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PAGE 76

The Downfall (La Debacle) Part 2
by [?]

The first object they set eyes on was an officer who had reined in his smoking, steaming charger before a farm-yard gate and was venting his towering rage in a volley of Billingsgate. It was General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, the commander of their brigade, covered with dust and looking as if he was about to tumble from his horse with fatigue. The chagrin on his gross, high-colored, animal face told how deeply he took to heart the disaster that he regarded in the light of a personal misfortune. His command had seen nothing of him since morning. Doubtless he was somewhere on the battlefield, striving to rally the remnants of his brigade, for he was not the man to look closely to his own safety in his rage against those Prussian batteries that had at the same time destroyed the empire and the fortunes of a rising officer, the favorite of the Tuileries.

Tonnerre de Dieu!” he shouted, “is there no one of whom one can ask a question in this d––-d country?”

The farmer’s people had apparently taken to the woods. At last a very old woman appeared at the door, some servant who had been forgotten, or whose feeble legs had compelled her to remain behind.

“Hallo, old lady, come here! Which way from here is Belgium?”

She looked at him stupidly, as one who failed to catch his meaning. Then he lost all control of himself and effervesced, forgetful that the woman was only a poor peasant, bellowing that he had no idea of going back to Sedan to be caught like a rat in a trap; not he! he was going to make tracks for foreign parts, he was, and d––-d quick, too! Some soldiers had come up and stood listening.

“But you won’t get through, General,” spoke up a sergeant; “the Prussians are everywhere. This morning was the time for you to cut stick.”

There were stories even then in circulation of companies that had become separated from their regiments and crossed the frontier without any intention of doing so, and of others that, later in the day, had succeeded in breaking through the enemy’s lines before the armies had effected their final junction.

The general shrugged his shoulders impatiently. “What, with a few daring fellows of your stripe, do you mean to say we couldn’t go where we please? I think I can find fifty daredevils to risk their skin in the attempt.” Then, turning again to the old peasant: “Eh! you old mummy, answer, will you, in the devil’s name! where is the frontier?”

She understood him this time. She extended her skinny arm in the direction of the forest.

“That way, that way!”

“Eh? What’s that you say? Those houses that we see down there, at the end of the field?”

“Oh! farther, much farther. Down yonder, away down yonder!”

The general seemed as if his anger must suffocate him. “It is too disgusting, an infernal country like this! one can make neither top nor tail of it. There was Belgium, right under our nose; we were all afraid we should put our foot in it without knowing it; and now that one wants to go there it is somewhere else. No, no! it is too much; I’ve had enough of it; let them take me prisoner if they will, let them do what they choose with me; I am going to bed!” And clapping spurs to his horse, bobbing up and down on his saddle like an inflated wine skin, he galloped off toward Sedan.

A winding path conducted the party down into the Fond de Givonne, an outskirt of the city lying between two hills, where the single village street, running north and south and sloping gently upward toward the forest, was lined with gardens and modest houses. This street was just then so obstructed by flying soldiers that Lieutenant Rochas, with Pache, Lapoulle, and Gaude, found himself caught in the throng and unable for the moment to move in either direction. Maurice and Jean had some difficulty in rejoining them; and all were surprised to hear themselves hailed by a husky, drunken voice, proceeding from the tavern on the corner, near which they were blockaded.