The Downfall: Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Weiss, in the obscurity of his little room at Bazeilles, was aroused
by a commotion that caused him to leap from his bed. It was the roar
of artillery. Groping about in the darkness he found and lit a candle
to enable him to consult his watch: it was four o'clock, just
beginning to be light. He adjusted his double eyeglass upon his nose
and looked out into the main street of the village, the road that
leads to Douzy, but it was filled with a thick cloud of something that
resembled dust, which made it impossible to distinguish anything. He
passed into the other room, the windows of which commanded a view of
the Meuse and the intervening meadows, and saw that the cause of his
obstructed vision was the morning mist arising from the river. In the
distance, behind the veil of fog, the guns were barking more fiercely
across the stream. All at once a French battery, close at hand, opened
in reply, with such a tremendous crash that the walls of the little
house were shaken.

Weiss's house was situated near the middle of the village, on the
right of the road and not far from the Place de l'Eglise. Its front,
standing back a little from the street, displayed a single story with
three windows, surmounted by an attic; in the rear was a garden of
some extent that sloped gently downward toward the meadows and
commanded a wide panoramic view of the encircling hills, from Remilly
to Frenois. Weiss, with the sense of responsibility of his new
proprietorship strong upon him, had spent the night in burying his
provisions in the cellar and protecting his furniture, as far as
possible, against shot and shell by applying mattresses to the
windows, so that it was nearly two o'clock before he got to bed. His
blood boiled at the idea that the Prussians might come and plunder the
house, for which he had toiled so long and which had as yet afforded
him so little enjoyment.

He heard a voice summoning him from the street.

"I say, Weiss, are you awake?"

He descended and found it was Delaherche, who had passed the night at
his dyehouse, a large brick structure, next door to the accountant's
abode. The operatives had all fled, taking to the woods and making for
the Belgian frontier, and there was no one left to guard the property
but the woman concierge, Francoise Quittard by name, the widow of a
mason; and she also, beside herself with terror, would have gone with
the others had it not been for her ten-year-old boy Charles, who was
so ill with typhoid fever that he could not be moved.

"I say," Delaherche continued, "do you hear that? It is a promising
beginning. Our best course is to get back to Sedan as soon as
possible."

Weiss's promise to his wife, that he would leave Bazeilles at the
first sign of danger, had been given in perfect good faith, and he had
fully intended to keep it; but as yet there was only an artillery duel
at long range, and the aim could not be accurate enough to do much
damage in the uncertain, misty light of early morning.

"Wait a bit, confound it!" he replied. "There is no hurry."

Delaherche, too, was curious to see what would happen; his curiosity
made him valiant. He had been so interested in the preparations for
defending the place that he had not slept a wink. General Lebrun,
commanding the 12th corps, had received notice that he would be
attacked at daybreak, and had kept his men occupied during the night
in strengthening the defenses of Bazeilles, which he had instructions
to hold in spite of everything. Barricades had been thrown up across
the Douzy road, and all the smaller streets; small parties of soldiers
had been thrown into the houses by way of garrison; every narrow lane,
every garden had become a fortress, and since three o'clock the
troops, awakened from their slumbers without beat of drum or call of
bugle in the inky blackness, had been at their posts, their chassepots
freshly greased and cartridge boxes filled with the obligatory ninety
rounds of ammunition. It followed that when the enemy opened their
fire no one was taken unprepared, and the French batteries, posted to
the rear between Balan and Bazeilles, immediately commenced to answer,
rather with the idea of showing they were awake than for any other
purpose, for in the dense fog that enveloped everything the practice
was of the wildest.

"The dyehouse will be well defended," said Delaherche. "I have a whole
section in it. Come and see."

It was true; forty and odd men of the infanterie de marine had been
posted there under the command of a lieutenant, a tall, light-haired
young fellow, scarcely more than a boy, but with an expression of
energy and determination on his face. His men had already taken full
possession of the building, some of them being engaged in loopholing
the shutters of the ground-floor windows that commanded the street,
while others, in the courtyard that overlooked the meadows in the
rear, were breaching the wall for musketry. It was in this courtyard
that Delaherche and Weiss found the young officer, straining his eyes
to discover what was hidden behind the impenetrable mist.

"Confound this fog!" he murmured. "We can't fight when we don't know
where the enemy is." Presently he asked, with no apparent change of
voice or manner: "What day of the week is this?"

"Thursday," Weiss replied.

"Thursday, that's so. Hanged if I don't think the world might come to
an end and we not know it!"

But just at that moment the uninterrupted roar of the artillery was
diversified by a brisk rattle of musketry proceeding from the edge of
the meadows, at a distance of two or three hundred yards. And at the
same time there was a transformation, as rapid and startling, almost,
as the stage effect in a fairy spectacle: the sun rose, the
exhalations of the Meuse were whirled away like bits of finest,
filmiest gauze, and the blue sky was revealed, in serene limpidity,
undimmed by a single cloud. It was the exquisite morning of a
faultless summer day.

"Ah!" exclaimed Delaherche, "they are crossing the railway bridge.
See, they are making their way along the track. How stupid of us not
to have blown up the bridge!"

The officer's face bore an expression of dumb rage. The mines had been
prepared and charged, he averred, but they had fought four hours the
day before to regain possession of the bridge and then had forgot to
touch them off.

"It is just our luck," he curtly said.

Weiss was silent, watching the course of events and endeavoring to
form some idea of the true state of affairs. The position of the
French in Bazeilles was a very strong one. The village commanded the
meadows, and was bisected by the Douzy road, which, turning sharp to
the left, passed under the walls of the Chateau, while another road,
the one that led to the railway bridge, bent around to the right and
forked at the Place de l'Eglise. There was no cover for any force
advancing by these two approaches; the Germans would be obliged to
traverse the meadows and the wide, bare level that lay between the
outskirts of the village and the Meuse and the railway. Their prudence
in avoiding unnecessary risks was notorious, hence it seemed
improbable that the real attack would come from that quarter. They
kept coming across the bridge, however, in deep masses, and that
notwithstanding the slaughter that a battery of mitrailleuses, posted
at the edge of the village, effected in their ranks, and all at once
those who had crossed rushed forward in open order, under cover of the
straggling willows, the columns were re-formed and began to advance.
It was from there that the musketry fire, which was growing hotter,
had proceeded.

"Oh, those are Bavarians," Weiss remarked. "I recognize them by the
braid on their helmets."

But there were other columns, moving to the right and partially
concealed by the railway embankment, whose object, it seemed to him,
was to gain the cover of some trees in the distance, whence they might
descend and take Bazeilles in flank and rear. Should they succeed in
effecting a lodgment in the park of Montivilliers, the village might
become untenable. This was no more than a vague, half-formed idea,
that flitted through his mind for a moment and faded as rapidly as it
had come; the attack in front was becoming more determined, and his
every faculty was concentrated on the struggle that was assuming, with
every moment, larger dimensions.

Suddenly he turned his head and looked away to the north, over the
city of Sedan, where the heights of Floing were visible in the
distance. A battery had just commenced firing from that quarter; the
smoke rose in the bright sunshine in little curls and wreaths, and the
reports came to his ears very distinctly. It was in the neighborhood
of five o'clock.

"Well, well," he murmured, "they are all going to have a hand in the
business, it seems."

The lieutenant of marines, who had turned his eyes in the same
direction, spoke up confidently:

"Oh! Bazeilles is the key of the position. This is the spot where the
battle will be won or lost."

"Do you think so?" Weiss exclaimed.

"There is not the slightest doubt of it. It is certainly the marshal's
opinion, for he was here last night and told us that we must hold the
village if it cost the life of every man of us."

Weiss slowly shook his head, and swept the horizon with a glance; then
in a low, faltering voice, as if speaking to himself, he said:

"No--no! I am sure that is a mistake. I fear the danger lies in
another quarter--where, or what it is, I dare not say--"

He said no more. He simply opened wide his arms, like the jaws of a
vise, then, turning to the north, brought his hands together, as if
the vise had closed suddenly upon some object there.

This was the fear that had filled his mind for the last twenty-four
hours, for he was thoroughly acquainted with the country and had
watched narrowly every movement of the troops during the previous day,
and now, again, while the broad valley before him lay basking in the
radiant sunlight, his gaze reverted to the hills of the left bank,
where, for the space of all one day and all one night, his eyes had
beheld the black swarm of the Prussian hosts moving steadily onward to
some appointed end. A battery had opened fire from Remilly, over to
the left, but the one from which the shells were now beginning to
reach the French position was posted at Pont-Maugis, on the river
bank. He adjusted his binocle by folding the glasses over, the one
upon the other, to lengthen its range and enable him to discern what
was hidden among the recesses of the wooded slopes, but could
distinguish nothing save the white smoke-wreaths that rose momentarily
on the tranquil air and floated lazily away over the crests. That
human torrent that he had seen so lately streaming over those hills,
where was it now--where were massed those innumerable hosts? At last,
at the corner of a pine wood, above Noyers and Frenois, he succeeded
in making out a little cluster of mounted men in uniform--some general,
doubtless, and his staff. And off there to the west the Meuse curved
in a great loop, and in that direction lay their sole line of retreat
on Mezieres, a narrow road that traversed the pass of Saint-Albert,
between that loop and the dark forest of Ardennes. While
reconnoitering the day before he had met a general officer who, he
afterward learned, was Ducrot, commanding the 1st corps, on a by-road
in the valley of Givonne, and had made bold to call his attention to
the importance of that, their only line of retreat. If the army did
not retire at once by that road while it was still open to them, if it
waited until the Prussians should have crossed the Meuse at Donchery
and come up in force to occupy the pass, it would be hemmed in and
driven back on the Belgian frontier. As early even as the evening of
that day the movement would have been too late. It was asserted that
the uhlans had possession of the bridge, another bridge that had not
been destroyed, for the reason, this time, that some one had neglected
to provide the necessary powder. And Weiss sorrowfully acknowledged to
himself that the human torrent, the invading horde, could now be
nowhere else than on the plain of Donchery, invisible to him, pressing
onward to occupy Saint-Albert pass, pushing forward its advanced
guards to Saint-Menges and Floing, whither, the day previous, he had
conducted Jean and Maurice. In the brilliant sunshine the steeple of
Floing church appeared like a slender needle of dazzling whiteness.

And off to the eastward the other arm of the powerful vise was slowly
closing in on them. Casting his eyes to the north, where there was a
stretch of level ground between the plateaus of Illy and of Floing, he
could make out the line of battle of the 7th corps, feebly supported
by the 5th, which was posted in reserve under the ramparts of the
city; but he could not discern what was occurring to the east, along
the valley of the Givonne, where the 1st corps was stationed, its line
stretching from the wood of la Garenne to Daigny village. Now,
however, the guns were beginning to thunder in that direction also;
the conflict seemed to be raging in Chevalier's wood, in front of
Daigny. His uneasiness was owing to reports that had been brought in
by peasants the day previous, that the Prussian advance had reached
Francheval, so that the movement which was being conducted at the
west, by way of Donchery, was also in process of execution at the
east, by way of Francheval, and the two jaws of the vise would come
together up there at the north, near the Calvary of Illy, unless the
two-fold flanking movement could be promptly checked. He knew nothing
of tactics or strategy, had nothing but his common sense to guide him;
but he looked with fear and trembling on that great triangle that had
the Meuse for one of its sides, and for the other two the 7th and 1st
corps on the north and east respectively, while the extreme angle at
the south was occupied by the 12th at Bazeilles--all the three corps
facing outward on the periphery of a semicircle, awaiting the
appearance of an enemy who was to deliver his attack at some one
point, where or when no one could say, but who, instead, fell on them
from every direction at once. And at the very center of all, as at the
bottom of a pit, lay the city of Sedan, her ramparts furnished with
antiquated guns, destitute of ammunition and provisions.

"Understand," said Weiss, with a repetition of his previous gesture,
extending his arms and bringing his hands slowly together, "that is
how it will be unless your generals keep their eyes open. The movement
at Bazeilles is only a feint--"

But his explanation was confused and unintelligible to the lieutenant,
who knew nothing of the country, and the young man shrugged his
shoulders with an expression of impatience and disdain for the
bourgeois in spectacles and frock coat who presumed to set his opinion
against the marshal's. Irritated to hear Weiss reiterate his view that
the attack on Bazeilles was intended only to mask other and more
important movements, he finally shouted:

"Hold your tongue, will you! We shall drive them all into the Meuse,
those Bavarian friends of yours, and that is all they will get by
their precious feint."

While they were talking the enemy's skirmishers seemed to have come up
closer; every now and then their bullets were heard thudding against
the dyehouse wall, and our men, kneeling behind the low parapet of the
courtyard, were beginning to reply. Every second the report of a
chassepot rang out, sharp and clear, upon the air.

"Oh, of course! drive them into the Meuse, by all means," muttered
Weiss, "and while we are about it we might as well ride them down and
regain possession of the Carignan road." Then addressing himself to
Delaherche, who had stationed himself behind the pump where he might
be out of the way of the bullets: "All the same, it would have been
their wisest course to make tracks last night for Mezieres, and if I
were in their place I would much rather be there than here. As it is,
however, they have got to show fight, since retreat is out of the
question now."

"Are you coming?" asked Delaherche, who, notwithstanding his eager
curiosity, was beginning to look pale in the face. "We shall be unable
to get into the city if we remain here longer."

"Yes, in one minute I will be with you."

In spite of the danger that attended the movement he raised himself on
tiptoe, possessed by an irresistible desire to see how things were
shaping. On the right lay the meadows that had been flooded by order
of the governor for the protection of the city, now a broad lake
stretching from Torcy to Balan, its unruffled bosom glimmering in the
morning sunlight with a delicate azure luster. The water did not
extend as far as Bazeilles, however, and the Prussians had worked
their way forward across the fields, availing themselves of the
shelter of every ditch, of every little shrub and tree. They were now
distant some five hundred yards, and Weiss was impressed by the
caution with which they moved, the dogged resolution and patience with
which they advanced, gaining ground inch by inch and exposing
themselves as little as possible. They had a powerful artillery fire,
moreover, to sustain them; the pure, cool air was vocal with the
shrieking of shells. Raising his eyes he saw that the Pont-Maugis
battery was not the only one that was playing on Bazeilles; two
others, posted half way up the hill of Liry, had opened fire, and
their projectiles not only reached the village, but swept the naked
plain of la Moncelle beyond, where the reserves of the 12th corps
were, and even the wooded slopes of Daigny, held by a division of the
1st corps, were not beyond their range. There was not a summit,
moreover, on the left bank of the stream that was not tipped with
flame. The guns seemed to spring spontaneously from the soil, like
some noxious growth; it was a zone of fire that grew hotter and
fiercer every moment; there were batteries at Noyers shelling Balan,
batteries at Wadelincourt shelling Sedan, and at Frenois, down under
la Marfee, there was a battery whose guns, heavier than the rest, sent
their missiles hurtling over the city to burst among the troops of the
7th corps on the plateau of Floing. Those hills that he had always
loved so well, that he had supposed were planted there solely to
delight the eye, encircling with their verdurous slopes the pretty,
peaceful valley that lay beneath, were now become a gigantic, frowning
fortress, vomiting ruin and destruction on the feeble defenses of
Sedan, and Weiss looked on them with terror and detestation. Why had
steps not been taken to defend them the day before, if their leaders
had suspected this, or why, rather, had they insisted on holding the
position?

A sound of falling plaster caused him to raise his head; a shot had
grazed his house, the front of which was visible to him above the
party wall. It angered him excessively, and he growled:

"Are they going to knock it about my ears, the brigands!"

Then close behind him there was a little dull, strange sound that he
had never heard before, and turning quickly he saw a soldier, shot
through the heart, in the act of falling backward. There was a brief
convulsive movement of the legs; the youthful, tranquil expression of
the face remained, stamped there unalterably by the hand of death. It
was the first casualty, and the accountant was startled by the crash
of the musket falling and rebounding from the stone pavement of the
courtyard.

"Ah, I have seen enough, I am going," stammered Delaherche. "Come, if
you are coming; if not, I shall go without you."

The lieutenant, whom their presence made uneasy, spoke up:

"It will certainly be best for you to go, gentlemen. The enemy may
attempt to carry the place at any moment."

Then at last, casting a parting glance at the meadows, where the
Bavarians were still gaining ground, Weiss gave in and followed
Delaherche, but when they had gained the street he insisted upon going
to see if the fastening of his door was secure, and when he came back
to his companion there was a fresh spectacle, which brought them both
to a halt.

At the end of the street, some three hundred yards from where they
stood, a strong Bavarian column had debouched from the Douzy road and
was charging up the Place de l'Eglise. The square was held by a
regiment of sailor-boys, who appeared to slacken their fire for a
moment as if with the intention of drawing their assailants on; then,
when the close-massed column was directly opposite their front, a most
surprising maneuver was swiftly executed: the men abandoned their
formation, some of them stepping from the ranks and flattening
themselves against the house fronts, others casting themselves prone
upon the ground, and down the vacant space thus suddenly formed the
mitrailleuses that had been placed in battery at the farther end
poured a perfect hailstorm of bullets. The column disappeared as if it
had been swept bodily from off the face of the earth. The recumbent
men sprang to their feet with a bound and charged the scattered
Bavarians with the bayonet, driving them and making the rout complete.
Twice the maneuver was repeated, each time with the same success. Two
women, unwilling to abandon their home, a small house at the corner of
an intersecting lane, were sitting at their window; they laughed
approvingly and clapped their hands, apparently glad to have an
opportunity to behold such a spectacle.

"There, confound it!" Weiss suddenly said, "I forgot to lock the
cellar door! I must go back. Wait for me; I won't be a minute."

There was no indication that the enemy contemplated a renewal of
their attack, and Delaherche, whose curiosity was reviving after
the shock it had sustained, was less eager to get away. He had halted
in front of his dyehouse and was conversing with the concierge, who
had come for a moment to the door of the room she occupied in the
_rez-de-chaussee_.

"My poor Francoise, you had better come along with us. A lone woman
among such dreadful sights--I can't bear to think of it!"

She raised her trembling hands. "Ah, sir, I would have gone when the
others went, indeed I would, if it had not been for my poor sick boy.
Come in, sir, and look at him."

He did not enter, but glanced into the apartment from the threshold,
and shook his head sorrowfully at sight of the little fellow in his
clean, white bed, his face exhibiting the scarlet hue of the disease,
and his glassy, burning eyes bent wistfully on his mother.

"But why can't you take him with you?" he urged. "I will find quarters
for you in Sedan. Wrap him up warmly in a blanket, and come along with
us."

"Oh, no, sir, I cannot. The doctor told me it would kill him. If only
his poor father were alive! but we two are all that are left, and we
must live for each other. And then, perhaps the Prussians will be
merciful; perhaps they won't harm a lone woman and a sick boy."

Just then Weiss reappeared, having secured his premises to his
satisfaction. "There, I think it will trouble them some to get in now.
Come on! And it is not going to be a very pleasant journey, either;
keep close to the houses, unless you want to come to grief."

There were indications, indeed, that the enemy were making ready for
another assault. The infantry fire was spluttering away more furiously
than ever, and the screaming of the shells was incessant. Two had
already fallen in the street a hundred yards away, and a third had
imbedded itself, without bursting, in the soft ground of the adjacent
garden.

"Ah, here is Francoise," continued the accountant. "I must have a look
at your little Charles. Come, come, you have no cause for alarm; he
will be all right in a couple of days. Keep your courage up, and the
first thing you do go inside, and don't put your nose outside the
door." And the two men at last started to go.

"_Au revoir_, Francoise."

"_Au revoir_, sirs."

And as they spoke, there came an appalling crash. It was a shell,
which, having first wrecked the chimney of Weiss's house, fell upon
the sidewalk, where it exploded with such terrific force as to break
every window in the vicinity. At first it was impossible to
distinguish anything in the dense cloud of dust and smoke that rose in
the air, but presently this drifted away, disclosing the ruined facade
of the dyehouse, and there, stretched across the threshold, Francoise,
a corpse, horribly torn and mangled, her skull crushed in, a fearful
spectacle.

Weiss sprang to her side. Language failed him; he could only express
his feelings by oaths and imprecations.

"_Nom de Dieu!_ _Nom de Dieu!_"

Yes, she was dead. He had stooped to feel her pulse, and as he arose
he saw before him the scarlet face of little Charles, who had raised
himself in bed to look at his mother. He spoke no word, he uttered no
cry; he gazed with blazing, tearless eyes, distended as if they would
start from their sockets, upon the shapeless mass that was strange,
unknown to him; and nothing more.

Weiss found words at last: "_Nom de Dieu!_ they have taken to killing
women!"

He had risen to his feet; he shook his fist at the Bavarians, whose
braid-trimmed helmets were commencing to appear again in the direction
of the church. The chimney, in falling, had crushed a great hole in
the roof of his house, and the sight of the havoc made him furious.

"Dirty loafers! You murder women, you have destroyed my house. No, no!
I will not go now, I cannot; I shall stay here."

He darted away and came running back with the dead soldier's rifle and
ammunition. He was accustomed to carry a pair of spectacles on his
person for use on occasions of emergency, when he wished to see with
great distinctness, but did not wear them habitually out of respect
for the wishes of his young wife. He now impatiently tore off his
double eyeglass and substituted the spectacles, and the big, burly
bourgeois, his overcoat flapping about his legs, his honest, kindly,
round face ablaze with wrath, who would have been ridiculous had he
not been so superbly heroic, proceeded to open fire, peppering away at
the Bavarians at the bottom of the street. It was in his blood, he
said; he had been hankering for something of the kind ever since the
days of his boyhood, down there in Alsace, when he had been told all
those tales of 1814. "Ah! you dirty loafers! you dirty loafers!" And
he kept firing away with such eagerness that, finally, the barrel of
his musket became so hot it burned his fingers.

The assault was made with great vigor and determination. There was no
longer any sound of musketry in the direction of the meadows. The
Bavarians had gained possession of a narrow stream, fringed with
willows and poplars, and were making preparations for storming the
houses, or rather fortresses, in the Place de l'Eglise. Their
skirmishers had fallen back with the same caution that characterized
their advance, and the wide grassy plain, dotted here and there with a
black form where some poor fellow had laid down his life, lay spread
in the mellow, slumbrous sunshine like a great cloth of gold. The
lieutenant, knowing that the street was now to be the scene of action,
had evacuated the courtyard of the dyehouse, leaving there only one
man as guard. He rapidly posted his men along the sidewalk with
instructions, should the enemy carry the position, to withdraw into
the building, barricade the first floor, and defend themselves there
as long as they had a cartridge left. The men fired at will, lying
prone upon the ground, and sheltering themselves as best they might
behind posts and every little projection of the walls, and the storm
of lead, interspersed with tongues of flame and puffs of smoke, that
tore through that broad, deserted, sunny avenue was like a downpour of
hail beaten level by the fierce blast of winter. A woman was seen to
cross the roadway, running with wild, uncertain steps, and she escaped
uninjured. Next, an old man, a peasant, in his blouse, who would not
be satisfied until he saw his worthless nag stabled, received a bullet
square in his forehead, and the violence of the impact was such that
it hurled him into the middle of the street. A shell had gone crashing
through the roof of the church; two others fell and set fire to
houses, which burned with a pale flame in the intense daylight, with a
loud snapping and crackling of their timbers. And that poor woman, who
lay crushed and bleeding in the doorway of the house where her sick
boy was, that old man with a bullet in his brain, all that work of
ruin and devastation, maddened the few inhabitants who had chosen to
end their days in their native village rather than seek safety in
Belgium. Other bourgeois, and workingmen as well, the neatly attired
citizen alongside the man in overalls, had possessed themselves of the
weapons of dead soldiers, and were in the street defending their
firesides or firing vengefully from the windows.

"Ah!" suddenly said Weiss, "the scoundrels have got around to our
rear. I saw them sneaking along the railroad track. Hark! don't you
hear them off there to the left?"

The heavy fire of musketry that was now audible behind the park of
Montivilliers, the trees of which overhung the road, made it evident
that something of importance was occurring in that direction. Should
the enemy gain possession of the park Bazeilles would be at their
mercy, but the briskness of the firing was in itself proof that the
general commanding the 12th corps had anticipated the movement and
that the position was adequately defended.

"Look out, there, you blockhead!" exclaimed the lieutenant, violently
forcing Weiss up against the wall; "do you want to get yourself blown
to pieces?"

He could not help laughing a little at the queer figure of the big
gentleman in spectacles, but his bravery had inspired him with a very
genuine feeling of respect, so, when his practiced ear detected a
shell coming their way, he had acted the part of a friend and placed
the civilian in a safer position. The missile landed some ten paces
from where they were and exploded, covering them both with earth and
debris. The citizen kept his feet and received not so much as a
scratch, while the officer had both legs broken.

"It is well!" was all he said; "they have sent me my reckoning!"

He caused his men to take him across the sidewalk and place him with
his back to the wall, near where the dead woman lay, stretched across
her doorstep. His boyish face had lost nothing of its energy and
determination.

"It don't matter, my children; listen to what I say. Don't fire too
hurriedly; take your time. When the time comes for you to charge, I
will tell you."

And he continued to command them still, with head erect, watchful of
the movements of the distant enemy. Another house was burning,
directly across the street. The crash and rattle of musketry, the roar
of bursting shells, rent the air, thick with dust and sulphurous
smoke. Men dropped at the corner of every lane and alley; corpses
scattered here and there upon the pavement, singly or in little
groups, made splotches of dark color, hideously splashed with red. And
over the doomed village a frightful uproar rose and swelled, the
vindictive shouts of thousands, devoting to destruction a few hundred
brave men, resolute to die.

Then Delaherche, who all this time had been frantically shouting to
Weiss without intermission, addressed him one last appeal:

"You won't come? Very well! then I shall leave you to your fate.
Adieu!"

It was seven o'clock, and he had delayed his departure too long. So
long as the houses were there to afford him shelter he took advantage
of every doorway, of every bit of projecting wall, shrinking at every
volley into cavities that were ridiculously small in comparison with
his bulk. He turned and twisted in and out with the sinuous dexterity
of the serpent; he would never have supposed that there was so much of
his youthful agility left in him. When he reached the end of the
village, however, and had to make his way for a space of some three
hundred yards along the deserted, empty road, swept by the batteries
on Liry hill, although the perspiration was streaming from his face
and body, he shivered and his teeth chattered. For a minute or so he
advanced cautiously along the bed of a dry ditch, bent almost double,
then, suddenly forsaking the protecting shelter, burst into the open
and ran for it with might and main, wildly, aimlessly, his ears
ringing with detonations that sounded to him like thunder-claps. His
eyes burned like coals of fire; it seemed to him that he was wrapt in
flame. It was an eternity of torture. Then he suddenly caught sight of
a little house to his left, and he rushed for the friendly refuge,
gained it, with a sensation as if an immense load had been lifted from
his breast. The place was tenanted, there were men and horses there.
At first he could distinguish nothing. What he beheld subsequently
filled him with amazement.

Was not that the Emperor, attended by his brilliant staff? He
hesitated, although for the last two days he had been boasting of his
acquaintance with him, then stood staring, open-mouthed. It was indeed
Napoleon III.; he appeared larger, somehow, and more imposing on
horseback, and his mustache was so stiffly waxed, there was such a
brilliant color on his cheeks, that Delaherche saw at once he had been
"made up" and painted like an actor. He had had recourse to cosmetics
to conceal from his army the ravages that anxiety and illness had
wrought in his countenance, the ghastly pallor of his face, his
pinched nose, his dull, sunken eyes, and having been notified at five
o'clock that there was fighting at Bazeilles, had come forth to see,
sadly and silently, like a phantom with rouged cheeks.

There was a brick-kiln near by, behind which there was safety from the
rain of bullets that kept pattering incessantly on its other front and
the shells that burst at every second on the road. The mounted group
had halted.

"Sire," someone murmured, "you are in danger--"

But the Emperor turned and motioned to his staff to take refuge in the
narrow road that skirted the kiln, where men and horses would be
sheltered from the fire.

"Really, Sire, this is madness. Sire, we entreat you--"

His only answer was to repeat his gesture; probably he thought that
the appearance of a group of brilliant uniforms on that deserted road
would draw the fire of the batteries on the left bank. Entirely
unattended he rode forward into the midst of the storm of shot and
shell, calmly, unhurriedly, with his unvarying air of resigned
indifference, the air of one who goes to meet his appointed fate.
Could it be that he heard behind him the implacable voice that was
urging him onward, that voice from Paris: "March! march! die the
hero's death on the piled corpses of thy countrymen, let the whole
world look on in awe-struck admiration, so that thy son may reign!"
--could that be what he heard? He rode forward, controlling his
charger to a slow walk. For the space of a hundred yards he thus rode
forward, then halted, awaiting the death he had come there to seek.
The bullets sang in concert with a music like the fierce autumnal
blast; a shell burst in front of him and covered him with earth. He
maintained his attitude of patient waiting. His steed, with distended
eyes and quivering frame, instinctively recoiled before the grim
presence who was so close at hand and yet refused to smite horse or
rider. At last the trying experience came to an end, and the Emperor,
with his stoic fatalism, understanding that his time was not yet come,
tranquilly retraced his steps, as if his only object had been to
reconnoiter the position of the German batteries.

"What courage, Sire! We beseech you, do not expose yourself further--"

But, unmindful of their solicitations, he beckoned to his staff to
follow him, not offering at present to consult their safety more than
he did his own, and turned his horse's head toward la Moncelle,
quitting the road and taking the abandoned fields of la Ripaille. A
captain was mortally wounded, two horses were killed. As he passed
along the line of the 12th corps, appearing and vanishing like a
specter, the men eyed him with curiosity, but did not cheer.

To all these events had Delaherche been witness, and now he trembled
at the thought that he, too, as soon as he should have left the brick
works, would have to run the gauntlet of those terrible projectiles.
He lingered, listening to the conversation of some dismounted officers
who had remained there.

"I tell you he was killed on the spot; cut in two by a shell."

"You are wrong, I saw him carried off the field. His wound was not
severe; a splinter struck him on the hip."

"What time was it?"

"Why, about an hour ago--say half-past six. It was up there around la
Moncelle, in a sunken road."

"I know he is dead."

"But I tell you he is not! He even sat his horse for a moment after he
was hit, then he fainted and they carried him into a cottage to attend
to his wound."

"And then returned to Sedan?"

"Certainly; he is in Sedan now."

Of whom could they be speaking? Delaherche quickly learned that it was
of Marshal MacMahon, who had been wounded while paying a visit of
inspection to his advanced posts. The marshal wounded! it was "just
our luck," as the lieutenant of marines had put it. He was reflecting
on what the consequences of the mishap were likely to be when an
_estafette_ dashed by at top speed, shouting to a comrade, whom he
recognized:

"General Ducrot is made commander-in-chief! The army is ordered to
concentrate at Illy in order to retreat on Mezieres!"

The courier was already far away, galloping into Bazeilles under the
constantly increasing fire, when Delaherche, startled by the strange
tidings that came to him in such quick succession and not relishing
the prospect of being involved in the confusion of the retreating
troops, plucked up courage and started on a run for Balan, whence he
regained Sedan without much difficulty.

The _estafette_ tore through Bazeilles on a gallop, disseminating the
news, hunting up the commanders to give them their instructions, and
as he sped swiftly on the intelligence spread among the troops:
Marshal MacMahon wounded, General Ducrot in command, the army falling
back on Illy!

"What is that they are saying?" cried Weiss, whose face by this time
was grimy with powder. "Retreat on Mezieres at this late hour! but it
is absurd, they will never get through!"

And his conscience pricked him, he repented bitterly having given that
counsel the day before to that very general who was now invested with
the supreme command. Yes, certainly, that was yesterday the best,
the only plan, to retreat, without loss of a minute's time, by the
Saint-Albert pass, but now the way could be no longer open to them,
the black swarms of Prussians had certainly anticipated them and were
on the plain of Donchery. There were two courses left for them to
pursue, both desperate; and the most promising, as well as the
bravest, of them was to drive the Bavarians into the Meuse, and cut
their way through and regain possession of the Carignan road.

Weiss, whose spectacles were constantly slipping down upon his nose,
adjusted them nervously and proceeded to explain matters to the
lieutenant, who was still seated against the wall with his two stumps
of legs, very pale and slowly bleeding to death.

"Lieutenant, I assure you I am right. Tell your men to stand their
ground. You can see for yourself that we are doing well. One more
effort like the last, and we shall drive them into the river."

It was true that the Bavarians' second attack had been repulsed. The
mitrailleuses had again swept the Place de l'Eglise, the heaps of
corpses in the square resembled barricades, and our troops, emerging
from every cross street, had driven the enemy at the point of the
bayonet through the meadows toward the river in headlong flight, which
might easily have been converted into a general rout had there been
fresh troops to support the sailor-boys, who had suffered severely and
were by this time much distressed. And in Montivilliers Park, again,
the firing did not seem to advance, which was a sign that in that
quarter, also, reinforcements, could they have been had, would have
cleared the wood.

"Order your men to charge them with the bayonet, lieutenant."

The waxen pallor of death was on the poor boy-officer's face; yet he
had strength to murmur in feeble accents:

"You hear, my children; give them the bayonet!"

It was his last utterance; his spirit passed, his ingenuous, resolute
face and his wide open eyes still turned on the battle. The flies
already were beginning to buzz about Francoise's head and settle
there, while lying on his bed little Charles, in an access of
delirium, was calling on his mother in pitiful, beseeching tones to
give him something to quench his thirst.

"Mother, mother, awake; get up--I am thirsty, I am so thirsty."

But the instructions of the new chief were imperative, and the
officers, vexed and grieved to see the successes they had achieved
thus rendered nugatory, had nothing for it but to give orders for the
retreat. It was plain that the commander-in-chief, possessed by a
haunting dread of the enemy's turning movement, was determined to
sacrifice everything in order to escape from the toils. The Place de
l'Eglise was evacuated, the troops fell back from street to street;
soon the broad avenue was emptied of its defenders. Women shrieked and
sobbed, men swore and shook their fists at the retiring troops,
furious to see themselves abandoned thus. Many shut themselves in
their houses, resolved to die in their defense.

"Well, _I_ am not going to give up the ship!" shouted Weiss, beside
himself with rage. "No! I will leave my skin here first. Let them come
on! let them come and smash my furniture and drink my wine!"

Wrath filled his mind to the exclusion of all else, a wild, fierce
desire to fight, to kill, at the thought that the hated foreigner
should enter his house, sit in his chair, drink from his glass. It
wrought a change in all his nature; everything that went to make up
his daily life--wife, business, the methodical prudence of the small
bourgeois--seemed suddenly to become unstable and drift away from him.
And he shut himself up in his house and barricaded it, he paced the
empty apartments with the restless impatience of a caged wild beast,
going from room to room to make sure that all the doors and windows
were securely fastened. He counted his cartridges and found he had
forty left, then, as he was about to give a final look to the meadows
to see whether any attack was to be apprehended from that quarter, the
sight of the hills on the left bank arrested his attention for a
moment. The smoke-wreaths indicated distinctly the position of the
Prussian batteries, and at the corner of a little wood on la Marfee,
over the powerful battery at Frenois, he again beheld the group of
uniforms, more numerous than before, and so distinct in the bright
sunlight that by supplementing his spectacles with his binocle he
could make out the gold of their epaulettes and helmets.

"You dirty scoundrels, you dirty scoundrels!" he twice repeated,
extending his clenched fist in impotent menace.

Those who were up there on la Marfee were King William and his staff.
As early as seven o'clock he had ridden up from Vendresse, where he
had had quarters for the night, and now was up there on the heights,
out of reach of danger, while at his feet lay the valley of the Meuse
and the vast panorama of the field of battle. Far as the eye could
reach, from north to south, the bird's-eye view extended, and standing
on the summit of the hill, as from his throne in some colossal opera
box, the monarch surveyed the scene.

In the central foreground of the picture, and standing out in bold
relief against the venerable forests of the Ardennes, that stretched
away on either hand from right to left, filling the northern horizon
like a curtain of dark verdure, was the city of Sedan, with the
geometrical lines and angles of its fortifications, protected on the
south and west by the flooded meadows and the river. In Bazeilles
houses were already burning, and the dark cloud of war hung heavy over
the pretty village. Turning his eyes eastward he might discover,
holding the line between la Moncelle and Givonne, some regiments of
the 12th and 1st corps, looking like diminutive insects at that
distance and lost to sight at intervals in the dip of the narrow
valley in which the hamlets lay concealed; and beyond that valley rose
the further slope, an uninhabited, uncultivated heath, of which the
pale tints made the dark green of Chevalier's Wood look black by
contrast. To the north the 7th corps was more distinctly visible in
its position on the plateau of Floing, a broad belt of sere, dun
fields, that sloped downward from the little wood of la Garenne to the
verdant border of the stream. Further still were Floing, Saint-Menges,
Fleigneux, Illy, small villages that lay nestled in the hollows of
that billowing region where the landscape was a succession of hill and
dale. And there, too, to the left was the great bend of the Meuse,
where the sluggish stream, shimmering like molten silver in the bright
sunlight, swept lazily in a great horseshoe around the peninsula of
Iges and barred the road to Mezieres, leaving between its further
bank and the impassable forest but one single gateway, the defile of
Saint-Albert.

It was in that triangular space that the hundred thousand men and five
hundred guns of the French army had now been crowded and brought to
bay, and when His Prussian Majesty condescended to turn his gaze still
further to the westward he might perceive another plain, the plain of
Donchery, a succession of bare fields stretching away toward
Briancourt, Marancourt, and Vrigne-aux-Bois, a desolate expanse of
gray waste beneath the clear blue sky; and did he turn him to the
east, he again had before his eyes, facing the lines in which the
French were so closely hemmed, a vast level stretch of country in
which were numerous villages, first Douzy and Carignan, then more to
the north Rubecourt, Pourru-aux-Bois, Francheval, Villers-Cernay, and
last of all, near the frontier, Chapelle. All about him, far as he
could see, the land was his; he could direct the movements of the
quarter of a million of men and the eight hundred guns that
constituted his army, could master at a glance every detail of the
operations of his invading host. Even then the XIth corps was pressing
forward toward Saint-Menges, while the Vth was at Vrigne-aux-Bois, and
the Wurtemburg division was near Donchery, awaiting orders. This was
what he beheld to the west, and if, turning to the east, he found his
view obstructed in that quarter by tree-clad hills, he could picture
to himself what was passing, for he had seen the XIIth corps entering
the wood of Chevalier, he knew that by that time the Guards were at
Villers-Cernay. There were the two arms of the gigantic vise, the army
of the Crown Prince of Prussia on the left, the Saxon Prince's army on
the right, slowly, irresistibly closing on each other, while the two
Bavarian corps were hammering away at Bazeilles.

Underneath the King's position the long line of batteries, stretching
with hardly an interval from Remilly to Frenois, kept up an
unintermittent fire, pouring their shells into Daigny and la Moncelle,
sending them hurtling over Sedan city to sweep the northern plateaus.
It was barely eight o'clock, and with eyes fixed on the gigantic board
he directed the movements of the game, awaiting the inevitable end,
calmly controlling the black cloud of men that beneath him swept, an
array of pigmies, athwart the smiling landscape.

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