with, won't you?"

"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"

The stout commandant went away, proud of himself and proud of being one of those Germans who know how to organise camps for refugees.

"Rely on our saying how we have been dealt with," bantered the old women, the moment the officers' large backs were turned.

Another caller was a clergyman, who was quite different from the others.

The Rev. Herr Freyer was about thirty-five, he was tall, dark-haired, with malicious eyes and a turned-up nose. I must say he did his best to comply with our wishes and serve the cause of the emigrants. From the very beginning he told us that he was very fond of the French--yes, but the Germans are all fond of the French--and that his grandmother was of French descent.

"Why! then she had married a German?"

Well, let us go on to something else.

This man was certainly the cleverest German we had met, or rather the only clever one we ever met. We were all the more amazed to notice once more the abyss that separates the French from the German mind. An utter incomprehension of certain delicacies, a lack of sensitiveness, is peculiar to them. If they had fallen from the very moon, our ways of doing and thinking could not be stranger to them.

And in discussion, they are unable to cast out preconceived notions, which will ever get the better of reasoning and observation.

Herr Freyer certainly wished to show us kindness, and at every turn he told us things which set our teeth on edge. Yet he wondered to see us stand up for causes which he had looked upon as lost since a long time.

"How I pity France," he used to tell us, "poor degenerate France!"

And he looked quite scared when he saw our anger, and heard our vehement protestations. He was still convinced victory would be theirs. On the other hand, he once declared to us:

"There is a blemish in the character of the Germans ... they are kind-hearted to a fault. The German nation is thoroughly kind-hearted."

Owing to the circ.u.mstances we dared not say all that we wanted to, and were content to hint at Belgium....

"Oh, so many lies have been told! You ought not to believe such slanderous accusations. As to myself I know that what you are alluding to is false; the Germans are too kind-hearted to be guilty of the deeds they are charged with."

Such is our enemy's mode of reasoning. He denies what they cannot excuse. It is very easy.

"In Alsace-Lorraine we have been to blame in every way," said the clergyman to us.

He is making confession, we thought.

"Yes, we have been too kind-hearted, over-indulgent to the people. If we had had a firmer hand, everything would have got on much better."

This blasphemer had some merit, let us not be too hard on him.

Our leisure was propitious to gossip, and we spent many an hour listening to those who had seen the first tragical events of the invasion. Their simple, unvarnished tales were like so many nightmares.

For instance, there were bargemen of Braye whose boat had been split in two by a cannon ball, and who had escaped death only by swimming and clinging to floating planks. There was the woman of Corbeny, driven by the Prussians from a village near Soissons. With several others she walked to Cerny at a stretch, with the Germans ever at her heels. The unhappy wretches had covered forty kilometres in the midst of a battle, spent with weariness, breathless, tumbling down, and trudging off again.

Three of them were killed on the way. The woman who gave us an account of this carried her baby, aged eighteen months, throughout this wild race, and on the way the poor little thing was wounded twice in her mother's arms. Of Cerny were the poor creatures who were shut up in a deep stone quarry, and stayed there with scarcely any food for twenty-seven days. When they were taken out and brought to Laon they were pale, hollow-cheeked, and covered with vermin; they could hardly walk by themselves, and their eyes could not look upon the daylight.

"The people wept as they saw us go by," the women said. During the first hours of their sojourn in the stone quarry, there had been a tragical incident. The fugitives were crouching in the dark when an officer broke in, accompanied with soldiers:

"Some of you," he said, "have harboured Englishmen. We discovered an English officer lying in such and such barn, in such a place. We have set the building on fire."