The Downfall (La Débâcle). Emile Zola
on joining the army as a volunteer, had been forthwith enrolled in the 106th of the Line, thanks to the colonel's protection, and without having to undergo the usual probation at the depôt—carried his knapsack willingly enough; but, at the very outset, a feeling of repugnance, of covert revolt, had turned him against this illiterate corporal, the clodhopper who commanded him.
'All right,' retorted Jean, in his quiet way. 'Get yourselves caught. I don't care a rap.'
Then he abruptly faced about on finding that Maurice had not told him a fib; for at that very moment the colonel, M. de Vineuil, whose long yellow face was intersected by bushy white moustaches, passed by with that grand aristocratic air of his, and acknowledged the salute of Weiss and Maurice with a smile. The colonel was walking rapidly towards a farmhouse which peeped out from among some plum trees on the right hand, a few hundred paces away. The staff was installed there for the night, but no one knew whether the commander of the Army Corps—struck down by the grievous tidings that his brother had been killed at Weissenburg[3]—was there or not. Major-General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, to whose brigade the 106th Regiment belonged, was, however, assuredly at the farm, brawling no doubt according to his wont, with his huge belly swaying to and fro atop of his diminutive legs, and with his face highly coloured, like the face of one fond of the table, who is not troubled with any excess of brains. There was an increasing stir around the farmhouse; every minute or so estafettes were galloping off and returning; and feverish, indeed, were the long hours of waiting for the belated telegrams that were expected to bring news of the great battle, which since daybreak everyone had deemed inevitable and proximate. Where had it been fought, and how had it resulted? By degrees, as the night fell, it seemed as though the spirit of anxiety were brooding over the orchards, over the scattered stacks, and around the cow-sheds, spreading itself out on all sides like a shadowy sea. The men told one another that a Prussian spy had been caught prowling about the camp, and had been conducted to the farm to be questioned by the general. If Colonel de Vineuil ran there so fast it was, perhaps, because he had received a telegram.
Meanwhile, Maurice Levasseur had begun to chat again with his brother-in-law Weiss, and his cousin Honoré Fouchard, the quartermaster. The tattoo party, coming from afar off with its numbers gradually strengthened, passed near them, drumming and trumpeting in the melancholy twilight peacefulness; and yet they did not seem to hear it even. Grandson of a hero of the First Napoleon's armies, Maurice was born at Le Chêne Populeux, in the Argonne. His father, being turned away from the paths of glory, had sunk down to a meagre tax-collectorship; and his mother, a peasant woman, had expired in bringing him and his twin sister, Henriette, into the world. If Maurice had enlisted in the army, it was because of grave offences, the outcome of a course of dissipation in which his weak, excitable nature had embarked at the time when he had repaired to Paris to read for the bar, and when his relatives had pinched and stinted themselves to make a gentleman of him. But he had squandered their money in gaming, on women, and on the thousand and one follies of the all-devouring city, and his conduct had hastened his father's death. His sister, after parting with her all to pay his debts, had been lucky enough to secure a husband, that honest fellow Weiss, an Alsatian of Mulhausen, who had long been an accountant at the refinery of Le Chêne Populeux, and was now an overseer in the employ of M. Delaherche, owner of one of the principal cloth-weaving establishments of Sedan. Maurice, who with his nervous nature was seized as promptly with hope as with despair, who was both generous and enthusiastic, but utterly devoid of stability—the slave indeed of each shifting, passing breeze—imagined that he was now quite cured of his follies. Fair and short, with an unusually large forehead, a small nose and chin, and generally refined features, he had grey, caressing eyes, in which there gleamed at times a spark of madness.
Weiss had hastened to Mulhausen on the eve of hostilities, having suddenly become desirous of settling some family affair; and if he had availed himself of Colonel de Vineuil's kindness, in order to shake hands with his brother-in-law, Maurice, it was because the colonel happened to be the uncle of young Madame Delaherche, a pretty widow, whom the cloth merchant of Sedan had married the year before, and whom both Maurice and Henriette had known when she was a child, her parents then being neighbours of their own. Besides the colonel, Maurice had come across another of Madame Delaherche's connections in the person of Captain Beaudoin, who commanded his company, and who had been this lady's most intimate friend, it was insinuated, at the time when she was Madame Maginot of Mézières, wife of M. Maginot, inspector of the State forest.
'Mind you kiss Henriette for me,' said Maurice, again and again—he was, indeed, passionately fond of his sister—'tell her she will have every reason to be pleased, and that I want to make her proud of me.'
Tears filled his eyes as he thought of his foolish conduct in Paris; but his brother-in-law, touched in his turn, changed the conversation by saying to Honoré Fouchard, the artilleryman: 'The first time I pass by Remilly I shall run up and tell uncle Fouchard that I saw you and found you well.'
Uncle Fouchard, a peasant with a little land of his own, who plied the calling of itinerant village butcher, was a brother of Maurice's mother. He lived at Remilly, right at the top of the hill, at four miles or so from Sedan.
'All right,' said Honoré, quietly; 'the old man doesn't care a rap about me, but, if it pleases you, you can go to see him.'
Just at that moment there was a stir in front of the farmhouse, and they saw the prowler—the man accused of being a Prussian spy—come out, accompanied by an officer. He had no doubt produced some papers, related some plausible tale or other, for he was no longer under arrest—the officer was simply turning him out of the camp. At that distance, in the impending darkness, one could only vaguely distinguish his huge, square-built figure and tawny head. Maurice, however, impetuously exclaimed: 'Look there, Honoré. Isn't that fellow like the Prussian—you know the man I mean—Goliath?'
The quartermaster started on hearing this name, and fixed his ardent eyes upon the supposed spy. This mention of Goliath Steinberg, the slaughterman, the rascal who had made bad blood between himself and his father, who had robbed him of his sweetheart Silvine, had revived all the horrible story—the filthy abomination that still caused him so much suffering—and he felt a sudden impulse to run after the man and strangle him. But the spy, if such he was, had already passed beyond the camp lines, and, walking rapidly away, soon vanished in the darkness of the night.
'Oh! Goliath,' muttered Honoré; 'it isn't possible. He must be over there with the others. Ah! if ever I meet him——'
And with a threatening gesture he pointed to the darkening horizon, the violet-tinted eastern sky which to him meant Prussia.
They all relapsed into silence, and the tattoo was again heard afar off, at the other end of the camp. 'Blazes!' resumed Honoré, 'I shall get into trouble if I'm not back for the roll call. Good night. Good-bye to all!' Then having once more pressed Weiss's hands he hastily strode away towards the hillock where the reserve artillery was massed; he had not again mentioned his father, nor had he even sent any message to Silvine, whose name burnt his lips.
A few minutes had elapsed, when a bugle call was heard on the left, near the quarters of the second brigade. Another bugle nearer at hand replied. Then a third rang out, afar off. They were all sounding, far and near, when Gaude, the bugler of Jean's company, made up his mind to discharge a volley of sonorous notes. He was a big, skinny, sorrowful, taciturn man, without a hair on his chin, and blew his instrument with the lungs of a whirlwind.
Sergeant Sapin, an affected little fellow, with big dreamy eyes, began to call the roll, shouting out the men's names in a shrill voice, whilst they, having drawn near to him, made answer in a variety of tones, now akin to the sound of a violoncello and now to that of a flute. A break, however, suddenly occurred in the responses. 'Lapoulle!' repeated the sergeant, shouting as loud as he could. There was still no answer, and Jean had to rush to the pile of green logs, which Lapoulle, egged on by his comrades, was still obstinately trying to ignite. Stretched there on his stomach, with his face quite scorched, he continued blowing away the smoke of the blackening wood.
'Thunder!' shouted Jean, 'just leave that alone and answer to your name.'
Lapoulle sat up with a bewildered air, then appeared to understand, and finally bellowed