The Downfall

by Эмиль Золя

  "It is all up with us!" said he, as the whole truth flashed through his mind, to Jean, who had given way to despair. Then as the corporal, failing to catch his meaning, looked at him wonderingly, he went on in an undertone, for his friend's ear alone, to speak of their commanders:

  "They mean well, but they have no sense, that's certain-and no luck! They know nothing; they foresee nothing; they have neither plans nor ideas, nor happy intuitions. Allons! everything is against us; it is all up!"

  And by slow degrees that same feeling of discouragement that Maurice had arrived at by a process of reasoning settled down upon the denser intellects of the troops who lay there inactive, anxiously awaiting to see what the end would be. Distrust, as a result of their truer perception of the position they were in, was obscurely burrowing in those darkened minds, and there was no man so ignorant as not to feel a sense of injury at the ignorance and irresolution of their leaders, although he might not have been able to express in distinct terms the causes of his exasperation. In the name of Heaven, what were they doing there, since the Prussians had not shown themselves? either let them fight and have it over with, or else go off to some place where they could get some sleep; they had had enough of that kind of work. Since the departure of the second aide-de-camp, who had been dispatched in quest of orders, this feeling of unrest had been increasing momentarily; men collected in groups, talking loudly and discussing the situation pro and con, and the general inquietude communicating itself to the officers, they knew not what answer to make to those of their men who ventured to question them. They ought to be marching, it would not answer to dawdle thus; and so, when it became known about five o'clock that the aide-de-camp had returned and that they were to retreat, there was a sigh of relief throughout the camp and every heart was lighter.

  It seemed that the wiser counsel was to prevail, then, after all! The Emperor and MacMahon had never looked with favor on the movement toward Montmedy, and now, alarmed to learn that they were again out-marched and out-maneuvered, and that they were to have the army of the Prince of Saxony as well as that of the Crown Prince to contend with, they had renounced the hazardous scheme of uniting their forces with Bazaine, and would retreat through the northern strongholds with a view to falling back ultimately on Paris. The 7th corps' destination would be Chagny, by way of Chene, while the 5th corps would be directed on Poix, and the 1st and 12th on Vendresse. But why, since they were about to fall back, had they advanced to the line of the Aisne? Why all that waste of time and labor, when it would have been so easy and so rational to move straight from Rheims and occupy the strong positions in the valley of the Marne? Was there no guiding mind, no military talent, no common sense? But there should be no more questioning; all should be forgiven, in the universal joy at the adoption of that eminently wise counsel, which was the only means at their command of extricating themselves from the hornets' nest into which they had rushed so imprudently. All, officers and men, felt that they would be the stronger for the retrograde movement, that under the walls of Paris they would be invincible, and that there it was that the Prussians would sustain their inevitable defeat. But Vouziers must be evacuated before daybreak, and they must be well on the road to Chene before the enemy should learn of the movement, and forthwith the camp presented a scene of the greatest animation: trumpets sounding, officers hastening to and fro with orders, while the baggage and quartermaster's trains, in order not to encumber the rear-guard, were sent forward in advance.

  Maurice was delighted. As he was endeavoring to explain to Jean the rationale of the impending movement, however, a cry of pain escaped him; his excitement had subsided, and he was again conscious of his foot, aching and burning as if it had been a ball of red-hot metal.

  "What's the matter? is it hurting you again?" the corporal asked sympathizingly. And with his calm and sensible resourcefulness he said: "See here, little one, you told me yesterday that you have acquaintances in the town, yonder. You ought to get permission from the major and find some one to drive you over to Chene, where you could have a good night's rest in a comfortable bed. We can pick you up as we go by to-morrow if you are fit to march. What do you say to that, hein?"

  In Falaise, the village near which the camp was pitched, Maurice had come across a small farmer, an old friend of his father's, who was about to drive his daughter over to Chene to visit an aunt in that town, and the horse was even then standing waiting, hitched to a light carriole. The prospect was far from encouraging, however, when he broached the subject to Major Bouroche.

  "I have a sore foot, monsieur the doctor-"

  Bouroche, with a savage shake of his big head with its leonine mane, turned on him with a roar:

  "I am not monsieur the doctor; who taught you manners?"

  And when Maurice, taken all aback, made a stammering attempt to excuse himself, he continued:

  "Address me as major, do you hear, you great oaf!"

  He must have seen that he had not one of the common herd to deal with and felt a little ashamed of himself; he carried it off with a display of more roughness.

  "All a cock-and-bull story, that sore foot of yours!-Yes, yes; you may go. Go in a carriage, go in a balloon, if you choose. We have too many of you malingerers in the army!"

  When Jean assisted Maurice into the carriole the latter turned to thank him, whereon the two men fell into each other's arms and embraced as if they were never to meet again. Who could tell, amid the confusion and disorder of the retreat, with those bloody Prussians on their track? Maurice could not tell how it was that there was already such a tender affection between him and the young man, and twice he turned to wave him a farewell. As he left the camp they were preparing to light great fires in order to mislead the enemy when they should steal away, in deepest silence, before the dawn of day.

  As they jogged along the farmer bewailed the terrible times through which they were passing. He had lacked the courage to remain at Falaise, and already was regretting that he had left it, declaring that if the Prussians burned his house it would ruin him. His daughter, a tall, pale young woman, wept copiously. But Maurice was like a dead man for want of sleep, and had no ears for the farmer's lamentations; he slumbered peacefully, soothed by the easy motion of the vehicle, which the little horse trundled over the ground at such a good round pace that it took them less than an hour and a half to accomplish the four leagues between Vouziers and Chene. It was not quite seven o'clock and scarcely beginning to be dark when the young man rubbed his eyes and alighted in a rather dazed condition on the public square, near the bridge over the canal, in front of the modest house where he was born and had passed twenty years of his life. He got down there in obedience to an involuntary impulse, although the house had been sold eighteen months before to a veterinary surgeon, and in reply to the farmer's questions said that he knew quite well where he was going, adding that he was a thousand times obliged to him for his kindness.

  He continued to stand stock-still, however, beside the well in the middle of the little triangular place; he was as if stunned; his memory was a blank. Where had he intended to go? and suddenly his wits returned to him and he remembered that it was to the notary's, whose house was next door to his father's, and whose mother, Madame Desvallieres, an aged and most excellent lady, had petted him when he was an urchin on account of their being neighbors. But he hardly recognized Chene in the midst of the hurly-burly and confusion into which the little town, ordinarily so dead, was thrown by the presence of an army corps encamped at its gates and filling its quiet streets with officers, couriers, soldiers, and camp-followers and stragglers of every description. The canal was there as of old, passing through the town from end to end and bisecting the market-place in the center into two equal-sized triangles connected by a narrow stone bridge; and there, on the other bank, was the old market with its moss-grown roofs, and the Rue Berond leading away to the left and the Sedan road to the right, but filling the Rue de Vouziers in front of him and extending as far as the Hotel de Ville wa
s such a compact, swarming, buzzing crowd that he was obliged to raise his eyes and take a look over the roof of the notary's house at the slate-covered bell tower in order to assure himself that that was the quiet spot where he had played hop-scotch when he was a youngster. There seemed to be an effort making to clear the square; some men were roughly crowding back the throng of idlers and gazers, and looking more closely he was surprised to see, parked like the guns of a battery, a collection of vans, baggage-wagons, and carriages open and closed; a miscellaneous assortment of traps that he had certainly set eyes on before.

  It was daylight still; the sun had just sunk in the canal at the point where it vanished in the horizon and the long, straight stretch of water was like a sea of blood, and Maurice was trying to make up his mind what to do when a woman who stood near stared at him a moment and then exclaimed:

  "Why goodness gracious, is it possible! Are you the Levasseur boy?"

  And thereon he recognized Madame Combette, the wife of the druggist, whose shop was on the market-place. As he was trying to explain to her that he was going to ask good Madame Desvallieres to give him a bed for the night she excitedly hurried him away.

  "No, no; come to our house. I will tell you why-" When they were in the shop and she had cautiously closed the door she continued: "You could not know, my dear boy, that the Emperor is at the Desvallieres. His officers took possession of the house in his name and the family are not any too well pleased with the great honor done them, I can tell you. To think that the poor old mother, a woman more than seventy, was compelled to give up her room and go up and occupy a servant's bed in the garret! Look, there, on the place. All that you see there is the Emperor's; those are his trunks, don't you see!"

  And then Maurice remembered; they were the imperial carriages and baggage-wagons, the entire magnificent train that he had seen at Rheims.

  "Ah! my dear boy, if you could but have seen the stuff they took from them, the silver plate, and the bottles of wine, and the baskets of good things, and the beautiful linen, and everything! I can't help wondering where they find room for such heaps of things, for the house is not a large one. Look, look! see what a fire they have lighted in the kitchen!"

  He looked over at the small white, two-storied house that stood at the corner of the market-place and the Rue de Vouziers, a comfortable, unassuming house of bourgeois aspect; how well he remembered it, inside and out, with its central hall and four rooms on each floor; why, it was as if he had just left it! There were lights in the corner room on the first floor overlooking the square; the apothecary's wife informed him that it was the bedroom of the Emperor. But the chief center of activity seemed, as she had said, to be the kitchen, the window of which opened on the Rue de Vouziers. In all their lives the good people of Chene had witnessed no such spectacle, and the street before the house was filled with a gaping crowd, constantly coming and going, who stared with all their eyes at the range on which was cooking the dinner of an Emperor. To obtain a breath of air the cooks had thrown open the window to its full extent. They were three in number, in jackets of resplendent whiteness, superintending the roasting of chickens impaled on a huge spit, stirring the gravies and sauces in copper vessels that shone like gold. And the oldest inhabitant, evoking in memory all the civic banquets that he had beheld at the Silver Lion, could truthfully declare that never at any one time had he seen so much wood burning and so much food cooking.

  Combette, a bustling, wizened little man, came in from the street in a great state of excitement from all that he had seen and heard. His position as deputy-mayor gave him facilities for knowing what was going on. It was about half-past three o'clock when MacMahon had telegraphed Bazaine that the Crown Prince of Prussia was approaching Chalons, thus necessitating the withdrawal of the army to the places along the Belgian frontier, and further dispatches were also in preparation for the Minister of War, advising him of the projected movement and explaining the terrible dangers of their position. It was uncertain whether or not the dispatch for Bazaine would get through, for communication with Metz had seemed to be interrupted for the past few days, but the second dispatch was another and more serious matter; and lowering his voice almost to a whisper the apothecary repeated the words that he had heard uttered by an officer of rank: "If they get wind of this in Paris, our goose is cooked!" Everyone was aware of the unrelenting persistency with which the Empress and the Council of Ministers urged the advance of the army. Moreover, the confusion went on increasing from hour to hour, the most conflicting advices were continually coming in as to the whereabouts of the German forces. Could it be possible that the Crown Prince was at Chalons? What, then, were the troops that the 7th corps had encountered among the passes of the Argonne?

  "They have no information at staff headquarters," continued the little druggist, raising his arms above his head with a despairing gesture. "Ah, what a mess we are in! But all will be well if the army retreats to-morrow." Then, dropping public for private matters, the kind-hearted man said: "Look here, my young friend, I am going to see what I can do for that foot of yours; then we'll give you some dinner and put you to bed in my apprentice's little room, who has cleared out."

  But Maurice was tormented by such an itching desire for further intelligence that he could neither eat nor sleep until he had carried into execution his original design of paying a visit to his old friend, Madame Desvallieres, over the way. He was surprised that he was not halted at the door, which, in the universal confusion, had been left wide open, without so much as a sentry to guard it. People were going out and coming in incessantly, military men and officers of the household, and the roar from the blazing kitchen seemed to rise and pervade the whole house. There was no light in the passage and on the staircase, however, and he had to grope his way up as best he might. On reaching the first floor he paused for a few seconds, his heart beating violently, before the door of the apartment that he knew contained the Emperor, but not a sound was to be heard in the room; the stillness that reigned there was as of death. Mounting the last flight he presented himself at the door of the servant's room to which Madame Desvallieres had been consigned; the old lady was at first terrified at sight of him. When she recognized him presently she said:

  "Ah, my poor child, what a sad meeting is this! I would cheerfully have surrendered my house to the Emperor, but the people he has about him have no sense of decency. They lay hands on everything, without so much as saying, 'By your leave,' and I am afraid they will burn the house down with their great fires! He, poor man, looks like a corpse, and such sadness in his face-"

  And when the young man took leave of her with a few murmured words of comfort she went with him to the door, and leaning over the banister: "Look!" she softly said, "you can see him from where you are. Ah! we are all undone. Adieu, my child!"

  Maurice remained planted like a statue on one of the steps of the dark staircase. Craning his neck and directing his glance through the glazed fanlight over the door of the apartment, he beheld a sight that was never to fade from his memory.

  In the bare and cheerless room, the conventional bourgeois "parlor," was the Emperor, seated at a table on which his plate was laid, lighted at either end by wax candles in great silver candelabra. Silent in the background stood two aides-de-camp with folded arms. The wine in the glass was untasted, the bread untouched, a breast of chicken was cooling on the plate. The Emperor did not stir; he sat staring down at the cloth with those dim, lusterless, watery eyes that the young man remembered to have seen before at Rheims; but he appeared more weary than then, and when, evidently at the cost of a great effort, he had raised a couple of mouthfuls to his lips, he impatiently pushed the remainder of the food from him with his hand. That was his dinner. His pale face was blanched with an expression of suffering endured in silence.

  As Maurice was passing the dining room on the floor beneath, the door was suddenly thrown open, and through the glow of candles and the steam of smoking joints he caught a glimpse of a table of equerries, chambe
rlains, and aides-de-camp, engaged in devouring the Emperor's game and poultry and drinking his champagne, amid a great hubbub of conversation. Now that the marshal's dispatch had been sent off, all these people were delighted to know that the retreat was assured. In a week they would be at Paris and could sleep between clean sheets.

  Then, for the first time, Maurice suddenly became conscious of the terrible fatigue that was oppressing him like a physical burden; there was no longer room for doubt, the whole army was about to fall back, and the best thing for him to do was to get some sleep while waiting for the 7th corps to pass. He made his way back across the square to the house of his friend Combette, where, like one in a dream, he ate some dinner, after which he was mistily conscious of someone dressing his foot and then conducting him upstairs to a bedroom. And then all was blackness and utter annihilation; he slept a dreamless, unstirring sleep. But after an uncertain length of time-hours, days, centuries, he knew not-he gave a start and sat bolt upright in bed in the surrounding darkness. Where was he? What was that continuous rolling sound, like the rattling of thunder, that had aroused him from his slumber? His recollection suddenly returned to him; he ran to the window to see what was going on. In the obscurity of the street beneath, where the night was usually so peaceful, the artillery was passing, horses, men, and guns, in interminable array, with a roar and clatter that made the lifeless houses quake and tremble. The abrupt vision filled him with unreasoning alarm. What time might it be? The great bell in the Hotel de Ville struck four. He was endeavoring to allay his uneasiness by assuring himself that it was simply the initial movement in the retreat that had been ordered the day previous, when, raising his eyes, he beheld a sight that gave him fresh cause for inquietude: there was a light still in the corner window of the notary's house opposite, and the shadow of the Emperor, drawn in dark profile on the curtain, appeared and disappeared at regularly spaced intervals.