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The Downfall (La Debacle) Part 1
by
“My poor child, be good; come with me back to bed. Say good-night, my poor child.”
She vanished, bearing him away. When she returned from the adjoining room she was no longer weeping; her face wore its customary expression of calm and courageous resignation.
It was Honore who, with a trembling voice, started the conversation again.
“And what did the Prussians do then?”
“Ah, yes; the Prussians. Well, they plundered right and left, destroying everything, eating and drinking all they could lay hands on. They stole linen as well, napkins and sheets, and even curtains, tearing them in strips to make bandages for their feet. I saw some whose feet were one raw lump of flesh, so long and hard had been their march. One little group I saw, seated at the edge of the gutter before the doctor’s house, who had taken off their shoes and were bandaging themselves with handsome chemises, trimmed with lace, stolen, doubtless, from pretty Madame Lefevre, the manufacturer’s wife. The pillage went on until night. The houses had no doors or windows left, and one passing in the street could look within and see the wrecked furniture, a scene of destruction that would have aroused the anger of a saint. For my part, I was almost wild, and could remain there no longer. They tried in vain to keep me, telling me that the roads were blocked, that I would certainly be killed; I started, and as soon as I was out of Raucourt, struck off to the right and took to the fields. Carts, loaded with wounded French and Prussians, were coming in from Beaumont. Two passed quite close to me in the darkness; I could hear the shrieks and groans, and I ran, oh! how I ran, across fields, through woods, I could not begin to tell you where, except that I made a wide circuit over toward Villers.
“Twice I thought I heard soldiers coming and hid, but the only person I met was another woman, a fugitive like myself. She was from Beaumont, she said, and she told me things too horrible to repeat. After that we ran harder than ever. And at last I am here, so wretched, oh! so wretched with what I have seen!”
Her tears flowed again in such abundance as to choke her utterance. The horrors of the day kept rising to her memory and would not down; she related the story that the woman of Beaumont had told her. That person lived in the main street of the village, where she had witnessed the passage of all the German artillery after nightfall. The column was accompanied on either side of the road by a file of soldiers bearing torches of pitch-pine, which illuminated the scene with the red glare of a great conflagration, and between the flaring, smoking lights the impetuous torrent of horses, guns, and men tore onward at a mad gallop. Their feet were winged with the tireless speed of victory as they rushed on in devilish pursuit of the French, to overtake them in some last ditch and crush them, annihilate them there. They stopped for nothing; on, on they went, heedless of what lay in their way. Horses fell; their traces were immediately cut, and they were left to be ground and torn by the pitiless wheels until they were a shapeless, bleeding mass. Human beings, prisoners and wounded men, who attempted to cross the road, were ruthlessly borne down and shared their fate. Although the men were dying with hunger the fierce hurricane poured on unchecked; was a loaf thrown to the drivers, they caught it flying; the torch-bearers passed slices of meat to them on the end of their bayonets, and then, with the same steel that had served that purpose, goaded their maddened horses on to further effort. And the night grew old, and still the artillery was passing, with the mad roar of a tempest let loose upon the land, amid the frantic cheering of the men.
Maurice’s fatigue was too much for him, and notwithstanding the interest with which he listened to Silvine’s narrative, after the substantial meal he had eaten he let his head decline upon the table on his crossed arms. Jean’s resistance lasted a little longer, but presently he too was overcome and fell dead asleep at the other end of the table. Father Fouchard had gone and taken his position in the road again; Honore was alone with Silvine, who was seated, motionless, before the still open window.