The Downfall. Emile Zola
that of the 7th. On the other hand, an important part of the materiel, all the forges of the artillery, had mistaken their road and strayed off in the direction of Terron; they were now trying to find their way back by the Vouziers road, where they were certain to fall into the hands of the Germans. Never was there such utter confusion, never was anxiety so intense.
A feeling of bitterest discouragement took possession of the troops. Many of them in their despair would have preferred to seat themselves on their knapsacks, in the midst of that sodden, wind-swept plain, and wait for death to come to them. They reviled their leaders and loaded them with insult: ah! famous leaders, they; brainless boobies, undoing at night what they had done in the morning, idling and loafing when there was no enemy in sight, and taking to their heels as soon as he showed his face! Each minute added to the demoralization that was already rife, making of that army a rabble, without faith or hope, without discipline, a herd that their chiefs were conducting to the shambles by ways of which they themselves were ignorant. Down in the direction of Vouziers the sound of musketry was heard; shots were being exchanged between the rear-guard of the 7th corps and the German skirmishers; and now every eye was turned upon the valley of the Aisne, where volumes of dense black smoke were whirling upward toward the sky from which the clouds had suddenly been swept away; they all knew it was the village of Falaise burning, fired by the uhlans. Every man felt his blood boil in his veins; so the Prussians were there at last; they had sat and waited two days for them to come up, and then had turned and fled. The most ignorant among the men had felt their cheeks tingle for very shame as, in their dull way, they recognized the idiocy that had prompted that enormous blunder, that imbecile delay, that trap into which they had walked blindfolded; the light cavalry of the IVth army feinting in front of Bordas’ brigade and halting and neutralizing, one by one, the several corps of the army of Chalons, solely to give the Crown Prince time to hasten up with the IIId army. And now, thanks to the marshal’s complete and astounding ignorance as to the identity of the troops he had before him, the junction was accomplished, and the 5th and 7th corps were to be roughly handled, with the constant menace of disaster overshadowing them.
Maurice’s eyes were bent on the horizon, where it was reddened with the flames of burning Falaise. They had one consolation, however: the train that had been believed to be lost came crawling along out of the Chene road. Without delay the 2d division put itself in motion and struck out across the forest for Boult-aux-Bois; the 3d took post on the heights of Belleville to the left in order to keep an eye to the communications, while the 1st remained at Quatre-Champs to wait for the coming up of the train and guard its countless wagons. Just then the rain began to come down again with increased violence, and as the 106th moved off the plateau, resuming the march that should have never been, toward the Meuse, toward the unknown, Maurice thought he beheld again his vision of the night: the shadow of the Emperor, incessantly appearing and vanishing, so sad, so pitiful a sight, on the white curtain of good old Madame Desvallieres. Ah! that doomed army, that army of despair, that was being driven forward to inevitable destruction for the salvation of a dynasty! March, march, onward ever, with no look behind, through mud, through rain, to the bitter end!
VI
“Thunder!” Chouteau ejaculated the following morning when he awoke, chilled and with aching bones, under the tent, “I wouldn’t mind having a bouillon with plenty of meat in it.”
At Boult-aux-Bois, where they were now encamped, the only ration issued to the men the night before had been an extremely slender one of potatoes; the commissariat was daily more and more distracted and disorganized by the everlasting marches and countermarches, never reaching the designated points of rendezvous in time to meet the troops. As for the herds, no one had the faintest idea where they might be upon the crowded roads, and famine was staring the army in the face.
Loubet stretched himself and plaintively replied:
“Ah, fichtre, yes! – No more roast goose for us now.”
The squad was out of sorts and sulky. Men couldn’t be expected to be lively on an empty stomach. And then there was the rain that poured down incessantly, and the mud in which they had to make their beds.
Observing Pache make the sign of the cross after mumbling his morning prayer, Chouteau captiously growled:
“Ask that good God of yours, if he is good for anything, to send us down a couple of sausages and a mug of beer apiece.”
“Ah, if we only had a good big loaf of bread!” sighed Lapoulle, whose ravenous appetite made hunger a more grievous affliction to him than to the others.
But Lieutenant Rochas, passing by just then, made them be silent. It was scandalous, never to think of anything but their stomachs! When he was hungry he tightened up the buckle of his trousers. Now that things were becoming decidedly squally and the popping of rifles was to be heard occasionally in the distance, he had recovered all his old serene confidence: it was all plain enough, now; the Prussians were there – well, all they had to do was, go out and lick ‘em. And he gave a significant shrug of the shoulders, standing behind Captain Beaudoin, the very young man, as he called him, with his pale face and pursed up lips, whom the loss of his baggage had afflicted so grievously that he had even ceased to fume and scold. A man might get along without eating, at a pinch, but that he could not change his linen was a circumstance productive of sorrow and anger.
Maurice awoke to a sensation of despondency and physical discomfort. Thanks to his easy shoes the inflammation in his foot had gone down, but the drenching he had received the day before, from the effects of which his greatcoat seemed to weigh a ton, had left him with a distinct and separate ache in every bone of his body. When he was sent to the spring to get water for the coffee he took a survey of the plain on the edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated: forests rise to the west and north, and there is a hill crowned by the hamlet of Belleville, while, over to the east, Buzancy way, there is a broad, level expanse, stretching far as the eye can see, with an occasional shallow depression concealing a small cluster of cottages. Was it from that direction that they were to expect the enemy? As he was returning from the stream with his bucket filled with water, the father of a family of wretched peasants hailed him from the door of his hovel, and asked him if the soldiers were this time going to stay and defend them. In the confusion of conflicting orders the 5th corps had already traversed the region no less than three times. The sound of cannonading had reached them the day before from the direction of Bar; the Prussians could not be more than a couple of leagues away. And when Maurice made answer to the poor folks that doubtless the 7th corps would also be called away after a time, their tears flowed afresh. Then they were to be abandoned to the enemy, and the soldiers had not come there to fight, whom they saw constantly vanishing and reappearing, always on the run?
“Those who like theirs sweet,” observed Loubet, as he poured the coffee, “have only to stick their thumb in it and wait for it to melt.”
Not a man of them smiled. It was too bad, all the same, to have to drink their coffee without sugar; and then, too, if they only had some biscuit! Most of them had devoured what eatables they had in their knapsacks, to the very last crumb, to while away their time of waiting, the day before, on the plateau of Quatre-Champs. Among them, however, the members of the squad managed to collect a dozen potatoes, which they shared equally.
Maurice, who began to feel a twinging sensation in his stomach, uttered a regretful cry:
“If I had known of this I would have bought some bread at Chene.”
Jean listened in silence. He had had a dispute with Chouteau that morning, who, on being ordered to go for firewood, had insolently refused, alleging that it was not his turn. Now that everything was so rapidly going to the dogs, insubordination among the men had increased to such a point that those in authority no longer ventured to reprimand them, and Jean, with his sober good sense and pacific disposition, saw that if he would preserve his influence with his squad he must keep the corporal in the background as far as possible. For this reason he was hail-fellow-well-met with his men, who could not fail to see what a treasure they had in a man of his experience, for if those committed to his care did not always have all they wanted to eat, they had, at all events, not suffered from hunger, as had been the case with so many others. But he was touched by the sight of Maurice’s suffering. He saw that he was losing strength,