The Downfall: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

All the long, long day of the battle Silvine, up on Remilly hill,
where Father Fouchard's little farm was situated, but her heart and
soul absent with Honore amid the dangers of the conflict, never once
took her eyes from off Sedan, where the guns were roaring. The
following day, moreover, her anxiety was even greater still, being
increased by her inability to obtain any definite tidings, for the
Prussians who were guarding the roads in the vicinity refused to
answer questions, as much from reasons of policy as because they knew
but very little themselves. The bright sun of the day before was no
longer visible, and showers had fallen, making the valley look less
cheerful than usual in the wan light.

Toward evening Father Fouchard, who was also haunted by a sensation of
uneasiness in the midst of his studied taciturnity, was standing on
his doorstep reflecting on the probable outcome of events. His son had
no place in his thoughts, but he was speculating how he best might
convert the misfortunes of others into fortune for himself, and as he
revolved these considerations in his mind he noticed a tall, strapping
young fellow, dressed in the peasant's blouse, who had been strolling
up and down the road for the last minute or so, looking as if he did
not know what to do with himself. His astonishment on recognizing him
was so great that he called him aloud by name, notwithstanding that
three Prussians happened to be passing at the time.

"Why, Prosper! Is that you?"

The chasseur d'Afrique imposed silence on him with an emphatic
gesture; then, coming closer, he said in an undertone:

"Yes, it is I. I have had enough of fighting for nothing, and I cut my
lucky. Say, Father Fouchard, you don't happen to be in need of a
laborer on your farm, do you?"

All the old man's prudence came back to him in a twinkling. He _was_
looking for someone to help him, but it would be better not to say so
at once.

"A lad on the farm? faith, no--not just now. Come in, though, all the
same, and have a glass. I shan't leave you out on the road when you're
in trouble, that's sure."

Silvine, in the kitchen, was setting the pot of soup on the fire,
while little Charlot was hanging by her skirts, frolicking and
laughing. She did not recognize Prosper at first, although they had
formerly served together in the same household, and it was not until
she came in, bringing a bottle of wine and two glasses, that she
looked him squarely in the face. She uttered a cry of joy and
surprise; her sole thought was of Honore.

"Ah, you were there, weren't you? Is Honore all right?"

Prosper's answer was ready to slip from his tongue; he hesitated. For
the last two days he had been living in a dream, among a rapid
succession of strange, ill-defined events which left behind them no
precise memory, as a man starts, half-awakened, from a slumber peopled
with fantastic visions. It was true, doubtless, he believed he had
seen Honore lying upon a cannon, dead, but he would not have cared to
swear to it; what use is there in afflicting people when one is not
certain?

"Honore," he murmured, "I don't know, I couldn't say."

She continued to press him with her questions, looking at him
steadily.

"You did not see him, then?"

He waved his hands before him with a slow, uncertain motion and an
expressive shake of the head.

"How can you expect one to remember! There were such lots of things,
such lots of things. Look you, of all that d-----d battle, if I was to
die for it this minute, I could not tell you that much--no, not even
the place where I was. I believe men get to be no better than idiots,
'pon my word I do!" And tossing off a glass of wine, he sat gloomily
silent, his vacant eyes turned inward on the dark recesses of his
memory. "All that I remember is that it was beginning to be dark when
I recovered consciousness. I went down while we were charging, and
then the sun was very high. I must have been lying there for hours, my
right leg caught under poor old Zephyr, who had received a piece of
shell in the middle of his chest. There was nothing to laugh at in my
position, I can tell you; the dead comrades lying around me in piles,
not a living soul in sight, and the certainty that I should have to
kick the bucket too unless someone came to put me on my legs again.
Gently, gently, I tried to free my leg, but it was no use; Zephyr's
weight must have been fully up to that of the five hundred thousand
devils. He was warm still. I patted him, I spoke to him, saying all
the pretty things I could think of, and here's a thing, do you see,
that I shall never forget as long as I live: he opened his eyes and
made an effort to raise his poor old head, which was resting on the
ground beside my own. Then we had a talk together: 'Poor old fellow,'
says I, 'I don't want to say a word to hurt your feelings, but you
must want to see me croak with you, you hold me down so hard.' Of
course he didn't say he did; he couldn't, but for all that I could
read in his great sorrowful eyes how bad he felt to have to part with
me. And I can't say how the thing happened, whether he intended it or
whether it was part of the death struggle, but all at once he gave
himself a great shake that sent him rolling away to one side. I was
enabled to get on my feet once more, but ah! in what a pickle; my leg
was swollen and heavy as a leg of lead. Never mind, I took Zephyr's
head in my arms and kept on talking to him, telling him all the kind
thoughts I had in my heart, that he was a good horse, that I loved him
dearly, that I should never forget him. He listened to me, he seemed
to be so pleased! Then he had another long convulsion, and so he died,
with his big vacant eyes fixed on me till the last. It is very
strange, though, and I don't suppose anyone will believe me; still, it
is the simple truth that great, big tears were standing in his eyes.
Poor old Zephyr, he cried just like a man--"

At this point Prosper's emotion got the better of him; tears choked
his utterance and he was obliged to break off. He gulped down another
glass of wine and went on with his narrative in disjointed, incomplete
sentences. It kept growing darker and darker, until there was only a
narrow streak of red light on the horizon at the verge of the
battlefield; the shadows of the dead horses seemed to be projected
across the plain to an infinite distance. The pain and stiffness in
his leg kept him from moving; he must have remained for a long time
beside Zephyr. Then, with his fears as an incentive, he had managed to
get on his feet and hobble away; it was an imperative necessity to him
not to be alone, to find comrades who would share his fears with him
and make them less. Thus from every nook and corner of the
battlefield, from hedges and ditches and clumps of bushes, the wounded
who had been left behind dragged themselves painfully in search of
companionship, forming when possible little bands of four or five,
finding it less hard to agonize and die in the company of their
fellow-beings. In the wood of la Garenne Prosper fell in with two men
of the 43d regiment; they were not wounded, but had burrowed in the
underbrush like rabbits, waiting for the coming of the night. When
they learned that he was familiar with the roads they communicated to
him their plan, which was to traverse the woods under cover of the
darkness and make their escape into Belgium. At first he declined to
share their undertaking, for he would have preferred to proceed direct
to Remilly, where he was certain to find a refuge, but where was he to
obtain the blouse and trousers that he required as a disguise? to say
nothing of the impracticability of getting past the numerous Prussian
pickets and outposts that filled the valley all the way from la
Garenne to Remilly. He therefore ended by consenting to act as guide
to the two comrades. His leg was less stiff than it had been, and they
were so fortunate as to secure a loaf of bread at a farmhouse. Nine
o'clock was striking from the church of a village in the distance as
they resumed their way. The only point where they encountered any
danger worth mentioning was at la Chapelle, where they fell directly
into the midst of a Prussian advanced post before they were aware of
it; the enemy flew to arms and blazed away into the darkness, while
they, throwing themselves on the ground and alternately crawling and
running until the fire slackened, ultimately regained the shelter of
the trees. After that they kept to the woods, observing the utmost
vigilance. At a bend in the road, they crept up behind an out-lying
picket and, leaping on his back, buried a knife in his throat. Then
the road was free before them and they no longer had to observe
precaution; they went ahead, laughing and whistling. It was about
three in the morning when they reached a little Belgian village, where
they knocked up a worthy farmer, who at once opened his barn to them;
they snuggled among the hay and slept soundly until morning.

The sun was high in the heavens when Prosper awoke. As he opened his
eyes and looked about him, while the two comrades were still snoring,
he beheld their entertainer engaged in hitching a horse to a great
carriole loaded with bread, rice, coffee, sugar, and all sorts of
eatables, the whole concealed under sacks of charcoal, and a little
questioning elicited from the good man the fact that he had two
married daughters living at Raucourt, in France, whom the passage of
the Bavarian troops had left entirely destitute, and that the
provisions in the carriole were intended for them. He had procured
that very morning the safe-conduct that was required for the journey.
Prosper was immediately seized by an uncontrollable desire to take a
seat in that carriole and return to the country that he loved so and
for which his heart was yearning with such a violent nostalgia. It was
perfectly simple; the farmer would have to pass through Remilly to
reach Raucourt; he would alight there. The matter was arranged in
three minutes; he obtained a loan of the longed-for blouse and
trousers, and the farmer gave out, wherever they stopped, that he was
his servant; so that about six o'clock he got down in front of the
church, not having been stopped more than two or three times by the
German outposts.

They were all silent for a while, then: "No, I had enough of it!" said
Prosper. "If they had but set us at work that amounted to something,
as out there in Africa! but this going up the hill only to come down
again, the feeling that one is of no earthly use to anyone, that is no
kind of a life at all. And then I should be lonely, now that poor
Zephyr is dead; all that is left me to do is to go to work on a farm.
That will be better than living among the Prussians as a prisoner,
don't you think so? You have horses, Father Fouchard; try me, and see
whether or not I will love them and take good care of them."

The old fellow's eyes gleamed, but he touched glasses once more with
the other and concluded the arrangement without any evidence of
eagerness.

"Very well; I wish to be of service to you as far as lies in my power;
I will take you. As regards the question of wages, though, you must
not speak of it until the war is over, for really I am not in need of
anyone and the times are too hard."

Silvine, who had remained seated with Charlot on her lap, had never
once taken her eyes from Prosper's face. When she saw him rise with
the intention of going to the stable and making immediate acquaintance
with its four-footed inhabitants, she again asked:

"Then you say you did not see Honore?"

The question repeated thus abruptly made him start, as if it had
suddenly cast a flood of light in upon an obscure corner of his
memory. He hesitated for a little, but finally came to a decision and
spoke.

"See here, I did not wish to grieve you just now, but I don't believe
Honore will ever come back."

"Never come back--what do you mean?"

"Yes, I believe that the Prussians did his business for him. I saw him
lying across his gun, his head erect, with a great wound just beneath
the heart."

There was silence in the room. Silvine's pallor was frightful to
behold, while Father Fouchard displayed his interest in the narrative
by replacing upon the table his glass, into which he had just poured
what wine remained in the bottle.

"Are you quite certain?" she asked in a choking voice.

"_Dame_! as certain as one can be of a thing he has seen with his own
two eyes. It was on a little hillock, with three trees in a group
right beside it; it seems to me I could go to the spot blindfolded."

If it was true she had nothing left to live for. That lad who had been
so good to her, who had forgiven her her fault, had plighted his troth
and was to marry her when he came home at the end of the campaign! and
they had robbed her of him, they had murdered him, and he was lying
out there on the battlefield with a wound under the heart! She had
never known how strong her love for him had been, and now the thought
that she was to see him no more, that he who was hers was hers no
longer, aroused her almost to a pitch of madness and made her forget
her usual tranquil resignation. She set Charlot roughly down upon the
floor, exclaiming:

"Good! I shall not believe that story until I see the evidence of it,
until I see it with my own eyes. Since you know the spot you shall
conduct me to it. And if it is true, if we find him, we will bring him
home with us."

Her tears allowed her to say no more; she bowed her head upon the
table, her frame convulsed by long-drawn, tumultuous sobs that shook
her from head to foot, while the child, not knowing what to make of
such unusual treatment at his mother's hands, also commenced to weep
violently. She caught him up and pressed him to her heart, with
distracted, stammering words:

"My poor child! my poor child!"

Consternation was depicted on old Fouchard's face. Appearances
notwithstanding, he did love his son, after a fashion of his own.
Memories of the past came back to him, of days long vanished, when his
wife was still living and Honore was a boy at school, and two big
tears appeared in his small red eyes and trickled down his old
leathery cheeks. He had not wept before in more than ten years. In the
end he grew angry at the thought of that son who was his and upon whom
he was never to set eyes again; he rapped out an oath or two.

"_Nom de Dieu!_ it is provoking all the same, to have only one boy,
and that he should be taken from you!"

When their agitation had in a measure subsided, however, Fouchard was
annoyed that Silvine still continued to talk of going to search for
Honore's body out there on the battlefield. She made no further noisy
demonstration, but harbored her purpose with the dogged silence of
despair, and he failed to recognize in her the docile, obedient
servant who was wont to perform her daily tasks without a murmur; her
great, submissive eyes, in which lay the chief beauty of her face, had
assumed an expression of stern determination, while beneath her thick
brown hair her cheeks and brow wore a pallor that was like death. She
had torn off the red kerchief that was knotted about her neck, and was
entirely in black, like a widow in her weeds. It was all in vain that
he tried to impress on her the difficulties of the undertaking, the
dangers she would be subjected to, the little hope there was of
recovering the corpse; she did not even take the trouble to answer
him, and he saw clearly that unless he seconded her in her plan she
would start out alone and do some unwise thing, and this aspect of the
case worried him on account of the complications that might arise
between him and the Prussian authorities. He therefore finally decided
to go and lay the matter before the mayor of Remilly, who was a kind
of distant cousin of his, and they two between them concocted a story:
Silvine was to pass as the actual widow of Honore, Prosper became her
brother, so that the Bavarian colonel, who had his quarters in the
Hotel of the Maltese Cross down in the lower part of the village, made
no difficulty about granting a pass which authorized the brother and
sister to bring home the body of the husband, provided they could find
it. By this time it was night; the only concession that could be
obtained from the young woman was that she would delay starting on her
expedition until morning.

When morning came old Fouchard could not be prevailed on to allow one
of his horses to be taken, fearing he might never set eyes on it
again. What assurance had he that the Prussians would not confiscate
the entire equipage? At last he consented, though with very bad grace,
to loan her the donkey, a little gray animal, and his cart, which,
though small, would be large enough to hold a dead man. He gave minute
instructions to Prosper, who had had a good night's sleep, but was
anxious and thoughtful at the prospect of the expedition now that,
being rested and refreshed, he attempted to remember something of the
battle. At the last moment Silvine went and took the counterpane from
her own bed, folding and spreading it on the floor of the cart. Just
as she was about to start she came running back to embrace Charlot.

"I entrust him to your care, Father Fouchard; keep an eye on him and
see that he doesn't get hold of the matches."

"Yes, yes; never fear!"

They were late in getting off; it was near seven o'clock when the
little procession, the donkey, hanging his head and drawing the narrow
cart, leading, descended the steep hill of Remilly. It had rained
heavily during the night, and the roads were become rivers of mud;
great lowering clouds hung in the heavens, imparting an air of
cheerless desolation to the scene.

Prosper, wishing to save all the distance he could, had determined on
taking the route that lay through the city of Sedan, but before they
reached Pont-Maugis a Prussian outpost halted the cart and held it for
over an hour, and finally, after their pass had been referred, one
after another, to four or five officials, they were told they might
resume their journey, but only on condition of taking the longer,
roundabout route by way of Bazeilles, to do which they would have to
turn into a cross-road on their left. No reason was assigned; their
object was probably to avoid adding to the crowd that encumbered the
streets of the city. When Silvine crossed the Meuse by the railroad
bridge, that ill-starred bridge that the French had failed to destroy
and which, moreover, had been the cause of such slaughter among the
Bavarians, she beheld the corpse of an artilleryman floating lazily
down with the sluggish current. It caught among some rushes near the
bank, hung there a moment, then swung clear and started afresh on its
downward way.

Bazeilles, through which they passed from end to end at a slow walk,
afforded a spectacle of ruin and desolation, the worst that war can
perpetrate when it sweeps with devastating force, like a cyclone,
through a land. The dead had been removed; there was not a single
corpse to be seen in the village streets, and the rain had washed away
the blood; pools of reddish water were to be seen here and there in
the roadway, with repulsive, frowzy-looking debris, matted masses that
one could not help associating in his mind with human hair. But what
shocked and saddened one more than all the rest was the ruin that was
visible everywhere; that charming village, only three days before so
bright and smiling, with its pretty houses standing in their well-kept
gardens, now razed, demolished, annihilated, nothing left of all its
beauties save a few smoke-stained walls. The church was burning still,
a huge pyre of smoldering beams and girders, whence streamed
continually upward a column of dense black smoke that, spreading in
the heavens, overshadowed the city like a gigantic funeral pall.
Entire streets had been swept away, not a house left on either side,
nor any trace that houses had ever been there, save the calcined
stone-work lying in the gutter in a pasty mess of soot and ashes, the
whole lost in the viscid, ink-black mud of the thoroughfare. Where
streets intersected the corner houses were razed down to their
foundations, as if they had been carried away bodily by the fiery
blast that blew there. Others had suffered less; one in particular,
owing to some chance, had escaped almost without injury, while its
neighbors on either hand, literally torn to pieces by the iron hail,
were like gaunt skeletons. An unbearable stench was everywhere,
noticeable, the nauseating odor that follows a great fire, aggravated
by the penetrating smell of petroleum, that had been used without
stint upon floors and walls. Then, too, there was the pitiful, mute
spectacle of the household goods that the people had endeavored to
save, the poor furniture that had been thrown from windows and smashed
upon the sidewalk, crazy tables with broken legs, presses with cloven
sides and split doors, linen, also, torn and soiled, that was trodden
under foot; all the sorry crumbs, the unconsidered trifles of the
pillage, of which the destruction was being completed by the
dissolving rain. Through the breach in a shattered house-front a
clock was visible, securely fastened high up on the wall above the
mantel-shelf, that had miraculously escaped intact.

"The beasts! the pigs!" growled Prosper, whose blood, though he was no
longer a soldier, ran hot at the sight of such atrocities.

He doubled his fists, and Silvine, who was white as a ghost, had to
exert the influence of her glance to calm him every time they
encountered a sentry on their way. The Bavarians had posted sentinels
near all the houses that were still burning, and it seemed as if those
men, with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, were guarding the fires
in order that the flames might finish their work. They drove away the
mere sightseers who strolled about in the vicinity, and the persons
who had an interest there as well, employing first a menacing gesture,
and in case that was not sufficient, uttering a single brief, guttural
word of command. A young woman, her hair streaming about her
shoulders, her gown plastered with mud, persisted in hanging about the
smoking ruins of a little house, of which she desired to search the
hot ashes, notwithstanding the prohibition of the sentry. The report
ran that the woman's little baby had been burned with the house. And
all at once, as the Bavarian was roughly thrusting her aside with his
heavy hand, she turned on him, vomiting in his face all her despair
and rage, lashing him with taunts and insults that were redolent of
the gutter, with obscene words which likely afforded her some
consolation in her grief and distress. He could not have understood
her, for he drew back a pace or two, eying her with apprehension.
Three comrades came running up and relieved him of the fury, whom they
led away screaming at the top of her voice. Before the ruins of
another house a man and two little girls, all three so weary and
miserable that they could not stand, lay on the bare ground, sobbing
as if their hearts would break; they had seen their little all go up
in smoke and flame, and had no place to go, no place to lay their
head. But just then a patrol went by, dispersing the knots of idlers,
and the street again assumed its deserted aspect, peopled only by the
stern, sullen sentries, vigilant to see that their iniquitous
instructions were enforced.

"The beasts! the pigs!" Prosper repeated in a stifled voice. "How I
should like, oh! how I should like to kill a few of them!"

Silvine again made him be silent. She shuddered. A dog, shut up in a
carriage-house that the flames had spared and forgotten there for the
last two days, kept up an incessant, continuous howling, in a key so
inexpressibly mournful that a brooding horror seemed to pervade the
low, leaden sky, from which a drizzling rain had now begun to fall.
They were then just abreast of the park of Montivilliers, and there
they witnessed a most horrible sight. Three great covered carts, those
carts that pass along the streets in the early morning before it is
light and collect the city's filth and garbage, stood there in a row,
loaded with corpses; and now, instead of refuse, they were being
filled with dead, stopping wherever there was a body to be loaded,
then going on again with the heavy rumbling of their wheels to make
another stop further on, threading Bazeilles in its every nook and
corner until their hideous cargo overflowed. They were waiting now
upon the public road to be driven to the place of their discharge, the
neighboring potter's field. Feet were seen projecting from the mass
into the air. A head, half-severed from its trunk, hung over the side
of the vehicle. When the three lumbering vans started again, swaying
and jolting over the inequalities of the road, a long, white hand was
hanging outward from one of them; the hand caught upon the wheel, and
little by little the iron tire destroyed it, eating through skin and
flesh clean down to the bones.

By the time they reached Balan the rain had ceased, and Prosper
prevailed on Silvine to eat a bit of the bread he had had the
foresight to bring with them. When they were near Sedan, however, they
were brought to a halt by another Prussian post, and this time the
consequences threatened to be serious; the officer stormed at them,
and even refused to restore their pass, which he declared, in
excellent French, to be a forgery. Acting on his orders some soldiers
had run the donkey and the little cart under a shed. What were they to
do? were they to be forced to abandon their undertaking? Silvine was
in despair, when all at once she thought of M. Dubreuil, Father
Fouchard's relative, with whom she had some slight acquaintance and
whose place, the Hermitage, was only a few hundred yards distant, on
the summit of the eminence that overlooked the faubourg. Perhaps he
might have some influence with the military, seeing that he was a
citizen of the place. As they were allowed their freedom,
conditionally upon abandoning their equipage, she left the donkey and
cart under the shed and bade Prosper accompany her. They ascended the
hill on a run, found the gate of the Hermitage standing wide open, and
on turning into the avenue of secular elms beheld a spectacle that
filled them with amazement.

"The devil!" said Prosper; "there are a lot of fellows who seem to be
taking things easy!"

On the fine-crushed gravel of the terrace, at the bottom of the steps
that led to the house, was a merry company. Arranged in order around a
marble-topped table were a sofa and some easy-chairs in sky-blue
satin, forming a sort of fantastic open-air drawing-room, which must
have been thoroughly soaked by the rain of the preceding day. Two
zouaves, seated in a lounging attitude at either end of the sofa,
seemed to be laughing boisterously. A little infantryman, who occupied
one of the fauteuils, his head bent forward, was apparently holding
his sides to keep them from splitting. Three others were seated in a
negligent pose, their elbows resting on the arms of their chairs,
while a chasseur had his hand extended as if in the act of taking a
glass from the table. They had evidently discovered the location of
the cellar, and were enjoying themselves.

"But how in the world do they happen to be here?" murmured Prosper,
whose stupefaction increased as he drew nearer to them. "Have the
rascals forgotten there are Prussians about?"

But Silvine, whose eyes had dilated far beyond their natural size,
suddenly uttered an exclamation of horror. The soldiers never moved
hand or foot; they were stone dead. The two zouaves were stiff and
cold; they both had had the face shot away, the nose was gone, the
eyes were torn from their sockets. If there appeared to be a laugh on
the face of him who was holding his sides, it was because a bullet had
cut a great furrow through the lower portion of his countenance,
smashing all his teeth. The spectacle was an unimaginably horrible
one, those poor wretches laughing and conversing in their attitude of
manikins, with glassy eyes and open mouths, when Death had laid his
icy hand on them and they were never more to know the warmth and
motion of life. Had they dragged themselves, still living, to that
place, so as to die in one another's company? or was it not rather a
ghastly prank of the Prussians, who had collected the bodies and
placed them in a circle about the table, out of derision for the
traditional gayety of the French nation?

"It's a queer start, though, all the same," muttered Prosper, whose
face was very pale. And casting a look at the other dead who lay
scattered about the avenue, under the trees and on the turf, some
thirty brave fellows, among them Lieutenant Rochas, riddled with
wounds and surrounded still by the shreds of the flag, he added
seriously and with great respect: "There must have been some very
pretty fighting about here! I don't much believe we shall find the
bourgeois for whom you are looking."

Silvine entered the house, the doors and windows of which had been
battered in and afforded admission to the damp, cold air from without.
It was clear enough that there was no one there; the masters must have
taken their departure before the battle. She continued to prosecute
her search, however, and had entered the kitchen, when she gave
utterance to another cry of terror. Beneath the sink were two bodies,
fast locked in each other's arms in mortal embrace, one of them a
zouave, a handsome, brown-bearded man, the other a huge Prussian with
red hair. The teeth of the former were set in the latter's cheek,
their arms, stiff in death, had not relaxed their terrible hug,
binding the pair with such a bond of everlasting hate and fury that
ultimately it was found necessary to bury them in a common grave.

Then Prosper made haste to lead Silvine away, since they could
accomplish nothing in that house where Death had taken up his abode,
and upon their return, despairing, to the post where the donkey and
cart had been detained, it so chanced that they found, in company with
the officer who had treated them so harshly, a general on his way to
visit the battlefield. This gentleman requested to be allowed to see
the pass, which he examined attentively and restored to Silvine; then,
with an expression of compassion on his face, he gave directions that
the poor woman should have her donkey returned to her and be allowed
to go in quest of her husband's body. Stopping only long enough to
thank her benefactor, she and her companion, with the cart trundling
after them, set out for the Fond de Givonne, obedient to the
instructions that were again given them not to pass through Sedan.

After that they bent their course to the left in order to reach the
plateau of Illy by the road that crosses the wood of la Garenne, but
here again they were delayed; twenty times they nearly abandoned all
hope of getting through the wood, so numerous were the obstacles they
encountered. At every step their way was barred by huge trees that had
been laid low by the artillery fire, stretched on the ground like
mighty giants fallen. It was the part of the forest that had suffered
so severely from the cannonade, where the projectiles had plowed their
way through the secular growths as they might have done through a
square of the Old Guard, meeting in either case with the sturdy
resistance of veterans. Everywhere the earth was cumbered with
gigantic trunks, stripped of their leaves and branches, pierced and
mangled, even as mortals might have been, and this wholesale
destruction, the sight of the poor limbs, maimed, slaughtered and
weeping tears of sap, inspired the beholder with the sickening horror
of a human battlefield. There were corpses of men there, too;
soldiers, who had stood fraternally by the trees and fallen with them.
A lieutenant, from whose mouth exuded a bloody froth, had been tearing
up the grass by handfuls in his agony, and his stiffened fingers were
still buried in the ground. A little farther on a captain, prone on
his stomach, had raised his head to vent his anguish in yells and
screams, and death had caught and fixed him in that strange attitude.
Others seemed to be slumbering among the herbage, while a zouave;
whose blue sash had taken fire, had had his hair and beard burned
completely from his head. And several times it happened, as they
traversed those woodland glades, that they had to remove a body from
the path before the donkey could proceed on his way. Presently they
came to a little valley, where the sights of horror abruptly ended.
The battle had evidently turned at this point and expended its force
in another direction, leaving this peaceful nook of nature untouched.
The trees were all uninjured; the carpet of velvety moss was undefiled
by blood. A little brook coursed merrily among the duckweed, the path
that ran along its bank was shaded by tall beeches. A penetrating
charm, a tender peacefulness pervaded the solitude of the lovely spot,
where the living waters gave up their coolness to the air and the
leaves whispered softly in the silence.

Prosper had stopped to let the donkey drink from the stream.

"Ah, how pleasant it is here!" he involuntarily exclaimed in his
delight.

Silvine cast an astonished look about her, as if wondering how it was
that she, too, could feel the influence of the peaceful scene. Why
should there be repose and happiness in that hidden nook, when
surrounding it on every side were sorrow and affliction? She made a
gesture of impatience.

"Quick, quick, let us be gone. Where is the spot? Where did you tell
me you saw Honore?"

And when, at some fifty paces from there, they at last came out on the
plateau of Illy, the level plain unrolled itself in its full extent
before their vision. It was the real, the true battlefield that they
beheld now, the bare fields stretching away to the horizon under the
wan, cheerless sky, whence showers were streaming down continually.
There were no piles of dead visible; all the Prussians must have been
buried by this time, for there was not a single one to be seen among
the corpses of the French that were scattered here and there, along
the roads and in the fields, as the conflict had swayed in one
direction or another. The first that they encountered was a sergeant,
propped against a hedge, a superb man, in the bloom of his youthful
vigor; his face was tranquil and a smile seemed to rest on his parted
lips. A hundred paces further on, however, they beheld another, lying
across the road, who had been mutilated most frightfully, his head
almost entirely shot away, his shoulders covered with great splotches
of brain matter. Then, as they advanced further into the field, after
the single bodies, distributed here and there, they came across little
groups; they saw seven men aligned in single rank, kneeling and with
their muskets at the shoulder in the position of aim, who had been hit
as they were about to fire, while close beside them a subaltern had
also fallen as he was in the act of giving the word of command. After
that the road led along the brink of a little ravine, and there they
beheld a spectacle that aroused their horror to the highest pitch as
they looked down into the chasm, into which an entire company seemed
to have been blown by the fiery blast; it was choked with corpses, a
landslide, an avalanche of maimed and mutilated men, bent and twisted
in an inextricable tangle, who with convulsed fingers had caught at
the yellow clay of the bank to save themselves in their descent,
fruitlessly. And a dusky flock of ravens flew away, croaking noisily,
and swarms of flies, thousands upon thousands of them, attracted by
the odor of fresh blood, were buzzing over the bodies and returning
incessantly.

"Where is the spot?" Silvine asked again.

They were then passing a plowed field that was completely covered with
knapsacks. It was manifest that some regiment had been roughly handled
there, and the men, in a moment of panic, had relieved themselves of
their burdens. The debris of every sort with which the ground was
thickly strewn served to explain the episodes of the conflict. There
was a stubble field where the scattered _kepis_, resembling huge
poppies, shreds of uniforms, epaulettes, and sword-belts told the
story of one of those infrequent hand-to-hand contests in the fierce
artillery duel that had lasted twelve hours. But the objects that were
encountered most frequently, at every step, in fact, were abandoned
weapons, sabers, bayonets, and, more particularly, chassepots; and so
numerous were they that they seemed to have sprouted from the earth, a
harvest that had matured in a single ill-omened day. Porringers and
buckets, also, were scattered along the roads, together with the
heterogeneous contents of knapsacks, rice, brushes, clothing,
cartridges. The fields everywhere presented an uniform scene of
devastation: fences destroyed, trees blighted as if they had been
struck by lightning, the very soil itself torn by shells, compacted
and hardened by the tramp of countless feet, and so maltreated that it
seemed as if seasons must elapse before it could again become
productive. Everything had been drenched and soaked by the rain of the
preceding day; an odor arose and hung in the air persistently, that
odor of the battlefield that smells like fermenting straw and burning
cloth, a mixture of rottenness and gunpowder.

Silvine, who was beginning to weary of those fields of death over
which she had tramped so many long miles, looked about her with
increasing distrust and uneasiness.

"Where is the spot? where is it?"

But Prosper made no answer; he also was becoming uneasy. What
distressed him even more than the sights of suffering among his
fellow-soldiers was the dead horses, the poor brutes that lay
outstretched upon their side, that were met with in great numbers.
Many of them presented a most pitiful spectacle, in all sorts of
harrowing attitudes, with heads torn from the body, with lacerated
flanks from which the entrails protruded. Many were resting on their
back, with their four feet elevated in the air like signals of
distress. The entire extent of the broad plain was dotted with them.
There were some that death had not released after their two days'
agony; at the faintest sound they would raise their head, turning it
eagerly from right to left, then let it fall again upon the ground,
while others lay motionless and momentarily gave utterance to that
shrill scream which one who has heard it can never forget, the lament
of the dying horse, so piercingly mournful that earth and heaven
seemed to shudder in unison with it. And Prosper, with a bleeding
heart, thought of poor Zephyr, and told himself that perhaps he might
see him once again.

Suddenly he became aware that the ground was trembling under the
thundering hoof-beats of a headlong charge. He turned to look, and had
barely time to shout to his companion:

"The horses, the horses! Get behind that wall!"

From the summit of a neighboring eminence a hundred riderless horses,
some of them still bearing the saddle and master's kit, were plunging
down upon them at break-neck speed. They were cavalry mounts that had
lost their masters and remained on the battlefield, and instinct had
counseled them to associate together in a band. They had had neither
hay nor oats for two days, and had cropped the scanty grass from off
the plain, shorn the hedge-rows of leaves and twigs, gnawed the bark
from the trees, and when they felt the pangs of hunger pricking at
their vitals like a keen spur, they started all together at a mad
gallop and charged across the deserted, silent fields, crushing the
dead out of all human shape, extinguishing the last spark of life in
the wounded.

The band came on like a whirlwind; Silvine had only time to pull the
donkey and cart to one side where they would be protected by the wall.

"_Mon Dieu!_ we shall be killed!"

But the horses had taken the obstacle in their stride and were already
scouring away in the distance on the other side with a rumble like
that of a receding thunder-storm; striking into a sunken road they
pursued it as far as the corner of a little wood, behind which they
were lost to sight.

Silvine, when she had brought the cart back into the road, insisted
that Prosper should answer her question before they proceeded further.

"Come, where is it? You told me you could find the spot with your eyes
bandaged; where is it? We have reached the ground."

He, drawing himself up and anxiously scanning the horizon in every
direction, seemed to become more and more perplexed.

"There were three trees, I must find those three trees in the first
place. Ah, _dame_! see here, one's sight is not of the clearest when
he is fighting, and it is no such easy matter to remember afterward
the roads one has passed over!"

Then perceiving people to his left, two men and a woman, it occurred
to him to question them, but the woman ran away at his approach and
the men repulsed him with threatening gestures; and he saw others of
the same stripe, clad in sordid rags, unspeakably filthy, with the
ill-favored faces of thieves and murderers, and they all shunned him,
slinking away among the corpses like jackals or other unclean,
creeping beasts. Then he noticed that wherever these villainous gentry
passed the dead behind them were shoeless, their bare, white feet
exposed, devoid of covering, and he saw how it was: they were the
tramps and thugs who followed the German armies for the sake of
plundering the dead, the detestable crew who followed in the wake of
the invasion in order that they might reap their harvest from the
field of blood. A tall, lean fellow arose in front of him and scurried
away on a run, a sack slung across his shoulder, the watches and small
coins, proceeds of his robberies, jingling in his pockets.

A boy about fourteen or fifteen years old, however, allowed Prosper to
approach him, and when the latter, seeing him to be French, rated him
soundly, the boy spoke up in his defense. What, was it wrong for a
poor fellow to earn his living? He was collecting chassepots, and
received five sous for every chassepot he brought in. He had run away
from his village that morning, having eaten nothing since the day
before, and engaged himself to a contractor from Luxembourg, who had
an arrangement with the Prussians by virtue of which he was to gather
the muskets from the field of battle, the Germans fearing that should
the scattered arms be collected by the peasants of the frontier, they
might be conveyed into Belgium and thence find their way back to
France. And so it was that there was quite a flock of poor devils
hunting for muskets and earning their five sous, rummaging among the
herbage, like the women who may be seen in the meadows, bent nearly
double, gathering dandelions.

"It's a dirty business," Prosper growled.

"What would you have! A chap must eat," the boy replied. "I am not
robbing anyone."

Then, as he did not belong to that neighborhood and could not give the
information that Prosper wanted, he pointed out a little farmhouse not
far away where he had seen some people stirring.

Prosper thanked him and was moving away to rejoin Silvine when he
caught sight of a chassepot, partially buried in a furrow. His first
thought was to say nothing of his discovery; then he turned about
suddenly and shouted, as if he could not help it:

"Hallo! here's one; that will make five sous more for you."

As they approached the farmhouse Silvine noticed other peasants
engaged with spades and picks in digging long trenches; but these men
were under the direct command of Prussian officers, who, with nothing
more formidable than a light walking-stick in their hands, stood by,
stiff and silent, and superintended the work. They had requisitioned
the inhabitants of all the villages of the vicinity in this manner,
fearing that decomposition might be hastened, owing to the rainy
weather. Two cart-loads of dead bodies were standing near, and a gang
of men was unloading them, laying the corpses side by side in close
contiguity to one another, not searching them, not even looking at
their faces, while two men followed after, equipped with great
shovels, and covered the row with a layer of earth, so thin that the
ground had already begun to crack beneath the showers. The work was so
badly and hastily done that before two weeks should have elapsed each
of those fissures would be breathing forth pestilence. Silvine could
not resist the impulse to pause at the brink of the trench and look at
those pitiful corpses as they were brought forward, one after another.
She was possessed by a horrible fear that in each fresh body the men
brought from the cart she might recognize Honore. Was not that he,
that poor wretch whose left eye had been destroyed? No! Perhaps that
one with the fractured jaw was he? The one thing certain to her mind
was that if she did not make haste to find him, wherever he might be
on that boundless, indeterminate plateau, they would pick him up and
bury him in a common grave with the others. She therefore hurried to
rejoin Prosper, who had gone on to the farmhouse with the cart.

"_Mon Dieu!_ how is it that you are not better informed? Where is the
place? Ask the people, question them."

There were none but Prussians at the farm, however, together with a
woman servant and her child, just come in from the woods, where they
had been near perishing of thirst and hunger. The scene was one of
patriarchal simplicity and well-earned repose after the fatigues of
the last few days. Some of the soldiers had hung their uniforms from a
clothes-line and were giving them a thorough brushing, another was
putting a patch on his trousers, with great neatness and dexterity,
while the cook of the detachment had built a great fire in the middle
of the courtyard on which the soup was boiling in a huge pot from
which ascended a most appetizing odor of cabbage and bacon. There is
no denying that the Prussians generally displayed great moderation
toward the inhabitants of the country after the conquest, which was
made the easier to them by the spirit of discipline that prevailed
among the troops. These men might have been taken for peaceable
citizens just come in from their daily avocations, smoking their long
pipes. On a bench beside the door sat a stout, red-bearded man, who
had taken up the servant's child, a little urchin five or six years
old, and was dandling it and talking baby-talk to it in German,
delighted to see the little one laugh at the harsh syllables which it
could not understand.

Prosper, fearing there might be more trouble in store for them, had
turned his back on the soldiers immediately on entering, but those
Prussians were really good fellows; they smiled at the little donkey,
and did not even trouble themselves to ask for a sight of the pass.

Then ensued a wild, aimless scamper across the bosom of the great,
sinister plain. The sun, now sinking rapidly toward the horizon,
showed its face for a moment from between two clouds. Was night to
descend and surprise them in the midst of that vast charnel-house?
Another shower came down; the sun was obscured, the rain and mist
formed an impenetrable barrier about them, so that the country around,
roads, fields, trees, was shut out from their vision. Prosper knew not
where they were; he was lost, and admitted it: his memory was all
astray, he could recall nothing precise of the occurrences of that
terrible day but one before. Behind them, his head lowered almost to
the ground, the little donkey trotted along resignedly, dragging the
cart, with his customary docility. First they took a northerly course,
then they returned toward Sedan. They had lost their bearings and
could not tell in which direction they were going; twice they noticed
that they were passing localities that they had passed before and
retraced their steps. They had doubtless been traveling in a circle,
and there came a moment when in their exhaustion and despair they
stopped at a place where three roads met, without courage to pursue
their search further, the rain pelting down on them, lost and utterly
miserable in the midst of a sea of mud.

But they heard the sound of groans, and hastening to a lonely little
house on their left, found there, in one of the bedrooms, two wounded
men. All the doors were standing open; the two unfortunates had
succeeded in dragging themselves thus far and had thrown themselves on
the beds, and for the two days that they had been alternately
shivering and burning, their wounds having received no attention, they
had seen no one, not a living soul. They were tortured by a consuming
thirst, and the beating of the rain against the window-panes added to
their torment, but they could not move hand or foot. Hence, when they
heard Silvine approaching, the first word that escaped their lips was:
"Drink! Give us to drink!" that longing, pathetic cry, with which the
wounded always pursue the by-passer whenever the sound of footsteps
arouses them from their lethargy. There were many cases similar to
this, where men were overlooked in remote corners, whither they had
fled for refuge. Some were picked up even five and six days later,
when their sores were filled with maggots and their sufferings had
rendered them delirious.

When Silvine had given the wretched men a drink Prosper, who, in the
more sorely injured of the twain, had recognized a comrade of his
regiment, a chasseur d'Afrique, saw that they could not be far from
the ground over which Margueritte's division had charged, inasmuch as
the poor devil had been able to drag himself to that house. All the
information he could get from him, however, was of the vaguest; yes,
it was over that way; you turned to the left, after passing a big
field of potatoes.

Immediately she was in possession of this slender clue Silvine
insisted on starting out again. An inferior officer of the medical
department chanced to pass with a cart just then, collecting the dead;
she hailed him and notified him of the presence of the wounded men,
then, throwing the donkey's bridle across her arm, urged him along
over the muddy road, eager to reach the designated spot, beyond the
big potato field. When they had gone some distance she stopped,
yielding to her despair.

"My God, where is the place! Where can it be?"

Prosper looked about him, taxing his recollection fruitlessly.

"I told you, it is close beside the place where we made our charge. If
only I could find my poor Zephyr--"

And he cast a wistful look on the dead horses that lay around them. It
had been his secret hope, his dearest wish, during the entire time
they had been wandering over the plateau, to see his mount once more,
to bid him a last farewell.

"It ought to be somewhere in this vicinity," he suddenly said. "See!
over there to the left, there are the three trees. You see the
wheel-tracks? And, look, over yonder is a broken-down caisson. We have
found the spot; we are here at last!"

Quivering with emotion, Silvine darted forward and eagerly scanned the
faces of two corpses, two artillerymen who had fallen by the roadside.

"He is not here! He is not here! You cannot have seen aright. Yes,
that is it; some delusion must have cheated your eyes." And little by
little an air-drawn hope, a wild delight crept into her mind. "If you
were mistaken, if he should be alive! And be sure he is alive, since
he is not here!"

Suddenly she gave utterance to a low, smothered cry. She had turned,
and was standing on the very position that the battery had occupied.
The scene was most frightful, the ground torn and fissured as by an
earthquake and covered with wreckage of every description, the dead
lying as they had fallen in every imaginable attitude of horror, arms
bent and twisted, legs doubled under them, heads thrown back, the lips
parted over the white teeth as if their last breath had been expended
in shouting defiance to the foe. A corporal had died with his hands
pressed convulsively to his eyes, unable longer to endure the dread
spectacle. Some gold coins that a lieutenant carried in a belt about
his body had been spilled at the same time as his life-blood, and lay
scattered among his entrails. There were Adolphe, the driver, and the
gunner, Louis, clasped in each other's arms in a fierce embrace, their
sightless orbs starting from their sockets, mated even in death. And
there, at last, was Honore, recumbent on his disabled gun as on a bed
of honor, with the great rent in his side that had let out his young
life, his face, unmutilated and beautiful in its stern anger, still
turned defiantly toward the Prussian batteries.

"Oh! my friend," sobbed Silvine, "my friend, my friend--"

She had fallen to her knees on the damp, cold ground, her hands joined
as if in prayer, in an outburst of frantic grief. The word friend, the
only name by which it occurred to her to address him, told the story
of the tender affection she had lost in that man, so good, so loving,
who had forgiven her, had meant to make her his wife, despite the ugly
past. And now all hope was dead within her bosom, there was nothing
left to make life desirable. She had never loved another; she would
put away her love for him at the bottom of her heart and hold it
sacred there. The rain had ceased; a flock of crows that circled above
the three trees, croaking dismally, affected her like a menace of
evil. Was he to be taken from her again, her cherished dead, whom she
had recovered with such difficulty? She dragged herself along upon her
knees, and with a trembling hand brushed away the hungry flies that
were buzzing about her friend's wide-open eyes.

She caught sight of a bit of blood-stained paper between Honore's
stiffened fingers. It troubled her; she tried to gain possession of
the paper, pulling at it gently, but the dead man would not surrender
it, seemingly tightening his hold on it, guarding it so jealously that
it could not have been taken from him without tearing it in bits. It
was the letter she had written him, that he had always carried next
his heart, and that he had taken from its hiding place in the moment
of his supreme agony, as if to bid her a last farewell. It seemed so
strange, was such a revelation, that he should have died thinking of
her; when she saw what it was a profound delight filled her soul in
the midst of her affliction. Yes, surely, she would leave it with him,
the letter that was so dear to him! she would not take it from him,
since he was so bent on carrying it with him to the grave. Her tears
flowed afresh, but they were beneficent tears this time, and brought
healing and comfort with them. She arose and kissed his hands, kissed
him on the forehead, uttering meanwhile but that one word, which was
in itself a prolonged caress:

"My friend! my friend--"

Meantime the sun was declining; Prosper had gone and taken the
counterpane from the cart, and between them they raised Honore's body,
slowly, reverently, and laid it on the bed-covering, which they had
stretched upon the ground; then, first wrapping him in its folds, they
bore him to the cart. It was threatening to rain again, and they had
started on their return, forming, with the donkey, a sorrowful little
cortege on the broad bosom of the accursed plain, when a deep rumbling
as of thunder was heard in the distance. Prosper turned his head and
had only time to shout:

"The horses! the horses!"

It was the starving, abandoned cavalry mounts making another charge.
They came up this time in a deep mass across a wide, smooth field,
manes and tails streaming in the wind, froth flying from their
nostrils, and the level rays of the fiery setting sun sent the shadow
of the infuriated herd clean across the plateau. Silvine rushed
forward and planted herself before the cart, raising her arms above
her head as if her puny form might have power to check them.
Fortunately the ground fell off just at that point, causing them to
swerve to the left; otherwise they would have crushed donkey, cart,
and all to powder. The earth trembled, and their hoofs sent a volley
of clods and small stones flying through the air, one of which struck
the donkey on the head and wounded him. The last that was seen of them
they were tearing down a ravine.

"It's hunger that starts them off like that," said Prosper. "Poor
beasts!"

Silvine, having bandaged the donkey's ear with her handkerchief, took
him again by the bridle, and the mournful little procession began to
retrace its steps across the plateau, to cover the two leagues that
lay between it and Remilly. Prosper had turned and cast a look on the
dead horses, his heart heavy within him to leave the field without
having seen Zephyr.

A little below the wood of la Garenne, as they were about to turn off
to the left to take the road that they had traversed that morning,
they encountered another German post and were again obliged to exhibit
their pass. And the officer in command, instead of telling them to
avoid Sedan, ordered them to keep straight on their course and pass
through the city; otherwise they would be arrested. This was the most
recent order; it was not for them to question it. Moreover, their
journey would be shortened by a mile and a quarter, which they did not
regret, weary and foot-sore as they were.

When they were within Sedan, however, they found their progress
retarded owing to a singular cause. As soon as they had passed the
fortifications their nostrils were saluted by such a stench, they were
obliged to wade through such a mass of abominable filth, reaching
almost to their knees, as fairly turned their stomachs. The city,
where for three days a hundred thousand men had lived without the
slightest provision being made for decency or cleanliness, had become
a cesspool, a foul sewer, and this devil's broth was thickened by all
sorts of solid matter, rotting hay and straw, stable litter, and the
excreta of animals. The carcasses of the horses, too, that were
knocked on the head, skinned, and cut up in the public squares, in
full view of everyone, had their full share in contaminating the
atmosphere; the entrails lay decaying in the hot sunshine, the bones
and heads were left lying on the pavement, where they attracted swarms
of flies. Pestilence would surely break out in the city unless they
made haste to rid themselves of all that carrion, of that stratum of
impurity, which, in the Rue de Minil, the Rue Maqua, and even on the
Place Turenne, reached a depth of twelve inches. The Prussian
authorities had taken the matter up, and their placards were to be
seen posted about the city, requisitioning the inhabitants,
irrespective of rank, laborers, merchants, bourgeois, magistrates, for
the morrow; they were ordered to assemble, armed with brooms and
shovels, and apply themselves to the task, and were warned that they
would be subjected to heavy penalties if the city was not clean by
night. The President of the Tribunal had taken time by the forelock,
and might even then be seen scraping away at the pavement before his
door and loading the results of his labors upon a wheelbarrow with a
fire-shovel.

Silvine and Prosper, who had selected the Grande Rue as their route
for traversing the city, advanced but slowly through that lake of
malodorous slime. In addition to that the place was in a state of
ferment and agitation that made it necessary for them to pull up
almost at every moment. It was the time that the Prussians had
selected for searching the houses in order to unearth those soldiers,
who, determined that they would not give themselves up, had hidden
themselves away. When, at about two o'clock of the preceding day,
General de Wimpffen had returned from the chateau of Bellevue after
signing the capitulation, the report immediately began to circulate
that the surrendered troops were to be held under guard in the
peninsula of Iges until such time as arrangements could be perfected
for sending them off to Germany. Some few officers had expressed their
intention of taking advantage of that stipulation which accorded them
their liberty conditionally on their signing an agreement not to
serve again during the campaign. Only one general, so it was said,
Bourgain-Desfeuilles, alleging his rheumatism as a reason, had bound
himself by that pledge, and when, that very morning, his carriage had
driven up to the door of the Hotel of the Golden Cross and he had
taken his seat in it to leave the city, the people had hooted and
hissed him unmercifully. The operation of disarming had been going on
since break of day; the manner of its performance was, the troops
defiled by battalions on the Place Turenne, where each man deposited
his musket and bayonet on the pile, like a mountain of old iron, which
kept rising higher and higher, in a corner of the place. There was a
Prussian detachment there under the command of a young officer, a
tall, pale youth, wearing a sky-blue tunic and a cap adorned with
a cock's feather, who superintended operations with a lofty but
soldier-like air, his hands encased in white gloves. A zouave, in a
fit of insubordination, having refused to give up his chassepot, the
officer ordered that he be taken away, adding, in the same even tone
of voice: "And let him be shot forthwith!" The rest of the battalion
continued to defile with a sullen and dejected air, throwing down
their arms mechanically, as if in haste to have the ceremony ended.
But who could estimate the number of those who had disarmed themselves
voluntarily, those whose muskets lay scattered over the country, out
yonder on the field of battle? And how many, too, within the last
twenty-four hours had concealed themselves, flattering themselves with
the hope that they might escape in the confusion that reigned
everywhere! There was scarcely a house but had its crew of those
headstrong idiots who refused to respond when called on, hiding away
in corners and shamming death; the German patrols that were sent
through the city even discovered them stowed away under beds. And as
many, even after they were unearthed, stubbornly persisted in
remaining in the cellars whither they had fled for shelter, the
patrols were obliged to fire on them through the coal-holes. It was a
man-hunt, a brutal and cruel battue, during which the city resounded
with rifle-shots and outlandish oaths.

At the Pont du Meuse they found a throng which the donkey was unable
to penetrate and were brought to a stand-still. The officer commanding
the guard at the bridge, suspecting they were endeavoring to carry on
an illicit traffic in bread or meat, insisted on seeing with his own
eyes what was contained in the cart; drawing aside the covering, he
gazed for an instant on the corpse with a feeling expression, then
motioned them to go their way. Still, however, they were unable to get
forward, the crowd momentarily grew denser and denser; one of the
first detachments of French prisoners was being conducted to the
peninsula of Iges under escort of a Prussian guard. The sorry band
streamed on in long array, the men in their tattered, dirty uniforms
crowding one another, treading on one another's heels, with bowed
heads and sidelong, hang-dog looks, the dejected gait and bearing of
the vanquished to whom had been left not even so much as a knife with
which to cut their throat. The harsh, curt orders of the guard urging
them forward resounded like the cracking of a whip in the silence,
which was unbroken save for the plashing of their coarse shoes through
the semi-liquid mud. Another shower began to fall, and there could be
no more sorrowful sight than that band of disheartened soldiers,
shuffling along through the rain, like beggars and vagabonds on the
public highway.

All at once Prosper, whose heart was beating as if it would burst his
bosom with repressed sorrow and indignation, nudged Silvine and called
her attention to two soldiers who were passing at the moment. He had
recognized Maurice and Jean, trudging along with their companions,
like brothers, side by side. They were near the end of the line, and
as there was now no impediment in their way, he was enabled to keep
them in view as far as the Faubourg of Torcy, as they traversed the
level road which leads to Iges between gardens and truck farms.

"Ah!" murmured Silvine, distressed by what she had just seen, fixing
her eyes on Honore's body, "it may be that the dead have the better
part!"

Night descended while they were at Wadelincourt, and it was pitchy
dark long before they reached Remilly. Father Fouchard was greatly
surprised to behold the body of his son, for he had felt certain that
it would never be recovered. He had been attending to business during
the day, and had completed an excellent bargain; the market price for
officers' chargers was twenty francs, and he had bought three for
forty-five francs.

Back to chapter list of: The Downfall