Six Women And The Invasion Part 9

Unctuous, yellowish substance. Was it oil, or syrup? I looked at it, shook the gla.s.s, smelt it, even tasted a drop with the tip of my tongue, and then announced:

"It is glucose."

Glucose! glucose! and we had no sugar left! Every morning we drank milk and coffee unsweetened by honey. Mme. Valaine declared my diagnosis right, and we leapt for joy like marionettes.

There was no more meat, no b.u.t.ter, and eggs were uncommonly rare, but sweetened dishes take the place of everything. Baskets full of pears! A keg of glucose! Thirty bottles of wine! Who talked of dearth? For truth's sake I must say glucose did not answer as well as we expected.

When I tried to sweeten the milk with it, the milk turned sour, and with it the experiment turned also, to my shame.

On the other hand, by stewing the beloved pears with glucose and wine, I obtained an unforgettable dish, over which a jury of cooks greedily licked its lips. And every other evening, for two months, our scanty menu was thus composed: soup, stewed pears, bread at discretion, fresh water at will. The glucose went to keep the wine company in the cistern, except for a few bottles of either liquid, which we craftily concealed in the garden, and in case of need we had but to cry out:

"Pierrot, go and fetch the bottle that is in the reeds or in the blue fir ... or in the big yew...."

It was much more amusing than simply to go down into the cellar.

Thus our life was not uninteresting, but our chief occupation was to watch the horizon, east and south, where our soldiers were fighting. The guns were coming sensibly nearer; we heard them growl day and night, and when it grew dark we saw sh.e.l.ls burst above the hills. We spent many hours in the garden looking out for these illuminations, hoping we might understand something from the way they went. Then came the gleam of an explosive, striping the sky with a flash of lightning or with a slow trail of light. The better to observe, we got up the ladder, and sat on the wall. To the casual pa.s.ser-by we might have resembled a flock of crows at roost waiting for gossip's tales. Mme. Valaine had no taste for these perilous exercises, and contented herself with the stories we told her. For us the only spectacle we thought worth while was that very one which almost rent our hearts. How eagerly we wished for the sh.e.l.ls to burst nearer, nearer, to set the house in a blaze so that we might be set free from our chains!

About the 25th of September took place the first shock between us and the German army. It was nearly eight o'clock in the evening. The supper over, I went into the garden, and was peering at the dark sky, heedless of the cold wind which caused my hair and my shawl to flutter, when a frightful uproar broke the silence. Gruff voices cried out vociferously; heavy boots kicked at the gates; the angry dogs barked till they choked.

"Good Heavens! what is happening?"

I threw myself down the ladder, fled through the garden--those days were full of wild races--got to the house, and saw Genevieve hasten forth, a key in her hand.

"They want us to open the gate," she said, "and we must."

Yvonne seized the dogs by the collar and dragged them in. The gate was hardly unlocked when those without threw it open, and at the same time overran the yard. They were furious, and one of them shouted out in bad French:

"When the Germans knock at a door, it should be opened immediately."

"You think so, do you, you Boche!"

On hearing us speak fluent German they softened, and looked at us in amazement.

They all had the same round faces, which the lantern of an under-officer lit up.

They wanted a lodging: barns, stables to shelter men and horses. All that was difficult to get!

"There is room but for one horse in the stable."

"Well, that will do for two horses and two men."

"And here is the wash-house."

"Six men will sleep there."

The others withdrew to look for a lodging somewhere else. The remainder, who seemed to be harmless blockheads, were convoys. We heaved a deep sigh, but hardly had a mouthful of air reached our lungs, when the yard was already swarming with a new mob. Standing on the steps I engaged in parley with the _Feldwebel_.

"The house is chock-full, and eight soldiers are already lodged in the outhouses."

He was young, big, and stout, and his hard-featured face was deeply scarred.

Of course he did not allow himself to be prevailed upon.

"It is all the same to me," he answered; "make room for me if you have none."

He ordered me to open the coach-house, but when he saw it crammed up with all sorts of things, he made a wry face.

"And up there?" he asked, pointing at the deserter's attic.

Good Heavens! the pears! the wine! I was trembling with fear, and was at a loss how to answer when the man altered his mind:

"I would rather have a bedroom to myself," and so saying he opened Antoinette's door.

"That will do," said the person, and waving back the silently waiting soldiers he kept but two of them with him. We began to remove a few things from the room, which Antoinette had always kept for herself, and before the sergeant's taunting eyes we carried away clothes, books, and knick-knacks. The door we had left ajar was suddenly thrown open, and a little c.o.xcomb of an officer came in and cried out in a cheerful tone:

"Oh! oh! Two at a time!"

That was more than we could stand, and leaving blankets and coverlets we ran away.

At the corner of the house a brutal arm stopped me, and a soldier I hardly saw in the night muttered something I did not understand about money--five francs. I tried to break loose from the man's hold, and answered at random we were no shopkeepers and sold nothing.

"If you are busy," he said, "another lady would do."

In the dim light of a glimmering window I caught sight of a Slavonic-featured, black-bearded, sneaking-eyed face that belonged to one of the stable-dwellers--a perfect brute. He looked so strange, his voice was so peculiar that I suddenly understood the meaning of his words. Frightened, I shook my arm to get it free, set off running, and got so quickly out of sight he might have believed I had been swallowed up by the night. I rushed into the house, banged the door, turned the key in it, pushed the bolts, and even then I was not sure I was secure.

I wished for padlocks, bars, chains, to protect us against such creatures. We thought we would never dare go to bed.

With Mme. Valaine I went through the house to test the wooden shutters.

In the street the carts of the convoy stood close to the house; here and there we saw a lantern glimmer. Lying under the awnings the drivers tumbled and tossed, and from time to time uttered heavy groans. Those carts reminded us of monstrous beasts, hunch-backed and mischievous, which squatted at our door to watch and threaten us. The yard was pitch dark, all seemed to be in a sound sleep, but for the horses, which kicked and pawed the ground of the narrow stable. The men were snoring; the dogs shut up in the lobby whined gently. We talked in a low voice and went on tip-toe. In our own house we felt beset with dangers and cares. Without taking off our clothes, we laid ourselves down, our eyes wide open, our ears attentive to all outside sounds, our nerves on edge.

So we waited for the break of day.

The Germans got up at the first glimmer of a misty sun, and we watched them through the trellised shutters. They had cooked a potato soup, a grey and sticky stuff, to which they added some brandy, and which they ate without conviction.

For hours together they peeled vegetables, hummed tunes, whistled, dawdled up and down; but they never drew a drop of water from the pump, and they seemed wholly unacquainted with the fact that a human being ought to wash. Then they began cleaning their arms most carefully, and deluged them with petroleum and oil. Our amazement was the same which the sight of wigwams or n.i.g.g.e.rs' cabins might have roused, seen for the first time. Their guns, leaning against the gate, confirmed this impression. Real savages' arms, the bayonets were about a hand's breadth, and notched like a saw. At the mere thought of the wounds such teeth would make in the flesh, an icy chill ran through our veins.

About nine, after half an hour's monotonous shouting, the convoy filed off, and soon after vanished from sight. As soon as they were gone we rushed out. The street swarmed with people, like an ant-hill which a clumsy foot has trodden on. Well! well! German boots leave traces. The High Street of Morny had never before witnessed such filth. On all sides lay dirty straw, muddy rags, formless sc.r.a.ps of iron. The horse-dung looked clean compared with the rest.

As to ourselves, we cried with horror at the sight of our poor yard, into which we could not put our foot. Oily pools stood here and there; the pavement, bespattered with mud, was covered all over with dirty rags, greasy papers, vegetable peelings, and, overtopping all the rest, what Antoinette pompously called "human dejections." And yet in a corner of the garden was a closet formerly intended for the gardener.... But such people....

Disgusted and bewailing, old Ta.s.sin spent the whole afternoon in cleaning the yard, and made more than one unpleasant discovery, such as about 40 lb. of rotten meat concealed in the straw. The "small room" was in a sorry plight. The pandours had emptied the ink-pot into a work-table, scribbled the walls all over, broken a vase, taken away a woollen blanket, an eider-down, and a door-curtain. As to the mattress and the spring-mattress, we could not have touched them with a pair of tongs, covered as they were with spots of grease. It is agreeable to receive Germans!

Antoinette instantly made up her mind to change her room, and easily transformed one of the attics.

We went roundly to work, and the "small room" was soon as empty as a Pomeranian's head. We had made up our minds that the creatures should bring straw with them if they required hospitality a second time. To the King of Prussia himself we would have grudged a bed, lest he should leave it in as bad a condition as his men.

The convoy came back that very evening. Our guests of yesterday went back to their lodging. Only the inhabitants of the "small room" did not return. Perhaps what was left them of conscience reproached them with theft.

Early in the morning the carts went off, and after three hours' work old Ta.s.sin declared he had removed all traces of their second visit. The whole village complained that the rascals had not only dirtied whatever they approached, but had stolen what they wanted, wasted provender and oats, and had thrown down whole sheaves of wheat for their horses to lie on.

In the first weeks of the occupation the invaders bled the country to death. In Morny they took thousands of fowls, hundreds of pigs and sheep, and I don't know how many horses and cows. M. Lantois' black bull, which his ravishers had tethered to a cart, and then abandoned in the middle of the road, protested in a wild, fierce, and fitful roar that he repeated every other minute for hours together. The farmers dreaded marauders still more than official requisitions. For what was requisitioned they obtained, if they insisted, a note of hand, often scribbled in pencil and almost illegible, but at least proving they had been deprived of something. The soldiers of course took an unfair advantage of their victims, who knew not German, and cheated them in every way. We were often asked to translate such I.O.U.'s as had been composed according to the writer's own fancy. "Paid and carried away a horse," wrote one requisitioner who had but paid with lies.--"Exchanged two horses of equal worth," another pretended, when a broken-down hack had supplied the place of a good mare.--"Received 40 lb. of bacon." And the honest customer knew he had gained 450 kilog. on the pork-butcher.