The Downfall Part 52

Henriette finished the letter, which concluded with a mention of the approach of the German armies. On the 13th, the day when a committee of the Government of National Defense had established its quarters at Tours, their advanced guards had been seen at Lagny, to the east of Paris. On the 14th and 15th they were at the very gates of the city, at Creteil and Joinville-le-Pont. On the 18th, however, the day when Maurice wrote, he seemed to have ceased to believe in the possibility of maintaining a strict blockade of Paris; he appeared to be under the influence of one of his hot fits of blind confidence, characterising the siege as a senseless and impudent enterprise that would come to an ignominious end before they were three weeks older, relying on the armies that the provinces would surely send to their relief, to say nothing of the army of Metz, that was already advancing by way of Verdun and Rheims. And the links of the iron chain that their enemies had forged for them had been riveted together; it encompa.s.sed Paris, and now Paris was a city shut off from all the world, whence no letter, no word of tidings longer came, the huge prison-house of two millions of living beings, who were to their neighbors as if they were not.

Henriette was oppressed by a sense of melancholy. "Ah, merciful heaven!"

she murmured, "how long will all this last, and shall we ever see him more!"

A more furious blast bent the st.u.r.dy trees out-doors and made the timbers of the old farmhouse creak and groan. Think of the sufferings the poor fellows would have to endure should the winter be severe, fighting in the snow, without bread, without fire!

"Bah!" rejoined Jean, "that's a very nice letter of his, and it's a comfort to have heard from him. We must not despair."

Thus, day by day, the month of October ran its course, with gray melancholy skies, and if ever the wind went down for a short s.p.a.ce it was only to bring the clouds back in darker, heavier ma.s.ses. Jean's wound was healing very slowly; the outflow from the drain was not the "laudable pus" which would have permitted the doctor to remove the appliance, and the patient was in a very enfeebled state, refusing, however, to be operated on in his dread of being left a cripple. An atmosphere of expectant resignation, disturbed at times by transient misgivings for which there was no apparent cause, pervaded the slumberous little chamber, to which the tidings from abroad came in vague, indeterminate shape, like the distorted visions of an evil dream.

The hateful war, with its butcheries and disasters, was still raging out there in the world, in some quarter unknown to them, without their ever being able to learn the real course of events, without their being conscious of aught save the wails and groans that seemed to fill the air from their mangled, bleeding country. And the dead leaves rustled in the paths as the wind swept them before it beneath the gloomy sky, and over the naked fields brooded a funereal silence, broken only by the cawing of the crows, presage of a bitter winter.

A princ.i.p.al subject of conversation between them at this time was the hospital, which Henriette never left except to come and cheer Jean with her company. When she came in at evening he would question her, making the acquaintance of each of her charges, desirous to know who would die and who recover; while she, whose heart and soul were in her occupation, never wearied, but related the occurrences of the day in their minutest details.

"Ah," she would always say, "the poor boys, the poor boys!"

It was not the ambulance of the battlefield, where the blood from the wounded came in a fresh, bright stream, where the flesh the surgeon's knife cut into was firm and healthy; it was the decay and rottenness of the hospital, where the odor of fever and gangrene hung in the air, damp with the exhalations of the lingering convalescents and those who were dying by inches. Doctor Dalichamp had had the greatest difficulty in procuring the necessary beds, sheets and pillows, and every day he had to accomplish miracles to keep his patients alive, to obtain for them bread, meat and desiccated vegetables, to say nothing of bandages, compresses and other appliances. As the Prussian officers in charge of the military hospital in Sedan had refused him everything, even chloroform, he was accustomed to send to Belgium for what he required.

And yet he had made no discrimination between French and Germans; he was even then caring for a dozen Bavarian soldiers who had been brought in there from Bazeilles. Those bitter adversaries who but a short time before had been trying to cut each other's throat now lay side by side, their pa.s.sions calmed by suffering. And what abodes of distress and misery they were, those two long rooms in the old schoolhouse of Remilly, where, in the crude light that streamed through the tall windows, some thirty beds in each were arranged on either side of a narrow pa.s.sage.

As late even as ten days after the battle wounded men had been discovered in obscure corners, where they had been overlooked, and brought in for treatment. There were four who had crawled into a vacant house at Balan and remained there, without attendance, kept from starving in some way, no one could tell how, probably by the charity of some kind-hearted neighbor, and their wounds were alive with maggots; they were as dead men, their system poisoned by the corruption that exuded from their wounds. There was a purulency, that nothing could check or overcome, that hovered over the rows of beds and emptied them.

As soon as the door was pa.s.sed one's nostrils were a.s.sailed by the odor of mortifying flesh. From drains inserted in festering sores fetid matter trickled, drop by drop. Oftentimes it became necessary to reopen old wounds in order to extract a fragment of bone that had been overlooked. Then abscesses would form, to break out after an interval in some remote portion of the body. Their strength all gone, reduced to skeletons, with ashen, clayey faces, the miserable wretches suffered the torments of the d.a.m.ned. Some, so weakened they could scarcely draw their breath, lay all day long upon their back, with tight shut, darkened eyes, like corpses in which decomposition had already set in; while others, denied the boon of sleep, tossing in restless wakefulness, drenched with the cold sweat that streamed from every pore, raved like lunatics, as if their suffering had made them mad. And whether they were calm or violent, it mattered not; when the contagion of the fever reached them, then was the end at hand, the poison doing its work, flying from bed to bed, sweeping them all away in one ma.s.s of corruption.

But worst of all was the condemned cell, the room to which were a.s.signed those who were attacked by dysentery, typhus or small-pox. There were many cases of black small-pox. The patients writhed and shrieked in unceasing delirium, or sat erect in bed with the look of specters.

Others had pneumonia and were wasting beneath the stress of their frightful cough. There were others again who maintained a continuous howling and were comforted only when their burning, throbbing wound was sprayed with cold water. The great hour of the day, the one that was looked forward to with eager expectancy, was that of the doctor's morning visit, when the beds were opened and aired and an opportunity was afforded their occupants to stretch their limbs, cramped by remaining long in one position. And it was the hour of dread and terror as well, for not a day pa.s.sed that, as the doctor went his rounds, he was not pained to see on some poor devil's skin the bluish spots that denoted the presence of gangrene. The operation would be appointed for the following day, when a few more inches of the leg or arm would be sliced away. Often the gangrene kept mounting higher and higher, and amputation had to be repeated until the entire limb was gone.

Every evening on her return Henriette answered Jean's questions in the same tone of compa.s.sion:

"Ah, the poor boys, the poor boys!"

And her particulars never varied; they were the story of the daily recurring torments of that earthly h.e.l.l. There had been an amputation at the shoulder-joint, a foot had been taken off, a humerus resected; but would gangrene or purulent contagion be clement and spare the patient?

Or else they had been burying some one of their inmates, most frequently a Frenchman, now and then a German. Scarcely a day pa.s.sed but a coa.r.s.e coffin, hastily knocked together from four pine boards, left the hospital at the twilight hour, accompanied by a single one of the attendants, often by the young woman herself, that a fellow-creature might not be laid away in his grave like a dog. In the little cemetery at Remilly two trenches had been dug, and there they slumbered, side by side, French to the right, Germans to the left, their enmity forgotten in their narrow bed.

Jean, without ever having seen them, had come to feel an interest in certain among the patients. He would ask for tidings of them.

"And 'Poor boy,' how is he getting on to-day?"

This was a little soldier, a private in the 5th of the line, not yet twenty years old, who had doubtless enlisted as a volunteer. The by-name: "Poor boy" had been given him and had stuck because he always used the words in speaking of himself, and when one day he was asked the reason he replied that that was the name by which his mother had always called him. Poor boy he was, in truth, for he was dying of pleurisy brought on by a wound in his left side.

"Ah, poor fellow," replied Henriette, who had conceived a special fondness for this one of her charges, "he is no better; he coughed all the afternoon. It pained my heart to hear him."

"And your bear, Gutman, how about him?" pursued Jean, with a faint smile. "Is the doctor's report more favorable?"

"Yes, he thinks he may be able to save his life. But the poor man suffers dreadfully."

Although they both felt the deepest compa.s.sion for him, they never spoke of Gutman but a smile of gentle amus.e.m.e.nt came to their lips. Almost immediately upon entering on her duties at the hospital the young woman had been shocked to recognize in that Bavarian soldier the features: big blue eyes, red hair and beard and ma.s.sive nose, of the man who had carried her away in his arms the day they shot her husband at Bazeilles.

He recognized her as well, but could not speak; a musket ball, entering at the back of the neck, had carried away half his tongue. For two days she recoiled with horror, an involuntary shudder pa.s.sed through her frame, each time she had to approach his bed, but presently her heart began to melt under the imploring, very gentle looks with which he followed her movements in the room. Was he not the blood-splashed monster, with eyes ablaze with furious rage, whose memory was ever present to her mind? It cost her an effort to recognize him now in that submissive, uncomplaining creature, who bore his terrible suffering with such cheerful resignation. The nature of his affliction, which is not of frequent occurrence, enlisted for him the sympathies of the entire hospital. It was not even certain that his name was Gutman; he was called so because the only sound he succeeded in articulating was a word of two syllables that resembled that more than it did anything else. As regarded all other particulars concerning him everyone was in the dark; it was generally believed, however, that he was married and had children. He seemed to understand a few words of French, for he would answer questions that were put to him with an emphatic motion of the head: "Married?" yes, yes! "Children?" yes, yes! The interest and excitement he displayed one day that he saw some flour induced them to believe he might have been a miller. And that was all. Where was the mill, whose wheel had ceased to turn? In what distant Bavarian village were the wife and children now weeping their lost husband and father?

Was he to die, nameless, unknown, in that foreign country, and leave his dear ones forever ignorant of his fate?

"To-day," Henriette told Jean one evening, "Gutman kissed his hand to me. I cannot give him a drink of water, or render him any other trifling service, but he manifests his grat.i.tude by the most extravagant demonstrations. Don't smile; it is too terrible to be buried thus alive before one's time has come."

Toward the end of October Jean's condition began to improve. The doctor thought he might venture to remove the drain, although he still looked apprehensive whenever he examined the wound, which, nevertheless appeared to be healing as rapidly as could be expected. The convalescent was able to leave his bed, and spent hours at a time pacing his room or seated at the window, looking out on the cheerless, leaden sky. Then time began to hang heavy on his hands; he spoke of finding something to do, asked if he could not be of service on the farm. Among the secret cares that disturbed his mind was the question of money, for he did not suppose he could have lain there for six long weeks and not exhaust his little fortune of two hundred francs, and if Father Fouchard continued to afford him hospitality it must be that Henriette had been paying his board. The thought distressed him greatly; he did not know how to bring about an explanation with her, and it was with a feeling of deep satisfaction that he accepted the position of a.s.sistant at the farm, with the understanding that he was to help Silvine with the housework, while Prosper was to be continued in charge of the out-door labors.

Notwithstanding the hardness of the times Father Fouchard could well afford to take on another hand, for his affairs were prospering. While the whole country was in the throes of dissolution and bleeding at every limb, he had succeeded in so extending his butchering business that he was now slaughtering three and even four times as many animals as he had ever done before. It was said that since the 31st of August he had been carrying on a most lucrative business with the Prussians. He who on the 30th had stood at his door with his c.o.c.ked gun in his hand and refused to sell a crust of bread to the starving soldiers of the 7th corps had on the following day, upon the first appearance of the enemy, opened up as dealer in all kinds of supplies, had disinterred from his cellar immense stocks of provisions, had brought back his flocks and herds from the fastnesses where he had concealed them; and since that day he had been one of the heaviest purveyors of meat to the German armies, exhibiting consummate address in bargaining with them and in getting his money promptly for his merchandise. Other dealers at times suffered great inconvenience from the insolent arbitrariness of the victors, whereas he never sold them a sack of flour, a cask of wine or a quarter of beef that he did not get his pay for it as soon as delivered in good hard cash. It made a good deal of talk in Remilly; people said it was scandalous on the part of a man whom the war had deprived of his only son, whose grave he never visited, but left to be cared for by Silvine; but nevertheless they all looked up to him with respect as a man who was making his fortune while others, even the shrewdest, were having a hard time of it to keep body and soul together. And he, with a sly leer out of his small red eyes, would shrug his shoulders and growl in his bull-headed way:

"Who talks of patriotism! I am more a patriot than any of them. Would you call it patriotism to fill those b.l.o.o.d.y Prussians' mouths gratis?

What they get from me they have to pay for. Folks will see how it is some of these days!"

On the second day of his employment Jean remained too long on foot, and the doctor's secret fears proved not to be unfounded; the wound opened, the leg became greatly inflamed and swollen, he was compelled to take to his bed again. Dalichamp suspected that the mischief was due to a spicule of bone that the two consecutive days of violent exercise had served to liberate. He explored the wound and was so fortunate as to find the fragment, but there was a shock attending the operation, succeeded by a high fever, which exhausted all Jean's strength. He had never in his life been reduced to a condition of such debility: his recovery promised to be a work of time, and faithful Henriette resumed her position as nurse and companion in the little chamber, where winter with icy breath now began to make its presence felt. It was early November, already the east wind had brought on its wings a smart flurry of snow, and between those four bare walls, on the uncarpeted floor where even the tall, gaunt old clothes-press seemed to shiver with discomfort, the cold was extreme. As there was no fireplace in the room they determined to set up a stove, of which the purring, droning murmur a.s.sisted to brighten their solitude a bit.

The days wore on, monotonously, and that first week of the relapse was to Jean and Henriette the dreariest and saddest in all their long, unsought intimacy. Would their suffering never end? were they to hope for no surcease of misery, the danger always springing up afresh? At every moment their thoughts sped away to Maurice, from whom they had received no further word. They were told that others were getting letters, brief notes written on tissue paper and brought in by carrier-pigeons. Doubtless the bullet of some hated German had slain the messenger that, winging its way through the free air of heaven, was bringing them their missive of joy and love. Everything seemed to retire into dim obscurity, to die and be swallowed up in the depths of the premature winter. Intelligence of the war only reached them a long time after the occurrence of events, the few newspapers that Doctor Dalichamp still continued to supply them with were often a week old by the time they reached their hands. And their dejection was largely owing to their want of information, to what they did not know and yet instinctively felt to be the truth, to the prolonged death-wail that, spite of all, came to their ears across the frozen fields in the deep silence that lay upon the country.

One morning the doctor came to them in a condition of deepest discouragement. With a trembling hand he drew from his pocket a Belgian newspaper and threw it on the bed, exclaiming:

"Alas, my friends, poor France is murdered; Bazaine has played the traitor!"

Jean, who had been dozing, his back supported by a couple of pillows, suddenly became wide-awake.

"What, a traitor?"

"Yes, he has surrendered Metz and the army. It is the experience of Sedan over again, only this time they drain us of our last drop of life-blood." Then taking up the paper and reading from it: "One hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, one hundred and fifty-three eagles and standards, one hundred and forty-one field guns, seventy-six machine guns, eight hundred casemate and barbette guns, three hundred thousand muskets, two thousand military train wagons, material for eighty-five batteries--"

And he went on giving further particulars: how Marshal Bazaine had been blockaded in Metz with the army, bound hand and foot, making no effort to break the wall of adamant that surrounded him; the doubtful relations that existed between him and Prince Frederick Charles, his indecision and fluctuating political combinations, his ambition to play a great role in history, but a role that he seemed not to have fixed upon himself; then all the dirty business of parleys and conferences, and the communications by means of lying, unsavory emissaries with Bismarck, King William and the Empress-regent, who in the end put her foot down and refused to negotiate with the enemy on the basis of a cession of territory; and, finally, the inevitable catastrophe, the completion of the web that destiny had been weaving, famine in Metz, a compulsory capitulation, officers and men, hope and courage gone, reduced to accept the bitter terms of the victor. France no longer had an army.

"In G.o.d's name!" Jean e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed in a deep, low voice. He had not fully understood it all, but until then Bazaine had always been for him the great captain, the one man to whom they were to look for salvation.

"What is left us to do now? What will become of them at Paris?"

The doctor was just coming to the news from Paris, which was of a disastrous character. He called their attention to the fact that the paper from which he was reading was dated November 5. The surrender of Metz had been consummated on the 27th of October, and the tidings were not known in Paris until the 30th. Coming, as it did, upon the heels of the reverses recently sustained at Chevilly, Bagneux and la Malmaison, after the conflict at Bourget and the loss of that position, the intelligence had burst like a thunderbolt over the desperate populace, angered and disgusted by the feebleness and impotency of the government of National Defense. And thus it was that on the following day, the 31st, the city was threatened with a general insurrection, an immense throng of angry men, a mob ripe for mischief, collecting on the Place de l'Hotel de Ville, whence they swarmed into the halls and public offices, making prisoners the members of the Government, whom the National Guard rescued later in the day only because they feared the triumph of those incendiaries who were clamoring for the commune. And the Belgian journal wound up with a few stinging comments on the great City of Paris, thus torn by civil war when the enemy was at its gates. Was it not the presage of approaching decomposition, the puddle of blood and mire that was to engulf a world?

"That's true enough!" said Jean, whose face was very white. "They've no business to be squabbling when the Prussians are at hand!"

But Henriette, who had said nothing as yet, always making it her rule to hold her tongue when politics were under discussion, could not restrain a cry that rose from her heart. Her thoughts were ever with her brother.

"_Mon Dieu_, I hope that Maurice, with all the foolish ideas he has in his head, won't let himself get mixed up in this business!"

They were all silent in their distress; and it was the doctor, who was ardently patriotic, who resumed the conversation.

"Never mind; if there are no more soldiers, others will grow. Metz has surrendered, Paris may surrender, even; but it don't follow from that that France is wiped out. Yes, the strong-box is all right, as our peasants say, and we will live on in spite of all."

It was clear, however, that he was hoping against hope. He spoke of the army that was collecting on the Loire, whose initial performances, in the neighborhood of Arthenay, had not been of the most promising; it would become seasoned and would march to the relief of Paris.

His enthusiasm was aroused to boiling pitch by the proclamations of Gambetta, who had left Paris by balloon on the 7th of October and two days later established his headquarters at Tours, calling on every citizen to fly to arms, and instinct with a spirit at once so virile and so sagacious that the entire country gave its adhesion to the dictatorial powers a.s.sumed for the public safety. And was there not talk of forming another army in the North, and yet another in the East, of causing soldiers to spring from the ground by sheer force of faith? It was to be the awakening of the provinces, the creation of all that was wanting by exercise of indomitable will, the determination to continue the struggle until the last sou was spent, the last drop of blood shed.

"Bah!" said the doctor in conclusion as he arose to go, "I have many a time given up a patient, and a week later found him as lively as a cricket."

Jean smiled. "Doctor, hurry up and make a well man of me, so I can go back to my post down yonder."

But those evil tidings left Henriette and him in a terribly disheartened state. There came another cold wave, with snow, and when the next day Henriette came in shivering from the hospital she told her friend that Gutman was dead. The intense cold had proved fatal to many among the wounded; it was emptying the rows of beds. The miserable man whom the loss of his tongue had condemned to silence had lain two days in the throes of death. During his last hour she had remained seated at his bedside, unable to resist the supplication of his pleading gaze. He seemed to be speaking to her with his tearful eyes, trying to tell, it may be, his real name and the name of the village, so far away, where a wife and little ones were watching for his return. And he had gone from them a stranger, known of none, sending her a last kiss with his uncertain, stiffening fingers, as if to thank her once again for all her gentle care. She was the only one who accompanied the remains to the cemetery, where the frozen earth, the unfriendly soil of the stranger's country, rattled with a dull, hollow sound on the pine coffin, mingled with flakes of snow.

The next day, again, Henriette said upon her return at evening: