The Downfall: Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Sleep did not visit Henriette's eyes that night. She knew her husband
to be a prudent man, but the thought that he was in Bazeilles, so near
the German lines, was cause to her of deep anxiety. She tried to
soothe her apprehensions by reminding herself that she had his solemn
promise to return at the first appearance of danger; it availed not,
and at every instant she detected herself listening to catch the sound
of his footstep on the stair. At ten o'clock, as she was about to go
to bed, she opened her window, and resting her elbows on the sill,
gazed out into the night.

The darkness was intense; looking downward, she could scarce discern
the pavement of the Rue des Voyards, a narrow, obscure passage,
overhung by old frowning mansions. Further on, in the direction of the
college, a smoky street lamp burned dimly. A nitrous exhalation rose
from the street; the squall of a vagrant cat; the heavy step of a
belated soldier. From the city at her back came strange and alarming
sounds: the patter of hurrying feet, an ominous, incessant rumbling, a
muffled murmur without a name that chilled her blood. Her heart beat
loudly in her bosom as she bent her ear to listen, and still she heard
not the familiar echo of her husband's step at the turning of the
street below.

Hours passed, and now distant lights that began to twinkle in the open
fields beyond the ramparts excited afresh her apprehensions. It was so
dark that it cost her an effort of memory to recall localities. She
knew that the broad expanse that lay beneath her, reflecting a dim
light, was the flooded meadows, and that flame that blazed up and was
suddenly extinguished, surely it must be on la Marfee. But never, to
her certain knowledge, had there been farmer's house or peasant's
cottage on those heights; what, then, was the meaning of that light?
And then on every hand, at Pont-Maugis, Noyers, Frenois, other fires
arose, coruscating fitfully for an instant and giving mysterious
indication of the presence of the swarming host that lay hidden in the
bosom of the night. Yet more: there were strange sounds and voices in
the air, subdued murmurings such as she had never heard before, and
that made her start in terror; the stifled hum of marching men, the
neighing and snorting of steeds, the clash of arms, hoarse words of
command, given in guttural accents; an evil dream of a demoniac crew,
a witch's sabbat, in the depths of those unholy shades. Suddenly a
single cannon-shot rang out, ear-rending, adding fresh terror to the
dead silence that succeeded it. It froze her very marrow; what could
it mean? A signal, doubtless, telling of the successful completion of
some movement, announcing that everything was ready, down there, and
that now the sun might rise.

It was about two o'clock when Henriette, forgetting even to close her
window, at last threw herself, fully dressed, upon her bed. Her
anxiety and fatigue had stupefied her and benumbed her faculties. What
could ail her, thus to shiver and burn alternately, she who was always
so calm and self-reliant, moving with so light a step that those about
her were unconscious of her existence? Finally she sank into a fitful,
broken slumber that brought with it no repose, in which was present
still that persistent sensation of impending evil that filled the
dusky heavens. All at once, arousing her from her unrefreshing stupor,
the firing commenced again, faint and muffled in the distance, not a
single shot this time, but peal after peal following one another in
quick succession. Trembling, she sat upright in bed. The firing
continued. Where was she? The place seemed strange to her; she could
not distinguish the objects in her chamber, which appeared to be
filled with dense clouds of smoke. Then she remembered: the fog must
have rolled in from the near-by river and entered the room through the
window. Without, the distant firing was growing fiercer. She leaped
from her bed and ran to the casement to listen.

Four o'clock was striking from a steeple in Sedan, and day was
breaking, tingeing the purplish mists with a sickly, sinister light.
It was impossible to discern objects; even the college buildings,
distant but a few yards, were undistinguishable. Where could the
firing be, _mon Dieu_! Her first thought was for her brother Maurice;
for the reports were so indistinct that they seemed to her to come
from the north, above the city; then, listening more attentively, her
doubt became certainty; the cannonading was there, before her, and she
trembled for her husband. It was surely at Bazeilles. For a little
time, however, she suffered herself to be cheered by a ray of hope,
for there were moments when the reports seemed to come from the right.
Perhaps the fighting was at Donchery, where she knew that the French
had not succeeded in blowing up the bridge. Then she lapsed into a
condition of most horrible uncertainty; it seemed to be now at
Donchery, now at Bazeilles; which, it was impossible to decide, there
was such a ringing, buzzing sensation in her head. At last the feeling
of suspense became so acute that she felt she could not endure it
longer; she _must_ know; every nerve in her body was quivering with
the ungovernable desire, so she threw a shawl over her shoulders and
left the house in quest of news.

When she had descended and was in the street Henriette hesitated a
brief moment, for the little light that was in the east had not yet
crept downward along the weather-blackened house-fronts to the
roadway, and in the old city, shrouded in opaque fog, the darkness
still reigned impenetrable. In the tap-room of a low pot-house in the
Rue au Beurre, dimly lighted by a tallow candle, she saw two drunken
Turcos and a woman. It was not until she turned into the Rue Maqua
that she encountered any signs of life: soldiers slinking furtively
along the sidewalk and hugging the walls, deserters probably, on the
lookout for a place in which to hide; a stalwart trooper with
despatches, searching for his captain and knocking thunderously at
every door; a group of fat burghers, trembling with fear lest they had
tarried there too long, and preparing to crowd themselves into one
small carriole if so be they might yet reach Bouillon, in Belgium,
whither half the population of Sedan had emigrated within the last two
days. She instinctively turned her steps toward the Sous-Prefecture,
where she might depend on receiving information, and her desire to
avoid meeting acquaintances determined her to take a short cut through
lanes and by-ways. On reaching the Rue du Four and the Rue des
Laboureurs, however, she found an obstacle in her way; the place had
been pre-empted by the ordnance department, and guns, caissons, forges
were there in interminable array, having apparently been parked away
in that remote corner the day before and then forgotten there. There
was not so much as a sentry to guard them. It sent a chill to her
heart to see all that artillery lying there silent and ineffective,
sleeping its neglected sleep in the concealment of those deserted
alleys. She was compelled to retrace her steps, therefore, which she
did by passing through the Place du College to the Grande-Rue, where
in front of the Hotel de l'Europe she saw a group of orderlies holding
the chargers of some general officers, whose high-pitched voices were
audible from the brilliantly lighted dining room. On the Place du
Rivage and the Place Turenne the crowd was even greater still,
composed of anxious groups of citizens, with women and children
interspersed among the struggling, terror-stricken throng, hurrying in
every direction; and there she saw a general emerge from the Hotel of
the Golden Cross, swearing like a pirate, and spur his horse off up
the street at a mad gallop, careless whom he might overturn. For a
moment she seemed about to enter the Hotel de Ville, then changed
her mind, and taking the Rue du Pont-de-Meuse, pushed on to the
Sous-Prefecture.

Never had Sedan appeared to her in a light so tragically sinister as
now, when she beheld it in the livid, forbidding light of early dawn,
enveloped in its shroud of fog. The houses were lifeless and silent as
tombs; many of them had been empty and abandoned for the last two
days, others the terrified owners had closely locked and barred.
Shuddering, the city awoke to the cares and occupations of the new
day; the morning was fraught with chill misery in those streets, still
half deserted, peopled only by a few frightened pedestrians and those
hurrying fugitives, the remnant of the exodus of previous days. Soon
the sun would rise and send down its cheerful light upon the scene;
soon the city, overwhelmed in the swift-rising tide of disaster, would
be crowded as it had never been before. It was half-past five o'clock;
the roar of the cannon, caught and deadened among the tall dingy
houses, sounded more faintly in her ears.

At the Sous-Prefecture Henriette had some acquaintance with the
concierge's daughter, Rose by name, a pretty little blonde of refined
appearance who was employed in Delaherche's factory. She made her way
at once to the lodge; the mother was not there, but Rose received her
with her usual amiability.

"Oh! dear lady, we are so tired we can scarcely stand; mamma has gone
to lie down and rest a while. Just think! all night long people have
been coming and going, and we have not been able to get a wink of
sleep."

And burning to tell all the wonderful sights that she had been witness
to since the preceding day, she did not wait to be questioned, but ran
on volubly with her narrative.

"As for the marshal, he slept very well, but that poor Emperor! you
can't think what suffering he has to endure! Yesterday evening, do you
know, I had gone upstairs to help give out the linen, and as I entered
the apartment that adjoins his dressing-room I heard groans, oh,
_such_ groans! just like someone dying. I thought a moment and knew it
must be the Emperor, and I was so frightened I couldn't move; I just
stood and trembled. It seems he has some terrible complaint that makes
him cry out that way. When there are people around he holds in, but as
soon as he is alone it is too much for him, and he groans and shrieks
in a way to make your hair stand on end."

"Do you know where the fighting is this morning?" asked Henriette,
desiring to check her loquacity.

Rose dismissed the question with a wave of her little hand and went on
with her narrative.

"That made me curious to know more, you see, and I went upstairs four
or five times during the night and listened, and every time it was
just the same; I don't believe he was quiet an instant all night long,
or got a minute's sleep. Oh! what a terrible thing it is to suffer
like that with all he has to worry him! for everything is upside down;
it is all a most dreadful mess. Upon my word, I believe those generals
are out of their senses; such ghostly faces and frightened eyes! And
people coming all the time, and doors banging and some men scolding
and others crying, and the whole place like a sailor's boarding-house;
officers drinking from bottles and going to bed in their boots! The
Emperor is the best of the whole lot, and the one who gives least
trouble, in the corner where he conceals himself and his suffering!"
Then, in reply to Henriette's reiterated question: "The fighting?
there has been fighting at Bazeilles this morning. A mounted officer
brought word of it to the marshal, who went immediately to notify the
Emperor. The marshal has been gone ten minutes, and I shouldn't wonder
if the Emperor intends to follow him, for they are dressing him
upstairs. I just now saw them combing him and plastering his face with
all sorts of cosmetics."

But Henriette, having finally learned what she desired to know, rose
to go.

"Thank you, Rose. I am in somewhat of a hurry this morning."

The young girl went with her to the street door, and took leave of her
with a courteous:

"Glad to have been of service to you, Madame Weiss. I know that
anything said to you will go no further."

Henriette hurried back to her house in the Rue des Voyards. She felt
quite certain that her husband would have returned, and even reflected
that he would be alarmed at not finding her there, and hastened her
steps in consequence. As she drew near the house she raised her eyes
in the expectation of seeing him at the window watching for her, but
the window, wide open as she had left it when she went out, was
vacant, and when she had run up the stairs and given a rapid glance
through her three rooms, it was with a sinking heart that she saw they
were untenanted save for the chill fog and continuous roar of the
cannonade. The distant firing was still going on. She went and stood
for a moment at the window; although the encircling wall of vapor was
not less dense than it had been before, she seemed to have a clearer
apprehension, now that she had received oral information, of the
details of the conflict raging at Bazeilles, the grinding sound of the
mitrailleuses, the crashing volleys of the French batteries answering
the German batteries in the distance. The reports seemed to be drawing
nearer to the city, the battle to be waxing fiercer and fiercer with
every moment.

Why did not Weiss return? He had pledged himself so faithfully not to
outstay the first attack! And Henriette began to be seriously alarmed,
depicting to herself the various obstacles that might have detained
him: perhaps he had not been able to leave the village, perhaps the
roads were blocked or rendered impassable by the projectiles. It might
even be that something had happened him, but she put the thought aside
and would not dwell on it, preferring to view things on their brighter
side and finding in hope her safest mainstay and reliance. For an
instant she harbored the design of starting out and trying to find her
husband, but there were considerations that seemed to render that
course inadvisable: supposing him to have started on his return, what
would become of her should she miss him on the way? and what would be
his anxiety should he come in and find her absent? Her guiding
principle in all her thoughts and actions was her gentle, affectionate
devotedness, and she saw nothing strange or out of the way in a visit
to Bazeilles under such extraordinary circumstances, accustomed as she
was, like an affectionate little woman, to perform her duty in silence
and do the thing that she deemed best for their common interest. Where
her husband was, there was her place; that was all there was about it.

She gave a sudden start and left the window, saying:

"Monsieur Delaherche, how could I forget--"

It had just come to her recollection that the cloth manufacturer had
also passed the night at Bazeilles, and if he had returned would be
able to give her the intelligence she wanted. She ran swiftly down the
stairs again. In place of taking the more roundabout way by the Rue
des Voyards, she crossed the little courtyard of her house and entered
the passage that conducted to the huge structure that fronted on the
Rue Maqua. As she came out into the great central garden, paved with
flagstones now and retaining of its pristine glories only a few
venerable trees, magnificent century-old elms, she was astonished to
see a sentry mounting guard at the door of a carriage-house; then it
occurred to her that she had been told the day before that the camp
chests of the 7th corps had been deposited there for safe keeping, and
it produced a strange impression on her mind that all the gold,
millions, it was said to amount to, should be lying in that shed while
the men for whom it was destined were being killed not far away. As
she was about to ascend the private staircase, however, that conducted
to the apartment of Gilberte, young Madame Delaherche, she experienced
another surprise in an encounter that startled her so that she
retraced her steps a little way, doubtful whether it would not be
better to abandon her intention, and go home again. An officer, a
captain, had crossed her path, as noiselessly as a phantom and
vanishing as swiftly, and yet she had had time to recognize him,
having seen him in the past at Gilberte's house in Charleville, in the
days when she was still Madame Maginot. She stepped back a few steps
in the courtyard and raised her eyes to the two tall windows of the
bedroom, the blinds of which were closed, then dismissed her scruples
and entered.

Upon reaching the first floor, availing herself of that privilege of
old acquaintanceship by virtue of which one woman often drops in upon
another for an unceremonious early morning chat, she was about to
knock at the door of the dressing-room, but apparently someone had
left the room hastily and failed to secure the door, so that it was
standing ajar, and all she had to do was give it a push to find
herself in the dressing room, whence she passed into the bedroom. From
the lofty ceiling of the latter apartment depended voluminous curtains
of red velvet, protecting the large double bed. The warm, moist air
was fragrant with a faint perfume of Persian lilac, and there was no
sound to break the silence save a gentle, regular respiration,
scarcely audible.

"Gilberte!" said Henriette, very softly.

The young woman was sleeping peacefully, and the dim light that
entered the room between the red curtains of the high windows
displayed her exquisitely rounded head resting upon a naked arm and
her profusion of beautiful hair straying in disorder over the pillow.
Her lips were parted in a smile.

"Gilberte!"

She slightly moved and stretched her arms, without opening her eyes.

"Yes, yes; good-by. Oh! please--" Then, raising her head and
recognizing Henriette: "What, is it you! How late is it?"

When she learned that it had not yet struck six she seemed
disconcerted, assuming a sportive air to hide her embarrassment,
saying it was unfair to come waking people up at such an hour. Then,
to her friend, questioning her about her husband, she made answer:

"Why, he has not returned; I don't look for him much before nine
o'clock. What makes you so eager to see him at this hour of the
morning?"

Henriette's voice had a trace of sternness in it as she answered,
seeing the other so smiling, so dull of comprehension in her happy
waking.

"I tell you there has been fighting all the morning at Bazeilles, and
I am anxious about my husband."

"Oh, my dear," exclaimed Gilberte, "I assure you there is not the
slightest reason for your feeling so. My husband is so prudent that he
would have been home long ago had there been any danger. Until you see
him back here you may rest easy, take my word for it."

Henriette was struck by the justness of the argument; Delaherche, it
was true, was distinctly not a man to expose himself uselessly. She
was reassured, and went and drew the curtains and threw back the
blinds; the tawny light from without, where the sun was beginning to
pierce the fog with his golden javelins, streamed in a bright flood
into the apartment. One of the windows was part way open, and in the
soft air of the spacious bedroom, but now so close and stuffy, the two
women could hear the sound of the guns. Gilberte, half recumbent, her
elbow resting on the pillow, gazed out upon the sky with her lustrous,
vacant eyes.

"So, then, they are fighting," she murmured. Her chemise had slipped
downward, exposing a rosy, rounded shoulder, half hidden beneath the
wandering raven tresses, and her person exhaled a subtle, penetrating
odor, the odor of love. "They are fighting, so early in the morning,
_mon Dieu!_ It would be ridiculous if it were not for the horror of
it."

But Henriette, in looking about the room, had caught sight of a pair
of gauntlets, the gloves of a man, lying forgotten on a small table,
and she started perceptibly. Gilberte blushed deeply, and extending
her arms with a conscious, caressing movement, drew her friend to her
and rested her head upon her bosom.

"Yes," she almost whispered, "I saw that you noticed it. Darling, you
must not judge me too severely. He is an old friend; I told you all
about it at Charleville, long ago, you remember." Her voice sank lower
still; there was something that sounded very like a laugh of
satisfaction in her tender tones. "He pleaded so with me yesterday
that I would see him just once more. Just think, this morning he is in
action; he may be dead by this. How could I refuse him?" It was all so
heroic and so charming, the contrast was so delicious between war's
stern reality and tender sentiment; thoughtless as a linnet, she
smiled again, notwithstanding her confusion. Never could she have
found it in her heart to drive him from her door, when circumstances
all were propitious for the interview. "Do you condemn me?"

Henriette had listened to her confidences with a very grave face. Such
things surprised her, for she could not understand them; it must be
that she was constituted differently from other women. Her heart that
morning was with her husband, her brother, down there where the battle
was raging. How was it possible that anyone could sleep so peacefully
and be so gay and cheerful when the loved ones were in peril?

"But think of your husband, my dear, and of that poor young man as
well. Does not your heart yearn to be with them? You do not reflect
that their lifeless forms may be brought in and laid before your eyes
at any moment."

Gilberte raised her adorable bare arm before her face to shield her
vision from the frightful picture.

"O Heaven! what is that you say? It is cruel of you to destroy all the
pleasure of my morning in this way. No, no; I won't think of such
things. They are too mournful."

Henriette could not refrain from smiling in spite of her anxiety. She
was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how Gilberte's father,
Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had been made collector
of customs at Charleville when his wounds had incapacitated him for
active service, hearing his daughter cough and fearing for her the
fate of his young wife, who had been snatched from his arms by that
terrible disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house
near Chene-Populeux. The little maid was not nine years old, and
already she was a consummate actress--a perfect type of the village
coquette, queening it over her playmates, tricked out in what old
finery she could lay hands on, adorning herself with bracelets and
tiaras made from the silver paper wrappings of the chocolate. She had
not changed a bit when, later, at the age of twenty, she married
Maginot, the inspector of woods and forests. Mezieres, a dark, gloomy
town, surrounded by ramparts, was not to her taste, and she continued
to live at Charleville, where the gay, generous life, enlivened by
many festivities, suited her better. Her father was dead, and with a
husband whom, by reason of his inferior social position, her friends
and acquaintances treated with scant courtesy, she was absolutely
mistress of her own actions. She did not escape the censure of the
stern moralists who inhabit our provincial cities, and in those days
was credited with many lovers; but of the gay throng of officers who,
thanks to her father's old connection and her kinship to Colonel de
Vineuil, disported themselves in her drawing-room, Captain Beaudoin
was the only one who had really produced an impression. She was light
and frivolous--nothing more--adoring pleasure and living entirely in
the present, without the least trace of perverse inclination; and if
she accepted the captain's attentions, it is pretty certain that she
did it out of good-nature and love of admiration.

"You did very wrong to see him again," Henriette finally said, in her
matter-of-fact way.

"Oh! my dear, since I could not possibly do otherwise, and it was only
for just that once. You know very well I would die rather than deceive
my new husband."

She spoke with much feeling, and seemed distressed to see her friend
shake her head disapprovingly. They dropped the subject, and clasped
each other in an affectionate embrace, notwithstanding their
diametrically different natures. Each could hear the beating of the
other's heart, and they might have understood the tongues those organs
spoke--one, the slave of pleasure, wasting and squandering all that
was best in herself; the other, with the mute heroism of a lofty soul,
devoting herself to a single ennobling affection.

"But hark! how the cannon are roaring," Gilberte presently exclaimed.
"I must make haste and dress."

The reports sounded more distinctly in the silent room now that their
conversation had ceased. Leaving her bed, the young woman accepted the
assistance of her friend, not caring to summon her maid, and rapidly
made her toilet for the day, in order that she might be ready to go
downstairs should she be needed there. As she was completing the
arrangement of her hair there was a knock at the door, and,
recognizing the voice of the elder Madame Delaherche, she hastened to
admit her.

"Certainly, dear mother, you may come in."

With the thoughtlessness that was part of her nature, she allowed the
old lady to enter without having first removed the gauntlets from the
table. It was in vain that Henriette darted forward to seize them and
throw them behind a chair. Madame Delaherche stood glaring for some
seconds at the spot where they had been with an expression on her face
as if she were slowly suffocating. Then her glance wandered
involuntarily from object to object in the room, stopping finally at
the great red-curtained bed, the coverings thrown back in disorder.

"I see that Madame Weiss has disturbed your slumbers. Then you were
able to sleep, daughter?"

It was plain that she had had another purpose in coming there than to
make that speech. Ah, that marriage that her son had insisted on
contracting, contrary to her wish, at the mature age of fifty, after
twenty years of joyless married life with a shrewish, bony wife; he,
who had always until then deferred so to her will, now swayed only by
his passion for this gay young widow, lighter than thistle-down! She
had promised herself to keep watch over the present, and there was the
past coming back to plague her. But ought she to speak? Her life in
the household was one of silent reproach and protest; she kept herself
almost constantly imprisoned in her chamber, devoting herself rigidly
to the observances of her austere religion. Now, however, the wrong
was so flagrant that she resolved to speak to her son.

Gilberte blushingly replied, without an excessive manifestation of
embarrassment, however:

"Oh, yes, I had a few hours of refreshing sleep. You know that Jules
has not returned--"

Madame Delaherche interrupted her with a grave nod of her head. Ever
since the artillery had commenced to roar she had been watching
eagerly for her son's return, but she was a Spartan mother, and
concealed her gnawing anxiety under a cloak of brave silence. And then
she remembered what was the object of her visit there.

"Your uncle, the colonel, has sent the regimental surgeon with a note
in pencil, to ask if we will allow them to establish a hospital here.
He knows that we have abundance of space in the factory, and I have
already authorized the gentlemen to make use of the courtyard and the
big drying-room. But you should go down in person--"

"Oh, at once, at once!" exclaimed Henriette, hastening toward the
door. "We will do what we can to help."

Gilberte also displayed much enthusiasm for her new occupation as
nurse; she barely took the time to throw a lace scarf over her head,
and the three women went downstairs. When they reached the bottom and
stood in the spacious vestibule, looking out through the main
entrance, of which the leaves had been thrown wide back, they beheld a
crowd collected in the street before the house. A low-hung carriage
was advancing slowly along the roadway, a sort of carriole, drawn by a
single horse, which a lieutenant of zouaves was leading by the bridle.
They took it to be a wounded man that they were bringing to them, the
first of their patients.

"Yes, yes! This is the place; this way!"

But they were quickly undeceived. The sufferer recumbent in the
carriole was Marshal MacMahon, severely wounded in the hip, who, his
hurt having been provisionally cared for in the cottage of a gardener,
was now being taken to the Sous-Prefecture. He was bareheaded and
partially divested of his clothing, and the gold embroidery on his
uniform was tarnished with dust and blood. He spoke no word, but had
raised his head from the pillow where it lay and was looking about him
with a sorrowful expression, and perceiving the three women where they
stood, wide eyed with horror, their joined hands resting on their
bosom, in presence of that great calamity, the whole army stricken in
the person of its chief at the very beginning of the conflict, he
slightly bowed his head, with a faint, paternal smile. A few of those
about him removed their hats; others, who had no time for such idle
ceremony, were circulating the report of General Ducrot's appointment
to the command of the army. It was half-past seven o'clock.

"And what of the Emperor?" Henriette inquired of a bookseller, who was
standing at his door.

"He left the city near an hour ago," replied the neighbor. "I was
standing by and saw him pass out at the Balan gate. There is a rumor
that his head was taken off by a cannon ball."

But this made the grocer across the street furious. "Hold your
tongue," he shouted, "it is an infernal lie! None but the brave will
leave their bones there to-day!"

When near the Place du College the marshal's carriole was lost to
sight in the gathering crowd, among whose numbers the most strange and
contradictory reports from the field of battle were now beginning to
circulate. The fog was clearing; the streets were bright with
sunshine.

A hail, in no gentle terms, was heard proceeding from the courtyard:
"Now then, ladies, here is where you are wanted, not outside!"

They all three hastened inside and found themselves in presence of
Major Bouroche, who had thrown his uniform coat upon the floor, in a
corner of the room, and donned a great white apron. Above the broad
expanse of, as yet, unspotted white, his blazing, leonine eyes and
enormous head, with shock of harsh, bristling hair, seemed to exhale
energy and determination. So terrible did he appear to them that the
women were his most humble servants from the very start, obedient to
his every sign, treading on one another to anticipate his wishes.

"There is nothing here that is needed. Get me some linen; try and
see if you can't find some more mattresses; show my men where the
pump is--"

And they ran as if their life was at stake to do his bidding; were so
active that they seemed to be ubiquitous.

The factory was admirably adapted for a hospital. The drying-room was
a particularly noticeable feature, a vast apartment with numerous and
lofty windows for light and ventilation, where they could put in a
hundred beds and yet have room to spare, and at one side was a shed
that seemed to have been built there especially for the convenience of
the operators: three long tables had been brought in, the pump
was close at hand, and a small grass-plot adjacent might serve as
ante-chamber for the patients while awaiting their turn. And the
handsome old elms, with their deliciously cool shade, roofed the spot
in most agreeably.

Bouroche had considered it would be best to establish himself in Sedan
at the commencement, foreseeing the dreadful slaughter and the
inevitable panic that would sooner or later drive the troops to the
shelter of the ramparts. All that he had deemed it necessary to leave
with the regiment was two flying ambulances and some "first aids,"
that were to send him in the casualties as rapidly as possible after
applying the primary dressings. The details of litter-bearers were all
out there, whose duty it was to pick up the wounded under fire, and
with them were the ambulance wagons and _fourgons_ of the medical
train. The two assistant-surgeons and three hospital stewards whom he
had retained, leaving two assistants on the field, would doubtless be
sufficient to perform what operations were necessary. He had also a
corps of dressers under him. But he was not gentle in manner and
language, for all he did was done impulsively, zealously, with all his
heart and soul.

"_Tonnerre de Dieu!_ how do you suppose we are going to distinguish
the cases from one another when they begin to come in presently? Take
a piece of charcoal and number each bed with a big figure on the wall
overhead, and place those mattresses closer together, do you hear? We
can strew some straw on the floor in that corner if it becomes
necessary."

The guns were barking, preparing his work for him; he knew that at any
moment now the first carriage might drive up and discharge its load of
maimed and bleeding flesh, and he hastened to get all in readiness in
the great, bare room. Outside in the shed the preparations were of
another nature: the chests were opened and their contents arranged in
order on a table, packages of lint, bandages, compresses, rollers,
splints for fractured limbs, while on another table, alongside a great
jar of cerate and a bottle of chloroform, were the surgical cases with
their blood-curdling array of glittering instruments, probes, forceps,
bistouries, scalpels, scissors, saws, an arsenal of implements of
every imaginable shape adapted to pierce, cut, slice, rend, crush. But
there was a deficient supply of basins.

"You must have pails, pots, jars about the house--something that will
hold water. We can't work besmeared with blood all day, that's
certain. And sponges, try to get me some sponges."

Madame Delaherche hurried away and returned, followed by three women
bearing a supply of the desired vessels. Gilberte, standing by the
table where the instruments were laid out, summoned Henriette to her
side by a look and pointed to them with a little shudder. They grasped
each other's hand and stood for a moment without speaking, but their
mute clasp was eloquent of the solemn feeling of terror and pity that
filled both their souls. And yet there was a difference, for one
retained, even in her distress, the involuntary smile of her bright
youth, while in the eyes of the other, pale as death, was the grave
earnestness of the heart which, one love lost, can never love again.

"How terrible it must be, dear, to have an arm or leg cut off!"

"Poor fellows!"

Bouroche had just finished placing a mattress on each of the three
tables, covering them carefully with oil-cloth, when the sound of
horses' hoofs was heard outside and the first ambulance wagon rolled
into the court. There were ten men in it, seated on the lateral
benches, only slightly wounded; two or three of them carrying their
arm in a sling, but the majority hurt about the head. They alighted
with but little assistance, and the inspection of their cases
commenced forthwith.

One of them, scarcely more than a boy, had been shot through the
shoulder, and as Henriette was tenderly assisting him to draw off his
greatcoat, an operation that elicited cries of pain, she took notice
of the number of his regiment.

"Why, you belong to the 106th! Are you in Captain Beaudoin's company?"

No, he belonged to Captain Bonnaud's company, but for all that he was
well acquainted with Corporal Macquart and felt pretty certain that
his squad had not been under fire as yet. The tidings, meager as they
were, sufficed to remove a great load from the young woman's heart:
her brother was alive and well; if now her husband would only return,
as she was expecting every moment he would do, her mind would be quite
at rest.

At that moment, just as Henriette raised her head to listen to the
cannonade, which was then roaring with increased viciousness, she was
thunderstruck to see Delaherche standing only a few steps away in the
middle of a group of men, to whom he was telling the story of the
frightful dangers he had encountered in getting from Bazeilles to
Sedan. How did he happen to be there? She had not seen him come in.
She darted toward him.

"Is not my husband with you?"

But Delaherche, who was just then replying to the fond questions of
his wife and mother, was in no haste to answer.

"Wait, wait a moment." And resuming his narrative: "Twenty times
between Bazeilles and Balan I just missed being killed. It was a
storm, a regular hurricane, of shot and shell! And I saw the Emperor,
too. Oh! but he is a brave man!--And after leaving Balan I ran--"

Henriette shook him by the arm.

"My husband?"

"Weiss? why, he stayed behind there, Weiss did."

"What do you mean, behind there?"

"Why, yes; he picked up the musket of a dead soldier, and is fighting
away with the best of them."

"He is fighting, you say?--and why?"

"He must be out of his head, I think. He would not come with me, and
of course I had to leave him."

Henriette gazed at him fixedly, with wide-dilated eyes. For a moment
no one spoke; then in a calm voice she declared her resolution.

"It is well; I will go to him."

What, she, go to him? But it was impossible, it was preposterous!
Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of shot and shell.
Gilberte seized her by the wrists to detain her, while Madame
Delaherche used all her persuasive powers to convince her of the folly
of the mad undertaking. In the same gentle, determined tone she
repeated:

"It is useless; I will go to him."

She would only wait to adjust upon her head the lace scarf that
Gilberte had been wearing and which the latter insisted she should
accept. In the hope that his offer might cause her to abandon her
resolve Delaherche declared that he would go with her at least as far
as the Balan gate, but just then he caught sight of the sentry, who,
in all the turmoil and confusion of the time, had been pacing
uninterruptedly up and down before the building that contained the
treasure chests of the 7th corps, and suddenly he remembered, was
alarmed, went to give a look and assure himself that the millions were
there still. In the meantime Henriette had reached the portico and was
about to pass out into the street.

"Wait for me, won't you? Upon my word, you are as mad as your
husband!"

Another ambulance had driven up, moreover, and they had to wait to let
it pass in. It was smaller than the other, having but two wheels, and
the two men whom it contained, both severely wounded, rested on
stretchers placed upon the floor. The first one whom the attendants
took out, using the most tender precaution, had one hand broken and
his side torn by a splinter of shell; he was a mass of bleeding flesh.
The second had his left leg shattered; and Bouroche, giving orders to
extend the latter on one of the oil-cloth-covered mattresses,
proceeded forthwith to operate on him, surrounded by the staring,
pushing crowd of dressers and assistants. Madame Delaherche and
Gilberte were seated near the grass-plot, employed in rolling
bandages.

In the street outside Delaherche had caught up with Henriette.

"Come, my dear Madame Weiss, abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How
can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is
no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home
through the fields. I assure you that Bazeilles is inaccessible."

But she did not even listen to him, only increasing her speed, and had
now entered the Rue de Menil, her shortest way to the Balan gate. It
was nearly nine o'clock, and Sedan no longer wore the forbidding,
funereal aspect of the morning, when it awoke to grope and shudder
amid the despair and gloom of its black fog. The shadows of the houses
were sharply defined upon the pavement in the bright sunlight, the
streets were filled with an excited, anxious throng, through which
orderlies and staff officers were constantly pushing their way at a
gallop. The chief centers of attraction were the straggling soldiers
who, even at this early hour of the day, had begun to stream into the
city, minus arms and equipments, some of them slightly wounded, others
in an extreme condition of nervous excitation, shouting and
gesticulating like lunatics. And yet the place would have had very
much its every-day aspect, had it not been for the tight-closed
shutters of the shops, the lifeless house-fronts, where not a blind
was open. Then there was the cannonade, that never-ceasing cannonade,
beneath which earth and rocks, walls and foundations, even to the very
slates upon the roofs, shook and trembled.

What between the damage that his reputation as a man of bravery and
politeness would inevitably suffer should he desert Henriette in her
time of trouble, and his disinclination to again face the iron hail on
the Bazeilles road, Delaherche was certainly in a very unpleasant
predicament. Just as they reached the Balan gate a bevy of mounted
officers, returning to the city, suddenly came riding up, and they
were parted. There was a dense crowd of people around the gate,
waiting for news. It was all in vain that he ran this way and that,
looking for the young woman in the throng; she must have been beyond
the walls by that time, speeding along the road, and pocketing his
gallantry for use on some future occasion, he said to himself aloud:

"Very well, so much the worse for her; it was too idiotic."

Then the manufacturer strolled about the city, bourgeois-like desirous
to lose no portion of the spectacle, and at the same time tormented by
a constantly increasing feeling of anxiety. How was it all to end? and
would not the city suffer heavily should the army be defeated? The
questions were hard ones to answer; he could not give a satisfactory
solution to the conundrum when so much depended on circumstances, but
none the less he was beginning to feel very uneasy for his factory and
house in the Rue Maqua, whence he had already taken the precaution to
remove his securities and valuables and bury them in a place of
safety. He dropped in at the Hotel de Ville, found the Municipal
Council sitting in permanent session, and loitered away a couple of
hours there without hearing any fresh news, unless that affairs
outside the walls were beginning to look very threatening. The army,
under the pushing and hauling process, pushed back to the rear by
General Ducrot during the hour and a half while the command was in his
hands, hauled forward to the front again by de Wimpffen, his
successor, knew not where to yield obedience, and the entire lack of
plan and competent leadership, the incomprehensible vacillation, the
abandonment of positions only to retake them again at terrible cost of
life, all these things could not fail to end in ruin and disaster.

From there Delaherche pushed forward to the Sous-Prefecture to
ascertain whether the Emperor had returned yet from the field of
battle. The only tidings he gleaned here were of Marshal MacMahon, who
was said to be resting comfortably, his wound, which was not
dangerous, having been dressed by a surgeon. About eleven o'clock,
however, as he was again going the rounds, his progress was arrested
for a moment in the Grande-Rue, opposite the Hotel de l'Europe, by a
sorry cavalcade of dust-stained horsemen, whose jaded nags were moving
at a walk, and at their head he recognized the Emperor, who was
returning after having spent four hours on the battle-field. It was
plain that death would have nothing to do with him. The big drops of
anguish had washed the rouge from off those painted cheeks, the waxed
mustache had lost its stiffness and drooped over the mouth, and in
that ashen face, in those dim eyes, was the stupor of one in his last
agony. One of the officers alighted in front of the hotel and
proceeded to give some friends, who were collected there, an account
of their route, from la Moncelle to Givonne, up the entire length of
the little valley among the soldiers of the 1st corps, who had already
been pressed back by the Saxons across the little stream to the right
bank; and they had returned by the sunken road of the Fond de Givonne,
which was even then in such an encumbered condition that had the
Emperor desired to make his way to the front again he would have found
the greatest difficulty in doing so. Besides, what would it have
availed?

As Delaherche was drinking in these particulars with greedy ears a
loud explosion shook the quarter. It was a shell, which had demolished
a chimney in the Rue Sainte-Barbe, near the citadel. There was a
general rush and scramble; men swore and women shrieked. He had
flattened himself against the wall, when another explosion broke the
windows in a house not far away. The consequences would be dreadful if
they should shell Sedan; he made his way back to the Rue Maqua on a
keen run, and was seized by such an imperious desire to learn the
truth that he did not pause below stairs, but hurried to the roof,
where there was a terrace that commanded a view of the city and its
environs.

A glance of the situation served to reassure him; the German fire was
not directed against the city; the batteries at Frenois and la Marfee
were shelling the Plateau de l'Algerie over the roofs of the houses,
and now that his alarm had subsided he could even watch with a certain
degree of admiration the flight of the projectiles as they sailed over
Sedan in a wide, majestic curve, leaving behind them a faint trail of
smoke upon the air, like gigantic birds, invisible to mortal eye and
to be traced only by the gray plumage shed by their pinions. At first
it seemed to him quite evident that what damage had been done so far
was the result of random practice by the Prussian gunners: they were
not bombarding the city yet; then, upon further consideration, he was
of opinion that their firing was intended as a response to the
ineffectual fire of the few guns mounted on the fortifications of the
place. Turning to the north he looked down from his position upon the
extended and complex system of defenses of the citadel, the frowning
curtains black with age, the green expanses of the turfed glacis, the
stern bastions that reared their heads at geometrically accurate
angles, prominent among them the three cyclopean salients, the
Ecossais, the Grand Jardin, and la Rochette, while further to the
west, in extension of the line, were Fort Nassau and Fort Palatinat,
above the faubourg of Menil. The sight produced in him a melancholy
impression of immensity and futility. Of what avail were they now
against the powerful modern guns with their immense range? Besides,
the works were not manned; cannon, ammunition, men were wanting. Some
three weeks previously the governor had invited the citizens to
organize and form a National Guard, and these volunteers were now
doing duty as gunners; and thus it was that there were three guns in
service at Palatinat, while at the Porte de Paris there may have been
a half dozen. As they had only seven or eight rounds to each gun,
however, the men husbanded their ammunition, limiting themselves to
a shot every half hour, and that only as a sort of salve to their
self-respect, for none of their missiles reached the enemy; all were
lost in the meadows opposite them. Hence the enemy's batteries,
disdainful of such small game, contemptuously pitched a shell at them
from time to time, out of charity, as it were.

Those batteries over across the river were objects of great interest
to Delaherche. He was eagerly scanning the heights of la Marfee with
his naked eye, when all at once he thought of the spy-glass with which
he sometimes amused himself by watching the doings of his neighbors
from the terrace. He ran downstairs and got it, returned and placed it
in position, and as he was slowly sweeping the horizon and trees,
fields, houses came within his range of vision, he lighted on that
group of uniforms, at the angle of a pine wood, over the main battery
at Frenois, of which Weiss had caught a glimpse from Bazeilles. To
him, however, thanks to the excellence of his glass, it would have
been no difficult matter to count the number of officers of the staff,
so distinctly he made them out. Some of them were reclining carelessly
on the grass, others were conversing in little groups, and in front of
them all stood a solitary figure, a spare, well-proportioned man to
appearances, in an unostentatious uniform, who yet asserted in some
indefinable way his masterhood. It was the Prussian King, scarce half
finger high, one of those miniature leaden toys that afford children
such delight. Although he was not certain of this identity until later
on the manufacturer found himself, by reason of some inexplicable
attraction, constantly returning to that diminutive puppet, whose
face, scarce larger than a pin's head, was but a pale point against
the immense blue sky.

It was not midday yet, and since nine o'clock the master had been
watching the movements, inexorable as fate, of his armies. Onward,
ever onward, they swept, by roads traced for them in advance,
completing the circle, slowly but surely closing in and enveloping
Sedan in their living wall of men and guns. The army on his left, that
had come up across the level plain of Donchery, was debouching still
from the pass of Saint-Albert and, leaving Saint-Menges in its rear,
was beginning to show its heads of columns at Fleigneux; and, in the
rear of the XIth corps, then sharply engaged with General Douay's
force, he could discern the Vth corps, availing itself of the shelter
of the woods and advancing stealthily on Illy, while battery upon
battery came wheeling into position, an ever-lengthening line of
thundering guns, until the horizon was an unbroken ring of fire. On
the right the army was now in undisputed possession of the valley of
the Givonne; the XIIth corps had taken la Moncelle, the Guards had
forced the passage of the stream at Daigny, compelling General Ducrot
to seek the protection of the wood of la Garenne, and were pushing up
the right bank, likewise in full march upon the plateau of Illy. Their
task was almost done; one effort more, and up there at the north,
among those barren fields, on the very verge of the dark forests of
the Ardennes, the Crown Prince of Prussia would join hands with the
Crown Prince of Saxony. To the south of Sedan the village of Bazeilles
was lost to sight in the dense smoke of its burning houses, in the
clouds of dun vapor that rose above the furious conflict.

And tranquilly, ever since the morning, the King had been watching and
waiting. An hour yet, two hours, it might be three, it mattered not;
it was only a question of time. Wheel and pinion, cog and lever, were
working in harmony, the great engine of destruction was in motion, and
soon would have run its course. In the center of the immense horizon,
beneath the deep vault of sunlit sky, the bounds of the battlefield
were ever becoming narrower, the black swarms were converging, closing
in on doomed Sedan. There were fiery reflexions in the windows of the
city; to the left, in the direction of the Faubourg de la Cassine, it
seemed as if a house was burning. And outside the circle of flame and
smoke, in the fields no longer trodden by armed men, over by Donchery,
over by Carignan, peace, warm and luminous, lay upon the land; the
bright waters of the Meuse, the lusty trees rejoicing in their
strength, the broad, verdant meadows, the fertile, well-kept farms,
all rested peacefully beneath the fervid noonday sun.

Turning to his staff, the King briefly called for information upon
some point. It was the royal will to direct each move on the gigantic
chessboard; to hold in the hollow of his hand the hosts who looked to
him for guidance. At his left, a flock of swallows, affrighted by the
noise of the cannonade, rose high in air, wheeled, and vanished in the
south.

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