by Emile Zola
Delaherche, feeling reassured, realized that he was dying of hunger and decided to go home. But as soon as he was outside he was pulled up short by the terrible confusion that had developed. The streets and open spaces were jammed and bursting, so full of men, horses and equipment that the compact mass looked as though it must have been forced in by some gigantic ram. While the regiments that had retired in good order were camping on the ramparts, the scattered remnants of every corps, the fugitives from all arms, a milling throng, had submerged the town and piled up like a tidal wave that had congealed and frozen solid, in which you could not move arms or legs. The wheels of guns, waggons and countless vehicles had fouled each other. Horses, whipped and shoved in all directions, had no room to go forwards or backwards. And the men, taking no notice of threats, were breaking into houses, devouring whatever they found and lying down wherever they could, in rooms or in cellars. Many had fallen asleep in doorways and were blocking entries. Some, too weak to go any further, were lying on the pavement dead asleep, not even stirring under feet that bruised their limbs, preferring to be trodden on rather than to have to make the effort to go somewhere else.
This made Delaherche realize the urgent necessity of surrender. At certain road junctions ammunition waggons were touching each other, and just one Prussian shell, if it landed on one of them, would blow up the others, and the whole of Sedan would flare up like a torch. Besides, what could be done about such a collection of desperate men, overcome with exhaustion and hunger and with no ammunition and no supplies? It would have needed a whole day simply to clear the streets. The fortress itself had no armament and the town had no provisions. At the meeting these had been the reasons given by the wiser men who kept a clear view of the situation in spite of their deep patriotic grief, and even the, most hot-headed officers, the ones who shouted emotionally that no army could give in like this, had had to hang their heads, being unable to think of any practical measures to start the fight again next day.
Delaherche managed with difficulty to fight his way through the pack and cross the Place Turenne and the Place du Rivage. As he passed the Hôtel de la Croix d’Or he caught a depressing glimpse of the dining-room, in which some generals were sitting in silence at an empty table. There was nothing left, not even any bread. But General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, who was storming about in the kitchen, must have found something, for he stopped talking and then ran up the stairs awkwardly holding in both hands something in greasy paper. There was such a crowd staring in from the pavement through the window at this glum board, swept clean by famine, that Delaherche had to shove with his elbows, feeling caught in a web, and sometimes being pushed back and losing what headway he had gained. But when he got to the Grande-Rue, the wall of people was impassable, and for a moment he gave up hope. Here all the guns in a battery seemed to have been piled on top of each other. So he made up his mind and climbed up on to the gun-carriages, stepped over the guns themselves, leaping from wheel to wheel at the risk of breaking his legs. Then there were horses in the way, and he stooped down and was reduced to making his way between the legs and under the bellies of these poor, half-starved creatures. After struggling for a quarter of an hour he reached the top of rue Saint-Michel, but there the growing number of obstacles frightened him, and he thought he would go along that street and get round via rue des Laboureurs, hoping that these back streets would be less crowded. But as ill-luck would have it there was a brothel down there, besieged by a lot of drunken soldiers, and fearing he might fare badly in some shindy he retraced his steps. So then he fought on and got to the end of the Grand-rue, sometimes balancing on cart-shafts, sometimes climbing over vans. In the Place du College he was actually carried along on people’s shoulders for some thirty metres. He fell off and nearly had his ribs broken, only getting away by climbing some railings. When at last he reached rue Maqua, in a sweat and torn to shreds, he had been wearing himself out for an hour since leaving the Sub-Prefecture to do a journey that usually took him under five minutes.
To prevent the garden and ambulance station from being overrun, Major Bouroche had taken the precaution of posting two pickets at the entrance. This was a relief to Delaherche, to whom it had just occurred that his home might be given up to looting. In the garden the sight of the temporary hospital, ill-lit by a few lanterns and giving off a foul smell of sickness, once again struck a chill into his heart. He tripped over a soldier asleep on the paving-stones and recollected the existence of the cash of the 7th corps, which this man had been guarding since that morning, and, no doubt forgotten by his officers, he was so dead beat that he had lain down. The house itself looked empty and the ground floor was quite dark, with the doors wide open. The servants must have stayed in the ambulance station, for there was nobody in the kitchen, where only one miserable little lamp was smoking. He lit a candle and went softly up the main staircase so as not to wake up his mother and his wife, whom he had begged to go to bed after such a heavy day and such terrible emotions.
But as he went into his study he had a shock. A soldier was stretched out on the sofa on which Captain Beaudoin had slept for some hours the day before, and he only understood when he recognized Maurice, Henriette’s brother; particularly as when he turned round he saw another soldier on the carpet, wrapped in a blanket, the Jean whom he had seen the day before. They were both knocked out, dead to the world. He did not stay there, but went on into his wife’s room next door. There was a lamp burning on the corner of a table, and an eerie silence. Gilberte had thrown herself across the bed fully dressed, for fear of some disaster, presumably. She was sleeping very peacefully, and by her bedside Henriette was asleep too, sitting on a chair with just her head resting on the bed, but her sleep was disturbed by nightmares, and there were big tears under her lids. He stood there looking at them both for a moment and was tempted to wake Henriette up and find out. Had she been to Bazeilles? Perhaps if he asked her she could give him some news about his dyeworks. But pity came over him, and he was withdrawing when his mother appeared noiselessly at the door and beckoned him to follow.
As they went through the dining-room he expressed his astonishment:
‘What, not in bed yet?’
She first shook her head and then whispered:
‘I can’t sleep, I’m in an armchair beside the colonel… He’s now got a very high temperature and keeps on waking up and asking questions. I don’t know how to answer. You come and have a look at him.’
Monsieur de Vineuil had already dropped off to sleep again. His long, red face with its bushy, snow-white moustache could just be made out on the pillow, for Madame Delaherche had shielded the lamp with a newspaper and all that part of the room was in semidarkness, while the bright light shone on her as she sat stiffly in the armchair with her hands hanging loose and eyes far away in a tragic dream.
‘Just a minute,’ she murmured, ‘I think he’s heard you, he’s waking up again.’
The colonel was indeed opening his eyes again, and he gazed at Delaherche without moving his head. Then he recognized him and at once asked in a voice weak with fever:
‘It’s all over, isn’t it? They’re capitulating.’
Delaherche caught his mother’s eye and was on the point of telling him a lie. But what was the point? He said with a gesture of weariness:
‘What do you expect them to do? If you could see the state of the streets in the town!… General de Wimpffen has just gone to the Prussian headquarters to discuss terms.’
Monsieur de Vineuil shut his eyes again and he gave a long shudder and moaned softly:
‘Oh God! Oh God!’
Keeping his eyes shut he went on in gasps:
‘Oh, what I wanted… they should have done it yesterday… Yes, I knew the terrain and I told the general what I was afraid of… but nobody would listen to him either… Up there, above Saint-Menges, as far as Fleigneux, all the heights occupied, the army dominating Sedan, commanding the Saint-Albert gap… There we were waiting in quite impregnable positions, th
e Mézières road still open…’
His words were getting mixed up, he mumbled a few more unintelligible words as his vision of the battle, born of a high fever, gradually faded out and vanished into sleep. In his sleep perhaps he was still dreaming of victory.
‘Does the major think he’ll pull through?’ Delaherche whispered.
Madame Delaherche nodded.
‘All the same, it’s terrible, those wounds in the foot,’ he went on. ‘He’ll be a long time in bed, won’t he?’
This time she made no reply, herself lost in the great grief of the defeat. She belonged to an already bygone age, that of the old, sturdy frontier bourgeoisie, so fierce in former days in defence of its towns. In the strong lamplight her severe face with its thin nose and tight lips expressed her anger and suffering, the feeling of revolt which made sleep impossible for her.
So Delaherche felt isolated and filled with dreadful distress. His unbearable hunger was coming on again, and he thought it must just be weakness that was draining him in this way of all his courage. He tiptoed out of the room and went down to the kitchen again, candlestick in hand. But he found it drearier than ever, with the stove out, the cupboard bare and cloths thrown all over the place as if the wind of disaster had blown through there and taken with it all the life and joy of anything that can be eaten or drunk. At first he thought he would not discover even a crust, for the odd bits of bread had gone down to the ambulance station in the soup. But then in the back of a cupboard he came upon some of yesterday’s beans that had been overlooked. He devoured them with neither butter nor bread, standing there and not daring to go upstairs for such a meal, which he hurried through in this dismal kitchen which the guttering little lamp made stink of paraffin.
It was not much after ten, and Delaherche had nothing he could do while waiting to know whether the capitulation was really going to be signed. He had a nagging worry that the struggle might be resumed, and a terror of what would happen then which he kept to himself and which weighed heavily on him. Having gone up to his study again, where Maurice and Jean had not moved, he tried in vain to stretch out in an armchair, but sleep would not come, and noises of exploding shells made him jump up again just as he was dropping off. The dreadful bombardment of the day had stayed in his ears, and he listened in terror for a minute and was left trembling at the heavy silence surrounding him. Not being able to sleep, he preferred to get up, and wandered through the dark rooms, avoiding the one in which his mother was watching over the colonel, for her fixed stare following him round got on his nerves. Twice he went back to see whether Henriette had awakened, and paused and watched how peaceful his wife’s face was. Until two in the morning, not knowing what to do, he went up and down from one place to another.
It could not go on for ever. Delaherche decided to go back yet again to the Sub-Prefecture, knowing that there would be no rest for him so long as he did not know. But down below, when he saw the jammed street, his heart failed him. He would never have the strength to get there and back with all these obstacles, the very memory of which made him feel exhausted. He was still hesitating when Major Bouroche came in, puffing and blowing and swearing.
‘Christ! It’s enough to kill you!’
He had had to go the the Hôtel de Ville to beg the mayor to requisition some chloroform and send him some by dawn because his supply had run out, operations were imperative and he was afraid, as he put it, that he would be obliged to mince up the poor buggers without putting them to sleep.
‘Well?’ asked Delaherche.
‘Well, they don’t even know whether the chemists have still got any!’
But the textile manufacturer was not interested in chloroform and he went on:
‘Never mind that… Is it over? Have they signed with the Prussians?’
The major waved his arms violently.
‘Nothing settled yet. Wimpffen has just come back… It seems that those sods are making demands they should get a thick ear for… Oh well, let’s all start again and all peg out, it’d be better that way!’
This made Delaherche go very pale.
‘But is what you are saying quite certain?’
‘I had it from those gentry in the town council who are having a permanent session… An officer had come in from the Sub-Prefecture and told them all about it.’
He went into details. The interview between General de Wimpffen and General von Moltke and Bismarck had taken place at the Château de Bellevue, near Donchery. He was a terror, that von Moltke, cold and hard, with the pasty face of a mathematical chemist who won battles in his study by algebra! He at once made it clear that he knew all about the desperate plight of the French army: no food, no ammunition, demoralization and disorder, the absolute impossibility of breaking the iron ring tightly closed round it, while the German armies occupied the strongest possible positions and could burn the town down in two hours. He coldly dictated his wishes: the whole French army to be taken prisoner with its arms and baggage. Bismarck merely backed him up, looking like an amiable bloodhound. Thereupon General de Wimpffen had worn himself out trying to resist these conditions, the harshest ever imposed upon a defeated army. He talked of its ill-luck, the heroism of the soldiers, the danger of pushing a proud people too far, and for three hours he had threatened, begged, talked with desperate and superb eloquence, asking them to intern the vanquished army in Central France or even in Algeria, and the sole concession obtained in the end was that officers who would bind themselves in writing and on their honour not to fight again would be allowed to go home. Anyhow, the armistice was to be extended until the following morning at ten. If by then the conditions were not accepted, the Prussian batteries would open fire again and the town would be destroyed.
‘It’s ridiculous!’ exclaimed Delaherche. ‘You don’t burn down a town that’s done nothing to deserve it!’
The major put the finishing touch to his panic when he added that some officers he had seen at the Hôtel de l’Europe were talking of a mass break-out before daybreak. Since the German demands had become known emotion had risen to fever-pitch, and the most extravagant projects were being put forward. Even the idea that it would not be honest to take advantage of the darkness and violate the truce stopped nobody, and the most crazy plans were bandied about – resumption of the march on Carignan right through the Bavarians, under cover of darkness, the plateau of Illy recaptured by surprise, the Mézières road cleared, or again an irrestible dash to leap with one bound into Belgium. Others, it was true, said nothing, for they were conscious of the inevitability of the disaster and, with a happy cry of relief, would have accepted anything, signed anything so as to be done with it. ‘Good night,’ concluded Bouroche. ‘I’m going to try and get a couple of hours’ sleep. I need it badly.’
Left on his own, Delaherche was outraged. What, were they really going to start fighting again and burn Sedan down? It was becoming inevitable, and this appalling thing would certainly come about as soon as the sun was sufficiently high above the hills to give enough light for the horrible massacre. Once again he automatically climbed the steep stairs to the attics and found himself among the
chimneys on the narrow ledge overlooking the town. But at that hour up there he was in total darkness, in an endless rolling sea of black waves and at first he could not make out anything whatever. The factory buildings below him were the first things to emerge in vague masses he could recognize: the engine-house, the loom-shops, drying-sheds, stores; and the sight of the huge block of buildings, his pride and wealth, broke him down with self-pity as he reflected that in a few hours nothing would be left of it but ashes. His eyes went up to the horizon and travelled along this black immensity in which tomorrow’s threat lay dormant. Southwards in the Bazeilles direction sparks were blowing over houses which were collapsing in ashes, while northwards the farm in the Garenne woods which had been set on fire that evening was still burning and throwing a bloody glare on to the trees. No other fires, only those two blazes, and between them a bot
tomless chasm with nothing but scattered, frightening noises. Over there, maybe a long way off, maybe on the ramparts, somebody was crying. He tried in vain to pierce the
veil and see Le Liry, La Marfée, the batteries at Frénois and Wadelincourt, the circle of bronze beasts of prey that he sensed were there, straining forward with open jaws. As he brought his eyes back to the town round him, he could hear its anguished breathing. It was not merely the uneasy sleep of the soldiers lying in the streets, the faint creakings of the mass of men and animals and cannons. What he seemed to be hearing was the anxious insomnia of townspeople and neighbours who couldn’t sleep any more than he could, but were feverishly waiting for daylight. They must all be aware that the capitulation was not signed, and were all counting the hours and shudderingly thinking that if it were not signed there would be nothing for them to do but go down into their cellars and die there, crushed and buried beneath the ruins. He thought a wild voice came up from the rue des Voyards crying Murder! amid a sudden clicking of rifles. He stayed there leaning over into the thick night, lost in a misty starless sky, and taken with such a shivering that all the hairs on his body seemed to be standing on end.