The colonel turned round, looking very grim.
‘Now now, my boys, my boys, be a bit patient. I have sent somebody to find out… we are just going…’
But they were not just going, and the seconds were like centuries. Jean had already taken hold of Maurice’s hand, and with perfect self-control was softly explaining to him that if the chaps were to start shoving the two of them would jump to the left and climb up through the woods on the other side of the river. He cast his eye round to find the guerrillas, thinking that they must know the by-ways, but somebody said they had sloped off on the way through Raucourt. And then the march suddenly started again, they rounded a bend in the road and from there onwards were screened from the German batteries. Later on it was known that in the confusion of that unfortunate day it was the Bonnemain division, four regiments of cuirassiers, who had cut across the 7th corps and stopped it in this way.
Night was falling by the time the 106th went through Ange-court. The hilltops went on to the right, but the gorge widened out on the left and a bluish valley appeared in the distance. At last, from the heights of Remilly, there could be seen through the evening mists a ribbon of pale silver in the immense panorama of meadows and cultivated land. It was the Meuse, the longed-for Meuse, where there would be victory, it seemed.
And Maurice, pointing to little distant lights twinkling merrily through the trees in this rich valley, making a charming picture in the tints of twilight, said to Jean, with the joyful relief of a man finding himself back in his beloved homeland:
‘Oh, look down there… that’s Sedan!’
7
IN Remilly there was a dreadful mix-up of men, horses, and vehicles jamming the street which zigzags down the hill to the Meuse. Half way down, in front of the church, some guns had got their wheels locked together and could not be moved in spite of much swearing and banging. At the bottom of the hill, where the Emmane roars down a fall, there was a huge queue of broken-down vans blocking the road, while an ever-growing wave of soldiers was struggling at the Croix de Malte inn, but not getting so much as a glass of wine.
This desperate pressure came up against a stoppage further on, at the southern end of the village, separated by a clump of trees from the river, over which the engineers had thrown a pontoon bridge that morning. To the right there was a ferry, and the ferryman’s house stood white and isolated amid tall weeds. Big fires had been lit on both banks, and the flames leaped up now and again and filled the night with a glare that made the water and banks as light as day. Then it was possible to see the huge pile-up of waiting troops, for the footbridge allowed only two men to cross at once, while on the bridge proper, three metres wide at the most, the cavalry, artillery and baggage-train moved at a mortally slow walking-pace. It was said that a brigade of the 1st corps was coming up, thirty-odd thousand men who, believing the enemy was at their heels, were in feverish haste to reach safety on the opposite bank.
There was a moment of despair. What! They’d been marching since first thing with no food, they had just got themselves out of the terrible gorge of Haraucourt by putting a sprint on, and all that so as to bang their heads, in this alarm and confusion, against an impassable wall! It might be hours and hours before the turn of the last comers, and everyone was fully aware that even if the Prussians dared not continue pursuing them through the night they would be there by daybreak. But the order to pile arms was given, and they camped on the great bare hills along the sides of which the Mouzon road runs, and the lower slopes of which run down to the meadows by the Meuse. Behind them, on the top of a plateau, the reserve artillery took up battle positions and trained their guns on the gorge so as to bombard the exit should need arise. And once again the waiting set in, full of resentment and anxiety.
The 106th was halted in a field of stubble above the road and looking over the great plain. The men had been loath to put down their rifles, and kept glancing behind them in their nagging fear of an attack. They all looked hard-faced and grim, and said nothing beyond occasional sullen mutterings of anger. It was nearly nine and they had been there for two hours, but although they were desperately tired they could not sleep but lay stretched out on the ground, their nerves on edge and ears cocked for the smallest distant sound. They could not struggle any more against their gnawing hunger – they would eat something over on the other side of the river, and they would eat grass if they couldn’t find anything else. But the congestion only seemed to be getting worse, the officers General Douay had posted by the bridge came back every twenty minutes with the same maddening story that hours and hours would still be needed. Eventually the general made up his mind to fight a way through to the bridge for himself. He could be seen struggling about in the mob, hurrying people on.
Sitting against a bank with Jean, Maurice made the same gesture towards the north that he had made before.
‘Sedan is in the background… Oh, and that is Bazeilles over there… And then Douzy and Carignan to the right… I expect it’ll be at Carignan that we shall be concentrated… Oh, if it were light you would see there’s plenty of room!’
His gesture took in the immense valley, full of darkness. The sky was not so black that you could not make out the pale course of the river across the panorama of black fields. Clumps of trees made darker patches, especially a row of poplars to the left, which cut off the horizon like a fantastic dike. Then in the background behind Sedan, with its sprinkling of bright little lights, was a heap of blackness as if all the forests of the Ardennes had drawn across their curtain of age-old oaks.
Jean looked back at the pontoon bridge below.
‘Just look at that! The whole thing’s buggered up and we shall never get across.’
The fires on both sides of the river were blazing higher and their light was so intense that the frightening scene stood out with nightmarish clarity. Under the weight of the cavalry and artillery passing over since morning the pontoons supporting the baulks of timber had sunk lower, so that the flooring was a few centimetres under water. At that moment the cuirassiers were crossing two by two in an uninterrupted line, emerging from the shadows on one bank and disappearing into the shadows on the other, and as the bridge itself could no longer be seen they appeared to be walking in the water, or on top of water luridly ablaze with dancing fires. The horses were whinnying as, manes standing on end and legs stiff, they moved forward in terror of the shifting ground they felt giving way beneath them. Standing in the stirrups and tugging the reins, the cuirassiers went on and on, draped in their long white cloaks and showing only their helmets flaming with red reflected fire. They might have been taken for phantom horsemen riding to a ghostly war with hair flaming.
A deep lament rose from Jean’s parched throat:
‘Oh, I am famished!’
But most of the men round them had gone to sleep in spite of the clawing at their stomachs. Excess of fatigue had taken away their fear and knocked them out on their backs, with their mouths gaping, dead to the world under the moonless sky. From end to end of the bare hills the time of waiting had sunk into a deathly silence.
‘Oh, I am hungry, so hungry I could eat earth!’
This was the cry that Jean, usually so tough and so silent, could not hold in any longer, but let out in spite of himself in the delirium of hunger, having had nothing to eat for nearly thirty-six hours. And then Maurice made up his mind, seeing that their regiment would probably not cross the Meuse for two or three hours.
‘Look here, I’ve got an uncle not far from here, Uncle Fouchard, you know, I told you about him. It’s up there, only five or six hundred yards, and I was wondering, but as you are hungry… My uncle will give us some bread, so what the hell!’
He took his friend away, and Jean let himself be led. Old Fouchard’s little farmhouse was at the end of the Haraucourt defile, near the plateau on which the reserve artillery had taken up its position. It was a low house with a fair number of outbuildings, a barn, cowshed and stable, and on the opposite side of the road
, in a sort of coach-house, he had set up his business as a travelling butcher, his own abattoir where he slaughtered the animals himself, which he then hawked round the villages in his cart.
As they drew near Maurice was surprised to see no light.
‘Oh, the old skinflint will have barricaded everything up, and he won’t open the door.’
What he saw then made him stop still in the middle of the road. In front of the farmhouse there were a dozen or so soldiers on the prowl, marauders no doubt looking for what they could pick up. They had begun by calling out, then they had knocked, and now, seeing that the house was black and silent, they were banging on the door with rifle-butts trying to break the lock. Voices were bawling:
‘Go on, for God’s sake, knock the fucking thing in, there’s nobody at home!’
Suddenly the shutter of an attic window flew open and a lanky old man in a smock, bareheaded, appeared with a candle in one hand and a gun in the other. His face jutted out under his tousled white mane, a deeply wrinkled face with a strong nose, big pale eyes and a firm chin.
‘Are you a lot of thieves breaking everything down?’ he shouted in a harsh voice. ‘What do you want?’
The soldiers fell back, a bit abashed.
‘We’re dying of hunger, we want something to eat.’
‘I’ve got nothing, not even a crust… Do you think we can feed hundreds of thousands of men, just like that?… This morning it was another lot, yes, General Ducrot’s lot, and they came through and took everything.’
One by one the soldiers came nearer.
‘Open the door just the same. We’ll have a rest and you’ll dig something out.’
They were already banging again when the old man put his candle down on the bar and took aim with his gun.
‘As sure as that’s a candle, I’ll blow out the brains of the first one to touch my door!’
Then there was nearly a pitched battle. They shouted curses up at him and one voice yelled that they’d better settle this bloody yokel’s hash – just like all the others he’d rather chuck his bread into the river than give a mouthful to a soldier. Rifles were already being raised and they were on the point of shooting him at almost point-blank range, but he did not even recoil, but stayed there, furious and immovable, in full view in the candlelight.
‘Nothing at all! Not a crust! They’ve taken the lot!’
Maurice was horrified and leaped forward, with Jean after him.
‘Comrades…’
He struck down the soldiers’ rifles and looked up, pleading:
‘Look, do be sensible. Don’t you recognize me? It’s me!’
‘Me! Who’s me?’
‘Maurice Levasseur, your nephew.’
Old Fouchard picked up his candle again. Obviously he recognized him. But he persisted in his determination not to give away even a glass of water.
‘Nephew or not, how do I know in this cut-throat darkness? Go on, bugger off, the whole lot of you, or I’ll shoot!’
And all through the vociferations and threats to shoot him down and set fire to the whole show he went on with the one cry which he repeated twenty times over:
‘Bugger off, the whole lot of you, or I’ll shoot!’
‘Even me, Dad?’ suddenly asked a loud voice above all the din.
The others drew back and a sergeant appeared in the flickering light from the candle. It was Honoré, whose battery was less than two hundred metres away and who for two hours had been fighting an irresistible urge to come and knock at this door. He had sworn he would never cross the threshold again and in all his four years of service he had never exchanged a single letter with the father he was now addressing so curtly. Already the marauding soldiers were in a huddle, conferring busily. The old boy’s son, and an N.C.O. as well! Nothing doing, it wasn’t so good, they’d better look somewhere else. And off they went, and vanished into the inky darkness.
When old Fouchard realized that he had been saved from looting he simply said, with no emotion whatever, as though he had seen his boy the day before:
‘Oh it’s you… all right, I’m coming down.’
It took a long time. Doors could be heard being unlocked and locked again – quite a performance by the sort of man who makes sure nothing is left lying about. Then at last the door opened, but barely ajar, and held by a strong hand.
‘Come in, you and nobody else!’
Yet he could not refuse asylum to his nephew, though it went visibly against the grain.
‘All right, you too.’
And he was by way of shutting the door pitilessly on Jean, and Maurice had to entreat him. But he was immovable: no, no, he didn’t want any strangers and thieves in his house and breaking up his furniture. Finally Honoré butted with his shoulder and let their mate in, and the old man had to give way, muttering vague threats. He had hung on to his gun. When he had taken them into the living-room and stood his rifle against the sideboard and put the candle on the table, he fell into a sullen silence.
‘Look here, Dad, we’re starving. Surely you can give us some bread and cheese!’
He made no answer and did not appear to hear, but kept going over to the window to listen in case some other lot should come and besiege his house.
‘Look, Uncle, Jean is like a brother to me. He went without everything for me. And we’ve been through so much together.’
He was still going round to make sure nothing was missing, and did not even look at them. At last he made up his mind, but still never said a word. He suddenly picked up his candle and left them in the dark, taking care to lock the door behind him so that nobody could follow. They heard him going down the cellar stairs. Once again it took a very long time. When he came back, after renewed barricading, he placed in the middle of the table a large loaf and a cheese, still in the silence which, now that his anger had died down, was simply strategic, for you never know where talking might lead you. In any case the three men threw themselves at the food revenously, and the only sound now was the frenzied noise of their jaws.
Honoré got up and went to fetch a jug of water from the sideboard.
‘Father, you might have given us some wine!’
Having now regained his composure and being sure of himself, Fouchard found his tongue again.
‘Wine! I haven’t got any, not a drop left! The other lot, the Ducrot lot, have drunk, eaten and pinched everything.’
He was lying, and try as he would it showed in the blinking of his pale bulging eyes. Two days before he had spirited away all his livestock, the few domestic animals he kept and the ones destined for his butchery, taking them by night and hiding them nobody knew where, in the depths of which wood or which abandoned quarry. And he had just been spending hours concealing everything in the house – wine, bread and the most unimportant provisions, even flour and salt, so that in fact all the cupboards could have been ransacked in vain. The house was swept clean. He had even refused to sell anything to the first soldiers who had appeared. You never knew, there might be better opportunities later, and vague ideas about trading were taking shape in the head of this patient and cunning miser.
Maurice, having eaten almost his fill, was the first to talk.
‘And my sister Henriette, how long is it since you saw her?’
The old man was still walking up and down, casting glances at Jean, who was putting away enormous hunks of bread; and then, without hurrying, as though after long reflection:
‘Henriette, yes, last month in Sedan… But I saw Weiss, her husband, this morning. He was with his boss, Monsieur Delaherche, who had taken him out with him in his carriage to see the army go through at Mouzon, just for the jaunt.’
An expression of heavy irony passed across the peasant’s inscrutable face.
‘But still, they may well have seen too much of the army and not have enjoyed themselves very much, because by three you couldn’t move on the roads, they were so cluttered up with soldiers on the run.’
In the same level and almost indiff
erent voice he gave a few details about the defeat of the 5th corps, taken by surprise at Beaumont just as they were preparing a meal, forced to withdraw and kicked back to Mouzon by the Bavarians. A lot of fleeing soldiers, rushing panic-stricken through Remilly, had called out to him that de Failly had once again sold them to Bismarck. Maurice recalled the frantic marches of the last two days, the orders from MacMahon stepping up the retreat so as to cross the Meuse at all costs, when they had lost so many precious days in incomprehensible hesitations. Now it was too late. Perhaps the marshal, who had been furious at finding the 7th corps in Oches when he thought it was at La Besace, had been convinced that the 5th was already encamped at Mouzon, whereas it was dallying at Beaumont and letting itself be annihilated. But what can you expect from troops badly commanded, demoralized by delay and flight, dying of hunger and fatigue?
Fouchard had finally come to a halt behind Jean, astounded to see the chunks disappearing, and coldly sarcastic:
‘You feel better, don’t you?’
The corporal looked up and answered with the same peasant aplomb:
‘Just beginning, thank you.’
Ever since he had been there Honoré had stopped now and again, in spite of his great hunger, and looked round thinking he heard a noise. The reason why after a great struggle he had broken his oath never to set foot in this house again was that he was urged on by an irresistible desire to see Silvine once more. He had kept under his shirt, in fact next to his body, the letter he had had at Rheims, that affectionate letter in which she told him she still loved him, and that she would never love anyone but him in spite of Goliath and the baby, little Charlot, she had had by this man. And now he could think of nothing but her and was worried because he had not seen her yet, while at the same time holding himself in check so as not to betray his anxiety to his father. But passion won, and he asked in a voice he tried to make sound natural:
‘And what about Silvine, isn’t she here now?’
Fouchard looked quizzically at his son, and his eyes twinkled with hidden amusement.