The Downfall Part 22

"You won't come? Very well! then I shall leave you to your fate. Adieu!"

It was seven o'clock, and he had delayed his departure too long. So long as the houses were there to afford him shelter he took advantage of every doorway, of every bit of projecting wall, shrinking at every volley into cavities that were ridiculously small in comparison with his bulk. He turned and twisted in and out with the sinuous dexterity of the serpent; he would never have supposed that there was so much of his youthful agility left in him. When he reached the end of the village, however, and had to make his way for a s.p.a.ce of some three hundred yards along the deserted, empty road, swept by the batteries on Liry hill, although the perspiration was streaming from his face and body, he shivered and his teeth chattered. For a minute or so he advanced cautiously along the bed of a dry ditch, bent almost double, then, suddenly forsaking the protecting shelter, burst into the open and ran for it with might and main, wildly, aimlessly, his ears ringing with detonations that sounded to him like thunder-claps. His eyes burned like coals of fire; it seemed to him that he was wrapt in flame. It was an eternity of torture. Then he suddenly caught sight of a little house to his left, and he rushed for the friendly refuge, gained it, with a sensation as if an immense load had been lifted from his breast. The place was tenanted, there were men and horses there. At first he could distinguish nothing. What he beheld subsequently filled him with amazement.

Was not that the Emperor, attended by his brilliant staff? He hesitated, although for the last two days he had been boasting of his acquaintance with him, then stood staring, open-mouthed. It was indeed Napoleon III.; he appeared larger, somehow, and more imposing on horseback, and his mustache was so stiffly waxed, there was such a brilliant color on his cheeks, that Delaherche saw at once he had been "made up" and painted like an actor. He had had recourse to cosmetics to conceal from his army the ravages that anxiety and illness had wrought in his countenance, the ghastly pallor of his face, his pinched nose, his dull, sunken eyes, and having been notified at five o'clock that there was fighting at Bazeilles, had come forth to see, sadly and silently, like a phantom with rouged cheeks.

There was a brick-kiln near by, behind which there was safety from the rain of bullets that kept pattering incessantly on its other front and the sh.e.l.ls that burst at every second on the road. The mounted group had halted.

"Sire," someone murmured, "you are in danger--"

But the Emperor turned and motioned to his staff to take refuge in the narrow road that skirted the kiln, where men and horses would be sheltered from the fire.

"Really, Sire, this is madness. Sire, we entreat you--"

His only answer was to repeat his gesture; probably he thought that the appearance of a group of brilliant uniforms on that deserted road would draw the fire of the batteries on the left bank. Entirely unattended he rode forward into the midst of the storm of shot and sh.e.l.l, calmly, unhurriedly, with his unvarying air of resigned indifference, the air of one who goes to meet his appointed fate. Could it be that he heard behind him the implacable voice that was urging him onward, that voice from Paris: "March! march! die the hero's death on the piled corpses of thy countrymen, let the whole world look on in awe-struck admiration, so that thy son may reign!"--could that be what he heard? He rode forward, controlling his charger to a slow walk. For the s.p.a.ce of a hundred yards he thus rode forward, then halted, awaiting the death he had come there to seek. The bullets sang in concert with a music like the fierce autumnal blast; a sh.e.l.l burst in front of him and covered him with earth. He maintained his att.i.tude of patient waiting. His steed, with distended eyes and quivering frame, instinctively recoiled before the grim presence who was so close at hand and yet refused to smite horse or rider. At last the trying experience came to an end, and the Emperor, with his stoic fatalism, understanding that his time was not yet come, tranquilly retraced his steps, as if his only object had been to reconnoiter the position of the German batteries.

"What courage, Sire! We beseech you, do not expose yourself further--"

But, unmindful of their solicitations, he beckoned to his staff to follow him, not offering at present to consult their safety more than he did his own, and turned his horse's head toward la Moncelle, quitting the road and taking the abandoned fields of la Ripaille. A captain was mortally wounded, two horses were killed. As he pa.s.sed along the line of the 12th corps, appearing and vanishing like a specter, the men eyed him with curiosity, but did not cheer.

To all these events had Delaherche been witness, and now he trembled at the thought that he, too, as soon as he should have left the brick works, would have to run the gauntlet of those terrible projectiles. He lingered, listening to the conversation of some dismounted officers who had remained there.

"I tell you he was killed on the spot; cut in two by a sh.e.l.l."

"You are wrong, I saw him carried off the field. His wound was not severe; a splinter struck him on the hip."

"What time was it?"

"Why, about an hour ago--say half-past six. It was up there around la Moncelle, in a sunken road."

"I know he is dead."

"But I tell you he is not! He even sat his horse for a moment after he was. .h.i.t, then he fainted and they carried him into a cottage to attend to his wound."

"And then returned to Sedan?"

"Certainly; he is in Sedan now."

Of whom could they be speaking? Delaherche quickly learned that it was of Marshal MacMahon, who had been wounded while paying a visit of inspection to his advanced posts. The marshal wounded! it was "just our luck," as the lieutenant of marines had put it. He was reflecting on what the consequences of the mishap were likely to be when an _estafette_ dashed by at top speed, shouting to a comrade, whom he recognized:

"General Ducrot is made commander-in-chief! The army is ordered to concentrate at Illy in order to retreat on Mezieres!"

The courier was already far away, galloping into Bazeilles under the constantly increasing fire, when Delaherche, startled by the strange tidings that came to him in such quick succession and not relishing the prospect of being involved in the confusion of the retreating troops, plucked up courage and started on a run for Balan, whence he regained Sedan without much difficulty.

The _estafette_ tore through Bazeilles on a gallop, disseminating the news, hunting up the commanders to give them their instructions, and as he sped swiftly on the intelligence spread among the troops: Marshal MacMahon wounded, General Ducrot in command, the army falling back on Illy!

"What is that they are saying?" cried Weiss, whose face by this time was grimy with powder. "Retreat on Mezieres at this late hour! but it is absurd, they will never get through!"

And his conscience p.r.i.c.ked him, he repented bitterly having given that counsel the day before to that very general who was now invested with the supreme command. Yes, certainly, that was yesterday the best, the only plan, to retreat, without loss of a minute's time, by the Saint-Albert pa.s.s, but now the way could be no longer open to them, the black swarms of Prussians had certainly antic.i.p.ated them and were on the plain of Donchery. There were two courses left for them to pursue, both desperate; and the most promising, as well as the bravest, of them was to drive the Bavarians into the Meuse, and cut their way through and regain possession of the Carignan road.

Weiss, whose spectacles were constantly slipping down upon his nose, adjusted them nervously and proceeded to explain matters to the lieutenant, who was still seated against the wall with his two stumps of legs, very pale and slowly bleeding to death.

"Lieutenant, I a.s.sure you I am right. Tell your men to stand their ground. You can see for yourself that we are doing well. One more effort like the last, and we shall drive them into the river."

It was true that the Bavarians' second attack had been repulsed. The mitrailleuses had again swept the Place de l'Eglise, the heaps of corpses in the square resembled barricades, and our troops, emerging from every cross street, had driven the enemy at the point of the bayonet through the meadows toward the river in headlong flight, which might easily have been converted into a general rout had there been fresh troops to support the sailor-boys, who had suffered severely and were by this time much distressed. And in Montivilliers Park, again, the firing did not seem to advance, which was a sign that in that quarter, also, reinforcements, could they have been had, would have cleared the wood.

"Order your men to charge them with the bayonet, lieutenant."

The waxen pallor of death was on the poor boy-officer's face; yet he had strength to murmur in feeble accents:

"You hear, my children; give them the bayonet!"

It was his last utterance; his spirit pa.s.sed, his ingenuous, resolute face and his wide open eyes still turned on the battle. The flies already were beginning to buzz about Francoise's head and settle there, while lying on his bed little Charles, in an access of delirium, was calling on his mother in pitiful, beseeching tones to give him something to quench his thirst.

"Mother, mother, awake; get up--I am thirsty, I am so thirsty."

But the instructions of the new chief were imperative, and the officers, vexed and grieved to see the successes they had achieved thus rendered nugatory, had nothing for it but to give orders for the retreat. It was plain that the commander-in-chief, possessed by a haunting dread of the enemy's turning movement, was determined to sacrifice everything in order to escape from the toils. The Place de l'Eglise was evacuated, the troops fell back from street to street; soon the broad avenue was emptied of its defenders. Women shrieked and sobbed, men swore and shook their fists at the retiring troops, furious to see themselves abandoned thus. Many shut themselves in their houses, resolved to die in their defense.

"Well, _I_ am not going to give up the ship!" shouted Weiss, beside himself with rage. "No! I will leave my skin here first. Let them come on! let them come and smash my furniture and drink my wine!"

Wrath filled his mind to the exclusion of all else, a wild, fierce desire to fight, to kill, at the thought that the hated foreigner should enter his house, sit in his chair, drink from his gla.s.s. It wrought a change in all his nature; everything that went to make up his daily life--wife, business, the methodical prudence of the small bourgeois--seemed suddenly to become unstable and drift away from him.

And he shut himself up in his house and barricaded it, he paced the empty apartments with the restless impatience of a caged wild beast, going from room to room to make sure that all the doors and windows were securely fastened. He counted his cartridges and found he had forty left, then, as he was about to give a final look to the meadows to see whether any attack was to be apprehended from that quarter, the sight of the hills on the left bank arrested his attention for a moment.

The smoke-wreaths indicated distinctly the position of the Prussian batteries, and at the corner of a little wood on la Marfee, over the powerful battery at Frenois, he again beheld the group of uniforms, more numerous than before, and so distinct in the bright sunlight that by supplementing his spectacles with his binocle he could make out the gold of their epaulettes and helmets.

"You dirty scoundrels, you dirty scoundrels!" he twice repeated, extending his clenched fist in impotent menace.

Those who were up there on la Marfee were King William and his staff. As early as seven o'clock he had ridden up from Vendresse, where he had had quarters for the night, and now was up there on the heights, out of reach of danger, while at his feet lay the valley of the Meuse and the vast panorama of the field of battle. Far as the eye could reach, from north to south, the bird's-eye view extended, and standing on the summit of the hill, as from his throne in some colossal opera box, the monarch surveyed the scene.

In the central foreground of the picture, and standing out in bold relief against the venerable forests of the Ardennes, that stretched away on either hand from right to left, filling the northern horizon like a curtain of dark verdure, was the city of Sedan, with the geometrical lines and angles of its fortifications, protected on the south and west by the flooded meadows and the river. In Bazeilles houses were already burning, and the dark cloud of war hung heavy over the pretty village. Turning his eyes eastward he might discover, holding the line between la Moncelle and Givonne, some regiments of the 12th and 1st corps, looking like diminutive insects at that distance and lost to sight at intervals in the dip of the narrow valley in which the hamlets lay concealed; and beyond that valley rose the further slope, an uninhabited, uncultivated heath, of which the pale tints made the dark green of Chevalier's Wood look black by contrast. To the north the 7th corps was more distinctly visible in its position on the plateau of Floing, a broad belt of sere, dun fields, that sloped downward from the little wood of la Garenne to the verdant border of the stream. Further still were Floing, Saint-Menges, Fleigneux, Illy, small villages that lay nestled in the hollows of that billowing region where the landscape was a succession of hill and dale. And there, too, to the left was the great bend of the Meuse, where the sluggish stream, shimmering like molten silver in the bright sunlight, swept lazily in a great horseshoe around the peninsula of Iges and barred the road to Mezieres, leaving between its further bank and the impa.s.sable forest but one single gateway, the defile of Saint-Albert.

It was in that triangular s.p.a.ce that the hundred thousand men and five hundred guns of the French army had now been crowded and brought to bay, and when His Prussian Majesty condescended to turn his gaze still further to the westward he might perceive another plain, the plain of Donchery, a succession of bare fields stretching away toward Briancourt, Marancourt, and Vrigne-aux-Bois, a desolate expanse of gray waste beneath the clear blue sky; and did he turn him to the east, he again had before his eyes, facing the lines in which the French were so closely hemmed, a vast level stretch of country in which were numerous villages, first Douzy and Carignan, then more to the north Rubecourt, Pourru-aux-Bois, Francheval, Villers-Cernay, and last of all, near the frontier, Chapelle. All about him, far as he could see, the land was his; he could direct the movements of the quarter of a million of men and the eight hundred guns that const.i.tuted his army, could master at a glance every detail of the operations of his invading host. Even then the XIth corps was pressing forward toward Saint-Menges, while the Vth was at Vrigne-aux-Bois, and the Wurtemburg division was near Donchery, awaiting orders. This was what he beheld to the west, and if, turning to the east, he found his view obstructed in that quarter by tree-clad hills, he could picture to himself what was pa.s.sing, for he had seen the XIIth corps entering the wood of Chevalier, he knew that by that time the Guards were at Villers-Cernay. There were the two arms of the gigantic vise, the army of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left, the Saxon Prince's army on the right, slowly, irresistibly closing on each other, while the two Bavarian corps were hammering away at Bazeilles.

Underneath the King's position the long line of batteries, stretching with hardly an interval from Remilly to Frenois, kept up an unintermittent fire, pouring their sh.e.l.ls into Daigny and la Moncelle, sending them hurtling over Sedan city to sweep the northern plateaus. It was barely eight o'clock, and with eyes fixed on the gigantic board he directed the movements of the game, awaiting the inevitable end, calmly controlling the black cloud of men that beneath him swept, an array of pigmies, athwart the smiling landscape.

II.

In the dense fog up on the plateau of Floing Gaude, the bugler, sounded reveille at peep of day with all the lung-power he was possessed of, but the inspiring strain died away and was lost in the damp, heavy air, and the men, who had not had courage even to erect their tents and had thrown themselves, wrapped in their blankets, upon the muddy ground, did not awake or stir, but lay like corpses, their ashen features set and rigid in the slumber of utter exhaustion. To arouse them from their trance-like sleep they had to be shaken, one by one, and, with ghastly faces and haggard eyes, they rose to their feet, like beings summoned, against their will, back from another world. It was Jean who awoke Maurice.

"What is it? Where are we!" asked the younger man. He looked affrightedly around him, and beheld only that gray waste, in which were floating the unsubstantial forms of his comrades. Objects twenty yards away were undistinguishable; his knowledge of the country availed him not; he could not even have indicated in which direction lay Sedan. Just then, however, the boom of cannon, somewhere in the distance, fell upon his ear. "Ah! I remember; the battle is for to-day; they are fighting.

So much the better; there will be an end to our suspense!"

He heard other voices around him expressing the same idea. There was a feeling of stern satisfaction that at last their long nightmare was to be dispelled, that at last they were to have a sight of those Prussians whom they had come out to look for, and before whom they had been retreating so many weary days; that they were to be given a chance to try a shot at them, and lighten the load of cartridges that had been tugging at their belts so long, with never an opportunity to burn a single one of them. Everyone felt that, this time, the battle would not, could not be avoided.

But the guns began to thunder more loudly down at Bazeilles, and Jean bent his ear to listen.

"Where is the firing?"