by Emile Zola
‘Gilberte!’ she whispered.
The young woman had gone to sleep again at once, and in the dim light coming through the red window curtains she had her pretty round face, set in the pillow, resting on one of her bare arms and surrounded by her lovely rumpled black hair.
‘Gilberte!’
She stirred, stretched, but did not open her eyes.
‘Yes, good-bye… Oh, never mind…’
Then, looking up, she recognized Henriette.
‘Oh, it’s you!… What’s the time, then?’
When she learned that it was just six she was somewhat embarrassed and joked to cover it up, saying it was no time for waking people out of their sleep. Then in answer to the first question about her husband:
‘But he hasn’t come back yet, he won’t before nine, I think. What makes you think he will come home so early?’
Henriette, seeing her smiling away in drowsy contentment, had to insist.
‘I’m telling you, they’ve been fighting in Bazeilles since dawn, and as I’m worried about my husband…’
‘Oh my dear, you’ve no need to be,’ exclaimed Gilberte. ‘Mine is so cautious that he would have been here hours ago it there had been the slightest danger… Get along with you, so long as he doesn’t come back there’s no need to worry.’
This thought made a strong impression on Henriette, for it was quite true that Delaherche was not the sort of man to take pointless risks. She was quite reassured, went over and pulled back the curtains and pushed open the shutters, and the room was lit up by the bright pinkish light from the sky in which the sun was beginning to pierce the fog with gold. One of the windows was half open and you could now hear the gunfire in this big warm room, so close and shut in until a moment ago.
Gilberte, half sitting up, with one elbow on the pillow, looked at the sky with her lovely light eyes.
‘So there’s some fighting,’ she said.
Her nightdress had slipped down and one of her shoulders was bare, showing her soft pink skin through the strands of her dark hair, and a strong aroma of love came from her awakening body.
‘They’re fighting so early, oh dear! It’s so silly to fight!’
But Henriette’s eye had been caught by a pair of army gloves, a man’s gloves, forgotten on a table, and she had not managed to restrain a start. Then Gilberte went very red and drew her over to the bed with a confused and affectionate movement and buried her face in her shoulder.
‘Yes, I felt sure you knew, that you had seen… My dear, you mustn’t judge me too harshly. He’s an old friend, I told you about him and me at Charleville in the old days, don’t you remember?’
She spoke more softly still and went on sentimentally but with a little giggle:
‘He begged so hard yesterday when I met him again… Just think, he’s fighting this morning and he might get killed… I couldn’t refuse, could I?’
It was heroic and charming in its tender gaiety, this last present of pleasure, this night of happiness freely bestowed on the battle eve. That was what was making her smile, with her bird-brained frivolity, despite her embarrassment. She would never have had the heart to shut her door, since everything worked together to facilitate the meeting.
‘Do you blame me?’
Henriette had looked very serious while she was listening. Such things took her aback because she did not understand them. Perhaps she was different. Since first thing that morning her heart had been with her husband and her brother out there under fire. How could anyone sleep so peacefully and go in for such carefree dallying when loved ones were in peril?
‘But my dear, doesn’t it make your heart ache not to be with your husband, or even that young man? Don’t you think all the time that at any minute they may be brought back to you broken and disfigured?’
With a quick movement of her adorable bare arm Gilberte thrust away the awful vision.
‘Oh my God, what are you saying? You really are horrid, spoiling my morning like this! No, no, I refuse to think about it, it’s too depressing!’
Even Henriette could not help smiling. She recalled their childhood, when Gilberte’s father, Major de Vineuil, was appointed customs officer for Charleville after being invalided out and had sent his daughter to a farm near Le Chêne-Populeux because he was worried about her cough. He was haunted by the death of his wife who had been carried off very young by tuberculosis. The little girl was only nine, and already she was restless and coquettish, went in for play-acting, dressing herself up as a queen in any old things she could find, keeping silver paper from chocolate to make bracelets and crowns. She remained like that later, and at twenty had married Maginot, a forestry inspector. She disliked Mézières, all shut in by its ramparts, and continued to live in Charleville, where she preferred the freer life brightened up with parties. Her father had died and she enjoyed absolute freedom with an easy-going husband who was such a nonentity that she had no scruples. Provincial gossip had given her many lovers, but she had only really let herself go with Captain Beaudoin out of the vast numbers of uniforms she had lived among thanks to the former connexions of her father and her relationship with Colonel de Vineuil. There was no vice in her, she simply loved pleasure, and it seemed quite clear that in taking lovers she had been indulging her irresistible need to be beautiful and gay.
‘It’s very wrong to have started up with him again,’ Henriette finally said in her serious tone.
But Gilberte at once shut her mouth with one of her pretty, affectionate gestures.
‘Oh my dear, but how could I do anything else, and it was only for once… You know I would rather die than deceive my new husband.’
They both stopped talking and stayed in an affectionate embrace, though so profoundly unlike each other. At that moment they could hear the beating of their hearts and might have understood the different languages of those hearts – the one living for her own happiness, giving herself, sharing herself, the other filled with a single devotion with the great silent heroism of noble souls.
‘Yes, they’re fighting, it’s true,’ cried Gilberte at long last. ‘I must hurry up and get dressed.’
Since they had been silent the sound of gunfire had indeed seemed louder. She jumped out of bed, got Henriette to help her, not wanting to call her maid, putting on shoes, getting quickly into a dress so as to be ready to receive anybody or go downstairs if necessary. As she was quickly finishing her hair there was a knock, and recognizing old Madame Delaherche’s voice she ran to open the door.
‘Of course, Mother dear, do come in.’
With her usual thoughtlessness she let her in without noticing that the army gloves were still there on the table. Henriette rushed to seize them and throw them behind an armchair, but in vain. Madame Delaherche must have noticed them, for she remained speechless for several seconds, as though she could not get her breath. She instinctively ran her eyes round the room, let them pause on the red curtained bed, still all unmade and in disorder.
‘So it was Madame Weiss who came up and woke you… You managed to sleep, my dear.’
Obviously she had not come to say that. Oh dear, this marriage that her son had insisted on going into against her will, at the dangerous age of fifty, after twenty years of a frigid married existence with a disagreeable, scraggy woman! He had been so reasonable until then, and was now carried away by a youthful passion for this pretty widow who was so flighty and frivolous! She had made up her mind to keep an eye on the present, and now here was the past coming back! But should she say anything? As it was she only existed as a silent reproach in the home, always stayed shut up in her room, and was unbending in her religious life. But this time the disloyalty was so flagrant that she resolved to tell her son.
Gilberte blushed and answered:
‘Yes, I did manage to get a few hours of good sleep… You know Jules still hasn’t come back.’
Madame Delaherche cut her short with a gesture. She had been worrying ever since the gunfire began, and watching out fo
r her son’s return. But she was a heroic mother. And then she remembered what she had come to do.
‘Your uncle the colonel has sent Major Bouroche with a pencilled note to ask whether we could fit up a casualty station here. He knows we’ve got room in the mill, and I’ve already put the yard and drying-shed at their disposal… Only you ought to go down…’
‘Oh yes, straight away! Straight away!’ said Henriette, joining in. ‘We’ll help.’
Gilberte herself seemed very concerned and enthusiastic about this new role as a nurse. She just took the time to tie a lace scarf over her hair and the three women went down. As they reached the archway down below, through the open gate they saw some people gathered in the street. A low vehicle was slowly coming along, a sort of trap with one horse being led by a lieutenant in the Zouaves. They thought it was. the first wounded being brought in.
‘Yes, yes, here it is, come in!’
But they were quickly undeceived. The wounded man lying on the floor of the trap was Marshal MacMahon, part of whose left buttock had been shot away, and he was being brought to the Sub-Prefecture after an emergency dressing in a gardener’s cottage. He was bareheaded and half undressed, and the gold braid on his uniform was soiled with dirt and blood. Without speaking he lifted his head and looked about him vaguely. Then seeing the three women standing horrified and wringing their hands as this great disaster went by – the whole army stricken in its commander-in-chief as the very first shots were fired – he nodded slightly with a wan paternal smile. A few onlookers standing by had doffed their hats. Others were already busily explaining that General Ducrot had been appointed commander-in-chief. It was half past seven.
‘And what about the Emperor?’ Henriette asked a bookseller standing at his door.
‘He went by nearly an hour ago,’ answered the neighbour. ‘I went along with him and saw him go out by the Balan gate. There’s a rumour that his head has been shot off.’
The grocer opposite was angry.
‘Come off it, that can’t be true! Only the brave give their lives.’
Towards the Place du Collège the trap carrying the marshal disappeared into the swelling crowds, among whom the most far-fetched reports from the battlefield were already going round. The mist was thinning and the streets filling with sunshine.
But then there came a harsh voice from the courtyard:
‘Ladies, it isn’t there you are wanted, but in here!’
All three went in and found themselves confronted by Major Bouroche, the medical officer, who had already thrown his uniform jacket into a corner and put on a big white apron. His huge head with coarse bristling hair and leonine face seemed flaming with urgency and energy above all this still unstained whiteness. He struck them as so terrible that they were instantly subjugated, obeying his every sign and rushing to satisfy him.
‘We’ve got nothing… Give me some linen, try and find some more mattresses, show my chaps where the pump is…’
They rushed about busily and became simply his servants.
The mill was a very good choice for an ambulance station. There was in particular the drying-shed, an enormous room with glass at the end where there was ample room for a hundred beds, and at one side there was a shed which would be ideal for operating: a long table had been brought in, the pump was quite near, and those with minor injuries could wait on the lawn just near, which happened to be very pleasant, for the lovely old elms were delightfully shady.
Bouroche had preferred to establish himself straight away in Sedan, foreseeing the massacre and the appalling pressure that would force the troops back into the town. He had merely left, close to the 7th corps, behind Floing, two mobile ambulance units for first aid, from which the wounded could be sent on to him after emergency dressings. All the stretcher-bearing squads were out there with the job of picking up under fire any men who fell, and they had the carts and vans. And apart from two of his assistants left on the battlefield Bouroche had brought his staff, two assistant medical officers and three juniors, which might be enough to cope with the operations. In addition there were three dispensers and a dozen medical orderlies.
But he was still fuming, being a man unable to do anything without passion.
‘What are you up to now? Put those mattresses closer together… We’ll put some straw in that corner if necessary.’
The guns were roaring, and he knew that the work would be coming in at any moment now, vehicles full of bleeding flesh, and he was frantically fitting up the big and still empty room. Then there were other preparations going on in the shed: boxes of dressings and medicaments all open and set out on a plank, packets of lint, bandages, compresses, linen, splints for fractures; while on another shelf beside a large pot of ointment and a bottle of chloroform the sets of instruments were laid out, all of shining steel, probes, pincers, knives, scissors, saws, an arsenal of every kind of point and blade for probing, making incisions, slicing, cutting off. But there were no bowls.
‘You must have some basins, buckets, saucepans, any old thing… We can’t muck ourselves up with blood up to our eyes, can we? And sponges, try and get me some sponges!’
Madame Delaherche rushed off and came back followed by three maids loaded with all the bowls they could find. Standing by the instruments Gilberte had beckoned Henriette over and shown them to her with a little shudder. They held each other’s hands and stood there in silence, expressing with the pressure of their hands the vague terror, pity and anxiety overwhelming them.
‘Oh my dear, to think of having a limb cut off!’
‘Poor creatures!’
On the big table Bouroche had had a mattress put and was covering it with oilcloth when a clatter of horses’ hoofs was heard under the archway. It was the first ambulance coming into the courtyard, but it only contained ten slightly wounded men sitting facing each other, most of them with an arm in a sling, a few with head wounds and bandaged foreheads. They got out themselves with just a little help and the examination began.
As Henriette was gently helping a very young soldier with a bullet wound in his shoulder to get his cape off, which made him cry out in pain, she noticed the number of his regiment.
‘But you belong to the 106th! Are you in the Beaudoin company?’
No, he was in Ravaud’s. But he did know Corporal Jean Macquart, and thought he was right in saying that his squad had not yet been in action. This very vague piece of information was enough to cheer her up, though; her brother was alive so far, and she would be quite all right when she had embraced her husband, whom she was still expecting at any minute.
Just then Henriette looked up and was amazed to see, standing in a group of people a few steps away, Delaherche, holding forth about the terrible dangers he had just come through between Bazeilles and Sedan. How had he got here? She hadn’t seen him come in.
‘Isn’t my husband with you?’
But Delaherche, whose mother and wife were enjoying questioning him, was in no hurry.
‘Just a minute.’
He took up his story again:
‘Between Bazeilles and Balan I was nearly killed twenty times. A hail of bullets and shells – no, a hurricane!… And I ran into the Emperor, oh, very brave! Then from Balan here I dashed…’
Henriette pulled his arm.
‘My husband?’
‘Weiss? Oh, he stayed there, Weiss did!’
‘There? What do you mean?’
‘Yes, he picked up a dead soldier’s rifle, he’s fighting.’
‘Fighting – but why?’
‘Oh, he’s quite off his head. He simply wouldn’t come with me, so I left him, naturally.’
Henriette looked at him with staring eyes. There was a silence. Then she calmly made up her mind.
‘All right, I’m going there.’
She was going there, but how? But it was impossible, crazy. Delaherche began again about the bullets and shells sweeping the road. Gilberte had seized her hand again to stop her, and Madame Delaherche also trie
d in vain to point out the absurd rashness of her idea. She said again in her quiet, calm way:
‘No, there’s nothing you can say, I’m going.’
She insisted, and all she would agree to take was Gilberte’s black lace head-scarf. Still hoping to convince her, Delaherche finally declared he would go with her, at any rate as far as the Balan gate. But at that moment he caught sight of the sentry who throughout the commotion of the installation of the casualty station had gone on pacing up and down in front of the coach-house in which the cash of the 7th corps was being kept under lock and key. He remembered and was afraid, and went to see if the millions were still there. Meanwhile Henriette was already on her way under the archway.
‘Wait for me! My word, you’re as crazy as your husband!’
But as another ambulance vehicle was coming in they had to let it pass. This was smaller, with only two wheels, containing two badly wounded lying on stretchers. The first one they brought out, with infinite care, was nothing but a mass of bleeding flesh with one hand smashed and the whole of one side torn through by a shell splinter. The second one had his right leg crushed. At once Bouroche had this one placed on the mattress and began the first operation, with orderlies and his assistants ceaselessly running to and fro. Madame Delaherche and Gilberte were sitting near the lawn, rolling bandages.
Outside, Delaherche caught up with Henriette.
‘Look here, my dear Madame Weiss, you’re not going to do such a silly thing… How do you think you can get to Weiss out there? He can’t even still be there by now, and must have taken to the fields to get back… I assure you that Bazeilles is unreachable.’