They had breakfast, and at once Delaherche came back to his excursion of the day before, unable to resist the itch to tell the story once again.
‘Do you know, I saw the Emperor at Baybel.’
He was off, and nothing could stop him after that. First there was a description of the farmhouse, a large, square building with an inner courtyard, shut off by railings, and standing on a little hill overlooking Mouzon to the left of the Carignan road. Then he came back to the 12th corps that he had gone right through as they were camping among the vines on the slopes – superb troops, gleaming in the sunshine, the sight of whom had filled him with great patriotic joy.
‘And there I was, sir, when the Emperor suddenly came out of the farmhouse where he had gone for a break to rest and eat. He was wearing a cloak thrown over his general’s uniform, although the sun was very hot. Behind him a manservant was carrying a folding seat. I didn’t think he looked at all well, oh no! stooping and walking with difficulty, his face yellow, in fact a sick man… And that didn’t surprise me because the chemist at Mouzon who had advised me to go on as far as Baybel had just told me that an aide-de-camp had been to him for medicine… yes, you know, remedies for…’
The presence of his mother and his wife prevented him from describing more clearly the diarrhoea from which the Emperor had been suffering since Le Chêne, and which had compelled him to stop like this at farmhouses along the route.
‘So, in a word, the servant set up the folding seat on the edge of a cornfield, at the point of a wood, and the Emperor sat down… He stayed there motionless, all huddled up, looking like some old pensioner warming his aches and pains in the sun. He scanned with his dull eyes the vast horizon, the Meuse below him flowing along the valley and opposite him the wooded slopes with summits going away into the distance, the peaks of the Dieulet woods on the left, the green hilltops of Sommauthe on the right… He was surrounded by aides-de-camp and high ranking officers, and a colonel of dragoons who had already asked me for directions had just signed to me not to go away, when suddenly…’
Delaherche rose to his feet for he was approaching the gripping climax of the narrative, and he wanted to add action to the words.
‘Suddenly there are shattering explosions, and lo and behold, right opposite, this side of Dieulet woods, shells describe parabolas in the sky… Upon my soul, it looked to me like a firework display let off in broad daylight… Naturally in the Emperor’s entourage there are exclamations, expressions of anxiety. My colonel of dragoons rushes back and asks me if I can say exactly where the fighting is. Without any hesitation I say: ‘At Beaumont, no doubt whatever.’ He returns to the Emperor, across whose knees an aide-de-camp was unfolding a map. The Emperor refused to believe they could be fighting at Beaumont. Well, I couldn’t insist, could I? Especially as the shells were careering through the sky and falling nearer, following the Mouzon road… It was then, just as I am looking at you now, sir, that I saw the Emperor turn his ashen face in my direction. Yes, he, looked at me for a moment with his lack-lustre eyes, full of mistrust and sadness. Then his head was bowed again over the map and he did not move again.’
Delaherche had been an ardent Bonapartist at the time of the plebiscite, but since the first reverses he admitted that the Empire had made some mistakes. However, he still defended the dynasty and pitied Napoleon III, who was being deceived by everybody. So according to him the people really responsible for our disasters were none other than the republican deputies in the opposition who had prevented the voting of the necessary numbers of men and financial credits.
‘And did the Emperor go back to the farmhouse?’ asked Captain Beaudoin.
‘Well, sir, I really don’t know, I left him on his campstool. It was midday, the battle was getting closer and I was beginning to be concerned about getting home… All I can add is that a general, to whom I pointed out Carignan in the distance on the plain behind us, seemed amazed to learn that the Belgian frontier was there, a few kilometres away. Oh poor Emperor, he has some wonderful servants!’
Gilberte, smiling and quite at her ease, as of old in her widowhood when she entertained in her drawing-room, concerned herself with the captain, passing him toast and butter. She tried to insist on his accepting a room or a bed, but he declined, and it was settled that he would only lie down for a couple of hours on a settee in Delaherche’s study before rejoining his regiment. As he was taking the sugar-basin from the young woman, old Madame Delaherche, who kept her eyes glued on them, clearly saw them link fingers; so now she knew.
A maid had just come in.
‘Sir, there’s a soldier downstairs asking for Monsieur Weiss’s address.’
Delaherche was not proud, as they say, and enjoyed talking to the lowly of this world, out of a love of chattering and popularity.
‘Weiss’s address, well, that’s funny!… Bring the soldier in.’
Jean came in, so exhausted that he was reeling. Seeing his captain sitting at table with some ladies, he started slightly in surprise and drew back the hand he was automatically putting out to support himself against a chair. Then he briefly answered the questions of the manufacturer, who was playing up the common touch, the soldier’s friend. In a few words he explained his friendship with Maurice and why he was looking for him.
‘He is a corporal in my company,’ the captain said at last, to cut things short.
He interrogated Jean in his turn, for he was anxious to know what had happened to the regiment. And as Jean said that the colonel had recently been seen going through the town at the head of his remaining men, on the way to camp to the north, Gilberte once again spoke too quickly with the usual impulsiveness of a pretty young woman not given to much thought.
‘Oh why didn’t my uncle come and have breakfast here?… We could have had a room ready for him… Suppose we send somebody to look for him?’
But old Madame Delaherche made a gesture of sovereign authority. In her veins flowed the ancient bourgeois blood of the frontier towns, with all the manly virtues of unbending patriotism. She only broke her severe silence to say:
‘Never mind Monsieur de Vineuil, he is doing his duty.’
That caused some embarrassment. Delaherche took the captain off to his study and wanted to see for himself that he rested on the settee, and Gilberte, in spite of the reprimand, fluttered off like a bird flapping its wings, blithe and gay just the same in the storm, while the maid who had been put in charge of Jean took him through the yards of the factory and into a maze of passages and stairs.
The Weisses lived in the rue des Voyards, but the house, which belonged to Delaherche, communicated with the huge main building in the rue Maqua. This rue des Voyards was at that time one of the strangest in Sedan, a narrow lane, damp and darkened by the rampart with which it ran parallel. The roofs of the lofty house-fronts almost touched each other and the dark entries were like mouths of caves, especially at the end where the high wall of the school towered. But Weiss, who occupied the whole of the third floor rent free, including heating, was well off, living right by his office to which he could go down in his slippers all under cover. He was a contented man since he had married Henriette, whom he had waited for so long, ever since he had first known her at Le Chêne in the house of her father the tax-collector. She had been a housewife from the age of six, taking her dead mother’s place, while he, having got a job in the General Refinery as a practically unskilled labourer, had educated himself and worked his way up to the position of ledger clerk by hard study. And even then, before he made his dream come true, he had had to wait for the death of the father, and then there had been the terrible follies of the brother in Paris, this Maurice, whose twin sister was a sort of servant to him, and had sacrificed her whole life to make him a gentleman. Brought up as a Cinderella at home, having learned little more than how to read and write, she had sold the house and furniture and still not filled the hole made by the young man’s extravagances when the kindly Weiss had hastened to offer all he possessed, with h
is strong arms and his heart. Touched to tears by his affection, and being very sensible, after careful thought she had agreed to marry him, for she was full of tender esteem if not of passionate love. Now fortune was smiling on them, Delaherche had talked of making Weiss a partner in the business. It would be perfect happiness when children came.
‘Mind how you go!’ said the maid, ‘the stairs are very steep.’
And indeed he was stumbling about in pitch darkness when a door was quickly opened and the stairs were flooded with light. He heard a gentle voice saying:
‘Here he is.’
‘Madame Weiss,’ said the maid, ‘here’s a soldier who is asking for you.’
There was a happy little laugh and the gentle voice answered:
‘Good, good, I know who he is.’
As the corporal, tongue-tied and awkward, was hesitating at the door:
‘Come in, Monsieur Jean… Maurice has been here for two hours and we’ve been expecting you so impatiently!’
Then in the subdued light of the room he saw her, strikingly like Maurice, with that extraordinary likeness of twins which is a sort of duplication of faces. But she was shorter and even slighter, more frail-looking, with a largish mouth, small features and a lovely head of fair hair, the light gold of ripe oats. The main thing that made her different from him was her grey eyes, calm, brave eyes in which there lived on all the heroic soul of their grandfather, the hero of the Grande Armée. She was not a great talker and moved noiselessly, and her movements were so neat, and her gentleness so radiant that as she passed by you felt her like a caress in the air.
‘Come this way, Monsieur Jean,’ she said again. ‘Everything will be ready in a moment.’
He made vague sounds and could not even find words to thank her in his emotion at being welcomed just like a brother. In any case his eyes were closing of their own accord and he could only see her through the invincible sleepiness which was overtaking, him like a sort of mist through which she floated like a wraith not touching the ground. Was she only a beguiling vision, this woman who was offering help and smiling at him with such simplicity? He thought she was taking his hand and that he felt hers, small, strong and as reliable as an old friend’s.
From that moment onwards Jean lost any clear consciousness of events. They were in the dining-room, there was bread and meat on the table, but he couldn’t even have found the strength to carry the pieces to his mouth. There was a man sitting on a chair. Then he realized it was Weiss, whom he had seen at Mulhouse. But he could not take in what the man was saying in such a worried voice and with slow, weary gestures. On a camp-bed set up in front of the stove Maurice was already fast asleep, his face motionless, looking like a corpse. Henriette was busying herself round a divan, on which she had put a mattress, and was now bringing a bolster, pillow and blankets, and then with quick skilful hands white sheets, lovely white sheets, white as snow.
Oh, those white sheets, sheets so desperately longed for! They were all Jean could see. He had not taken off his clothes properly or slept in a bed for six weeks. It felt like the impatient greed of a child, an irresistible passion to slip into this cool whiteness and lose himself. As soon as they left him alone he stripped down to his shirt and had his feet bare, and went to bed and satisfied this hunger with the grunt of a contented animal. The pale morning light came in through the high window, and as he was sinking into sleep he half opened his eyes and had one more vision of Henriette, an even more vague and disembodied Henriette tiptoeing back to put on a table at his side a carafe and glass she had forgotten. She seemed to pause there a few seconds looking at them both, her brother and him, with her gentle smile, infinitely kind. Then she faded away. And he slept between the white sheets dead to everything.
Hours, years went by. Jean and Maurice no longer existed, dreamless, not even conscious of the faint pulse in their veins. Ten years or ten minutes, time no longer counted; it was like the revenge of their overwrought bodies, satisfying themselves in the death of their whole being. Suddenly, jerked back by the same shock, they both woke up. What was the matter? What was going on? How long had they been asleep? The same pale light was falling from the high window. They felt knocked out, with stiff joints, and their limbs felt more tired and their mouths more dry than when they had gone to bed. Fortunately they couldn’t have slept for more than an hour. So they were not surprised to see Weiss on the same chair, apparently waiting for them to wake up, and still in the same attitude of dejection.
‘Oh Lord,’ muttered Jean, ‘we must get up and get back to the regiment by noon.’
He jumped to the floor with a little exclamation of pain and pulled on his clothes.
‘By noon!’ Weiss repeated. ‘Do you realize it’s seven in the evening, and you’ve been sleeping for about twelve hours?’
Seven o’clock, good God! This was terrifying. Jean, already fully dressed, was for running. But Maurice, still in bed, was moaning that he had lost the use of his legs. How were they to get back to their mates? Hadn’t the army moved on? They both began to get angry, they shouldn’t have been allowed to sleep on so long. But Weiss made a gesture of despair.
‘Good Lord, considering all they’ve done you’ve been wise to stay in bed.’
He had been wandering round Sedan and its outskirts all day. He had only just come in, disgusted at the inaction of the troops this whole day, the 31st, so valuable and lost in some inexplicable delay. There was only one possible excuse, the extreme fatigue of the men, and even then he didn’t see why the retreat had not continued after the few essential hours of rest.
‘Of course,’ he went on, ‘I don’t presume to understand, but I have the feeling, yes, I feel that the army is very badly placed in Sedan… The 12th corps is at Bazeilles, where there was a little fighting this morning; the 1st is strung out all along the Givonne from the village of La Moncelle to the Garenne woods; while the 7th is camping on the plateau of Floing and the 5th, already half destroyed, is huddled right under the ramparts of the castle… And that’s what frightens me, knowing that they are all standing round the town like that, just waiting for the Prussians. If it had been me, I’d have got away at once towards Mézières. I know the country, and there’s no other line of retreat, or else we shall be pitched back into Belgium… And then besides, come and see something…’
He took Jean’s hand and led him to the window.
‘Look over there, on the crest of those hills.’
The window looked out over the ramparts and the near-by buildings to the valley of the Meuse south of Sedan. The river was winding across the broad meadows, with Remilly on the left, Pont-Maugis and Wadelincourt opposite, Frénois on the right; and the hills spread out their green slopes – first Le Liry, then La Marfée and La Croix-Piau, with their extensive woods. In the evening light the immense horizon looked profoundly peaceful, limpid as crystal.
‘Don’t you see over there along the tops those black lines moving like a procession of black ants?’
Jean opened his eyes wide and Maurice, kneeling on his bed, craned his neck.
‘Oh yes,’ they exclaimed together. ‘There’s one line, and there’s another, and another and another! It’s crawling with them.’
‘Well,’ said Weiss, ‘those are the Prussians… I’ve been watching them ever since this morning, and they keep going on and on! Oh, I can tell you, if our soldiers are waiting for them they are in a hurry to get here! And all the inhabitants of this town have seen them, same as me, and really the generals are the only ones with their eyes blindfolded. I was talking just now to a general and he shrugged his shoulders and told me that Marshal MacMahon was absolutely convinced he had scarcely seventy thousand men opposing him. God grant he is well informed… But just look at them, the ground is covered with them, and still they come and come, like black ants!’
At that moment Maurice threw himself back on the bed and burst into violent sobbing. Henriette was coming in with the smiling face she had had that morning, but she ran over i
n alarm.
‘What is it?’
But he pushed her away.
‘No, no, leave me alone, I’ve never given you anything but trouble. When I think that you went without clothes and I was at college! Oh yes, an education I’ve made fine use of! And then I pretty nearly dishonoured our name, and I don’t know where I’d be now if you hadn’t bled yourself white to pay the price of my idiocy.’
She began to smile again.
‘Really, my poor darling, you’re not waking up in a very happy mood… But you know all that is over and forgotten. Aren’t you doing your duty as a Frenchman now? Since you enlisted I’ve been very proud of you, I really have.’
She turned to Jean as though to call in his help. He looked at her and was a little taken aback to find her not so pretty as before, but thinner and paler now he was no longer seeing her through the near-hallucination of his fatigue. What was still striking was the likeness to her brother, and yet all the profound difference between their natures showed clearly at that moment. He was as highly-strung as a woman, shattered by the disease of the age they were living in, going through the historical and social crisis of his race, capable of passing from one minute to the next from the most noble enthusiasms to the most craven discouragements, but she, so weak-looking, a self-effacing Cinderella with the resigned look of a little housewife, had the firm brow and brave eyes of the blessed stock that martyrs are made of.
‘Proud of me!’ exclaimed Maurice. ‘There’s no reason at all for that, really there isn’t. For a whole month now we’ve been running away like the cowards we are.’
‘Well, after all,’ said Jean with his usual good sense, ‘we aren’t the only ones, we do what we are told to do.’
But at that the young man’s attack burst out more violently than ever.
‘That’s just what I mean, and I’ve had enough!… Doesn’t it make you weep tears of blood, these continual defeats, these fools of commanders, these soldiers just being led by stupid people to the slaughterhouse like a lot of cattle?… Now look at us here in a blind alley. It is perfectly clear that the Prussians are closing in from every direction and we are going to be crushed, the army is doomed… No, no, I’m staying here, I prefer to be shot as a deserter. Jean, you can go without me. No, I’m staying here.’