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The Downfall (La Debacle) Part 1
by
“I know some folks who talk of shooting us,” Chouteau continued, with an ugly look at Jean; “dirty, miserable skunks, who treat us worse than beasts, and, when a man’s back is broken with the weight of his knapsack and Brownbess, aie! aie! object to his planting them in the fields to see if a new crop will grow from them. What do you suppose they would say, comrades, hein! now that we are masters, if we should pitch them all out upon the track, and teach them better manners? That’s the way to do, hein! We’ll show ’em that we won’t be bothered any longer with their mangy wars. Down with Badinguet’s bed-bugs! Death to the curs who want to make us fight!”
Jean’s face was aflame with the crimson tide that never failed to rush to his cheeks in his infrequent fits of anger. He rose, wedged in though as he was between his neighbors as firmly as in a vise, and his blazing eyes and doubled fists had such a look of business about them that the other quailed.
“Tonnerre de Dieu! will you be silent, pig! For hours I have sat here without saying anything, because we have no longer any leaders, and I could not even send you to the guard-house. Yes, there’s no doubt of it, it would be a good thing to shoot such men as you and rid the regiment of the vermin. But see here, as there’s no longer any discipline, I will attend to your case myself. There’s no corporal here now, but a hard-fisted fellow who is tired of listening to your jaw, and he’ll see if he can’t make you keep your potato-trap shut. Ah! you d––d coward! You won’t fight yourself and you want to keep others from fighting! Repeat your words once and I’ll knock your head off!”
By this time the whole car, won over by Jean’s manly attitude, had deserted Chouteau, who cowered back in his seat as if not anxious to face his opponent’s big fists.
“And I care no more for Badinguet than I do for you, do you understand? I despise politics, whether they are republican or imperial, and now, as in the past, when I used to cultivate my little farm, there is but one thing that I wish for, and that is the happiness of all, peace and good-order, freedom for every man to attend to his affairs. No one denies that war is a terrible business, but that is no reason why a man should not be treated to the sight of a firing-party when he comes trying to dishearten people who already have enough to do to keep their courage up. Good Heavens, friends, how it makes a man’s pulses leap to be told that the Prussians are in the land and that he is to go help drive them out!”
Then, with the customary fickleness of a mob, the soldiers applauded the corporal, who again announced his determination to thrash the first man of his squad who should declare non-combatant principles. Bravo, the corporal! they would soon settle old Bismarck’s hash! And, in the midst of the wild ovation of which he was the object, Jean, who had recovered his self-control, turned politely to Maurice and addressed him as if he had not been one of his men:
“Monsieur, you cannot have anything in common with those poltroons. Come, we haven’t had a chance at them yet; we are the boys who will give them a good basting yet, those Prussians!”
It seemed to Maurice at that moment as if a ray of cheering sunshine had penetrated his heart. He was humiliated, vexed with himself. What! that man was nothing more than an uneducated rustic! And he remembered the fierce hatred that had burned in his bosom the day he was compelled to pick up the musket that he had thrown away in a moment of madness. But he also remembered his emotion at seeing the two big tears that stood in the corporal’s eyes when the old grandmother, her gray hairs streaming in the wind, had so bitterly reproached them and pointed to the Rhine that lay beneath the horizon in the distance. Was it the brotherhood of fatigue and suffering endured in common that had served thus to dissipate his wrathful feelings? He was Bonapartist by birth, and had never thought of the Republic except in a speculative, dreamy way; his feeling toward the Emperor, personally, too, inclined to friendliness, and he was favorable to the war, the very condition of national existence, the great regenerative school of nationalities. Hope, all at once, with one of those fitful impulses of the imagination, that were common in his temperament, revived in him, while the enthusiastic ardor that had impelled him to enlist one night again surged through his veins and swelled his heart with confidence of victory.