The Downfall

“Come this way, Monsieur Jean,” she said. “Everything will soon be ready for you.”

He stammered something inarticulately, for his emotion was such that he could find no word of thanks. In addition to that his eyes were closing he beheld her through the irresistible drowsiness that was settling on him as a sea-fog drifts in and settles on the land, in which she seemed floating in a vague, unreal way, as if her feet no longer touched the earth. Could it be that it was all a delightful apparition, that friendly young woman who smiled on him with such sweet simplicity? He fancied for a moment that she had touched his hand and that he had felt the pressure of hers, cool and firm, loyal as the clasp of an old tried friend.

That was the last moment in which Jean was distinctly conscious of what was going on about him. They were in the dining room; bread and meat were set out on the table, but for the life of him he could not have raised a morsel to his lips. A man was there, seated on a chair. Presently he knew it was Weiss, whom he had seen at Mulhausen, but he had no idea what the man was saying with such a sober, sorrowful air, with slow and emphatic gestures. Maurice was already sound asleep, with the tranquillity of death resting on his face, on a bed that had been improvised for him beside the stove, and Henriette was busying herself about a sofa on which a mattress had been thrown; she brought in a bolster, pillow and coverings; with nimble, dexterous hands she spread the white sheets, snowy white, dazzling in their whiteness.

Ah! those clean, white sheets, so long coveted, so ardently desired; Jean had eyes for naught save them. For six weeks he had not had his clothes off, had not slept in a bed. He was as impatient as a child waiting for some promised treat, or a lover expectant of his mistress’s coming; the time seemed long, terribly long to him, until he could plunge into those cool, white depths and lose himself there. Quickly, as soon as he was alone, he removed his shoes and tossed his uniform across a chair, then, with a deep sigh of satisfaction, threw himself on the bed. He opened his eyes a little way for a last look about him before his final plunge into unconsciousness, and in the pale morning light that streamed in through the lofty window beheld a repetition of his former pleasant vision, only fainter, more aerial; a vision of Henriette entering the room on tiptoe, and placing on the table at his side a water-jug and glass that had been forgotten before. She seemed to linger there a moment, looking at the sleeping pair, him and her brother, with her tranquil, ineffably tender smile upon her lips, then faded into air, and he, between his white sheets, was as if he were not.

Hours – or was it years? slipped by; Jean and Maurice were like dead men, without a dream, without consciousness of the life that was within them. Whether it was ten years or ten minutes, time had stood still for them; the overtaxed body had risen against its oppressor and annihilated their every faculty. They awoke simultaneously with a great start and looked at each other inquiringly; where were they? what had happened? how long had they slept? The same pale light was entering through the tall window. They felt as if they had been racked; joints stiffer, limbs wearier, mouth more hot and dry than when they had lain down; they could not have slept more than an hour, fortunately. It did not surprise them to see Weiss sitting where they had seen him before, in the same dejected attitude, apparently waiting for them to awake.

“Fichtre!” exclaimed Jean, “we must get up and report ourselves to the first sergeant before noon.”

He uttered a smothered cry of pain as he jumped to the floor and began to dress.

“Before noon!” said Weiss. “Are you aware that it is seven o’clock in the evening? You have slept about twelve hours.”

Great heavens, seven o’clock! They were thunderstruck. Jean, who by that time was completely dressed, would have run for it, but Maurice, still in bed, found he no longer had control of his legs; how were they ever to find their comrades? would not the army have marched away? They took Weiss to task for having let them sleep so long. But the accountant shook his head sorrowfully and said:

“You have done just as well to remain in bed, for all that has been accomplished.”

All that day, from early morning, he had been scouring Sedan and its environs in quest of news, and was just come in, discouraged with the inactivity of the troops and the inexplicable delay that had lost them the whole of that precious day, the 31st. The sole excuse was that the men were worn out and rest was an absolute necessity for them, but granting that, he could not see why the retreat should not have been continued after giving them a few hours of repose.

“I do not pretend to be a judge of such matters,” he continued, “but I have a feeling, so strong as to be almost a conviction, that the army is very badly situated at Sedan. The 12th corps is at Bazeilles, where there was a little fighting this morning; the 1st is strung out along the Givonne between la Moncelle and Holly, while the 7th is encamped on the plateau of Floing, and the 5th, what is left of it, is crowded together under the ramparts of the city, on the side of the Chateau. And that is what alarms me, to see them all concentrated thus about the city, waiting for the coming of the Prussians. If I were in command I would retreat on Mezieres, and lose no time about it, either. I know the country; it is the only line of retreat that is open to us, and if we take any other course we shall be driven into Belgium. Come here! let me show you something.”

He took Jean by the hand and led him to the window.

“Tell me what you see over yonder on the crest of the hills.”

Looking from the window over the ramparts, over the adjacent buildings, their view embraced the valley of the Meuse to the southward of Sedan. There was the river, winding through broad meadows; there, to the left, was Remilly in the background, Pont Maugis and Wadelincourt before them and Frenois to the right; and shutting in the landscape the ranges of verdant hills, Liry first, then la Marfee and la Croix Piau, with their dense forests. A deep tranquillity, a crystalline clearness reigned over the wide prospect that lay there in the mellow light of the declining day.

“Do you see that moving line of black upon the hilltops, that procession of small black ants?”

Jean stared in amazement, while Maurice, kneeling on his bed, craned his neck to see.

“Yes, yes!” they cried. “There is a line, there is another, and another, and another! They are everywhere.”

“Well,” continued Weiss, “those are Prussians. I have been watching them since morning, and they have been coming, coming, as if there were no end to them! You may be sure of one thing: if our troops are waiting for them, they have no intention of disappointing us. And not I alone, but every soul in the city saw them; it is only the generals who persist in being blind. I was talking with a general officer a little while ago; he shrugged his shoulders and told me that Marshal MacMahon was absolutely certain that he had not over seventy thousand men in his front. God grant he may be right! But look and see for yourselves; the ground is hid by them! they keep coming, ever coming, the black swarm!”

At this juncture Maurice threw himself back in his bed and gave way to a violent fit of sobbing. Henriette came in, a smile on her face. She hastened to him in alarm.

“What is it?”

But he pushed her away. “No, no! leave me, have nothing more to do with me; I have never been anything but a burden to you. When I think that you were making yourself a drudge, a slave, while I was attending college – oh! to what miserable use have I turned that education! And I was near bringing dishonor on our name; I shudder to think where I might be now, had you not beggared yourself to pay for my extravagance and folly.”

Her smile came back to her face, together with her serenity.

“Is that all? Your sleep don’t seem to have done you good, my poor friend. But since that is all gone and past, forget it! Are you not doing your duty now, like a good Frenchman? I am very proud of you, I assure you, now that you are a soldier.”

She had turned toward Jean, as if to ask him to come to her assistance, and he looked at her with some surprise that she appeared to him less beautiful than yesterday; she was paler, thinner, now that the glamour was no longer in his drowsy eyes. The one striking point that remained unchanged was her resemblance to her brother, and yet the difference in their two natures was never more strongly marked than at that moment; he, weak and nervous as a woman, swayed by the impulse of the hour, displaying in his person all the fitful and emotional temperament of his nation, vibrating from one moment to another between the loftiest enthusiasm and the most abject despair; she, the patient, indomitable housewife, such an inconsiderable little creature in her resignation and self-effacement, meeting adversity with a brave face and eyes full of inexpugnable courage and resolution, fashioned from the stuff of which heroes are made.

“Proud of me!” cried Maurice. “Ah! truly, you have great reason to be. For a month and more now we have been flying, like the cowards that we are!”

“What of it? we are not the only ones,” said Jean with his practical common sense; “we do what we are told to do.”

But the young man broke out more furiously than ever: “I have had enough of it, I tell you! Our imbecile leaders, our continual defeats, our brave soldiers led like sheep to the slaughter – is it not enough, seeing all these things, to make one weep tears of blood? We are here now in Sedan, caught in a trap from which there is no escape; you can see the Prussians closing in on us from every quarter, and certain destruction is staring us in the face; there is no hope, the end is come. No! I shall remain where I am; I may as well be shot as a deserter. Jean, do you go, and leave me here. No! I won’t go back there; I will stay here.”

He sank upon the pillow in a renewed outpour of tears. It was an utter breakdown of the nervous system, sweeping everything before it, one of those sudden lapses into hopelessness to which he was so subject, in which he despised himself and all the world. His sister, knowing as she did the best way of treating such crises, kept an unruffled face.

“That would not be a nice thing to do, dear Maurice – desert your post in the hour of danger.”

He rose impetuously to a sitting posture: “Then give me my musket! I will go and blow my brains out; that will be the shortest way of ending it.” Then, pointing with outstretched arm to Weiss, where he sat silent and motionless, he said: “There! that is the only sensible man I have seen; yes, he is the only one who saw things as they were. You remember what he said to me, Jean, at Mulhausen, a month ago?”

“It is true,” the corporal assented; “the gentleman said we should be beaten.”

And the scene rose again before their mind’s eye, that night of anxious vigil, the agonized suspense, the prescience of the disaster at Froeschwiller hanging in the sultry heavy air, while the Alsatian told his prophetic fears; Germany in readiness, with the best of arms and the best of leaders, rising to a man in a grand outburst of patriotism; France dazed, a century behind the age, debauched, and a prey to intestine disorder, having neither commanders, men, nor arms to enable her to cope with her powerful adversary. How quickly the horrible prediction had proved itself true!

Weiss raised his trembling hands. Profound sorrow was depicted on his kind, honest face, with its red hair and beard and its great prominent blue eyes.

“Ah!” he murmured, “I take no credit to myself for being right. I don’t claim to be wiser than others, but it was all so clear, when one only knew the true condition of affairs! But if we are to be beaten we shall first have the pleasure of killing some of those Prussians of perdition. There is that comfort for us; I believe that many of us are to leave their bones there, and I hope there will be plenty of Prussians to keep them company; I would like to see the ground down there in the valley heaped with dead Prussians!” He arose and pointed down the valley of the Meuse. Fire flashed from his myopic eyes, which had exempted him from service with the army. “A thousand thunders! I would fight, yes, I would, if they would have me. I don’t know whether it is seeing them assume the airs of masters in my country – in this country where once the Cossacks did such mischief; but whenever I think of their being here, of their entering our houses, I am seized with an uncontrollable desire to cut a dozen of their throats. Ah! if it were not for my eyes, if they would take me, I would go!” Then, after a moment’s silence: “And besides; who can tell?”

It was the hope that sprang eternal, even in the breast of the least confident, of the possibility of victory, and Maurice, ashamed by this time of his tears, listened and caught at the pleasing speculation. Was it not true that only the day before there had been a rumor that Bazaine was at Verdun? Truly, it was time that Fortune should work a miracle for that France whose glories she had so long protected. Henriette, with an imperceptible smile on her lips, silently left the room, and was not the least bit surprised when she returned to find her brother up and dressed, and ready to go back to his duty. She insisted, however, that he and Jean should take some nourishment first. They seated themselves at the table, but the morsels choked them; their stomachs, weakened by their heavy slumber, revolted at the food. Like a prudent old campaigner Jean cut a loaf in two halves and placed one in Maurice’s sack, the other in his own. It was growing dark, it behooved them to be going. Henriette, who was standing at the window watching the Prussian troops incessantly defiling on distant la Marfee, the swarming legions of black ants that were gradually being swallowed up in the gathering shadows, involuntarily murmured:

“Oh, war! what a dreadful thing it is!”

Maurice, seeing an opportunity to retort her sermon to him, immediately took her up:

“How is this, little sister? you are anxious to have people fight, and you speak disrespectfully of war!”

She turned and faced him, valiantly as ever: “It is true; I abhor it, because it is an abomination and an injustice. It may be simply because I am a woman, but the thought of such butchery sickens me. Why cannot nations adjust their differences without shedding blood?”

Jean, the good fellow, seconded her with a nod of the head, and nothing to him, too, seemed easier – to him, the unlettered man – than to come together and settle matters after a fair, honest talk; but Maurice, mindful of his scientific theories, reflected on the necessity of war – war, which is itself existence, the universal law. Was it not poor, pitiful man who conceived the idea of justice and peace, while impassive nature revels in continual slaughter?

“That is all very fine!” he cried. “Yes, centuries hence, if it shall come to pass that then all the nations shall be merged in one; centuries hence man may look forward to the coming of that golden age; and even in that case would not the end of war be the end of humanity? I was a fool but now; we must go and fight, since it is nature’s law.” He smiled and repeated his brother-in-law’s expression: “And besides, who can tell?”

He saw things now through the mirage of his vivid self-delusion, they came to his vision distorted through the lens of his diseased nervous sensibility.

“By the way,” he continued cheerfully, “what do you hear of our cousin Gunther? You know we have not seen a German yet, so you can’t look to me to give you any foreign news.”

The question was addressed to his brother-in-law, who had relapsed into a thoughtful silence and answered by a motion of his hand, expressive of his ignorance.

“Cousin Gunther?” said Henriette, “Why, he belongs to the Vth corps and is with the Crown Prince’s army; I read it in one of the newspapers, I don’t remember which. Is that army in this neighborhood?”

Weiss repeated his gesture, which was imitated by the two soldiers, who could not be supposed to know what enemies were in front of them when their generals did not know. Rising to his feet, the master of the house at last made use of articulate speech.

“Come along; I will go with you. I learned this afternoon where the 106th’s camp is situated.” He told his wife that she need not expect to see him again that night, as he would sleep at Bazeilles, where they had recently bought and furnished a little place to serve them as a residence during the hot months. It was near a dyehouse that belonged to M. Delaherche. The accountant’s mind was ill at ease in relation to certain stores that he had placed in the cellar – a cask of wine and a couple of sacks of potatoes; the house would certainly be visited by marauders if it was left unprotected, he said, while by occupying it that night he would doubtless save it from pillage. His wife watched him closely while he was speaking.

“You need not be alarmed,” he added, with a smile; “I harbor no darker design than the protection of our property, and I pledge my word that if the village is attacked, or if there is any appearance of danger, I will come home at once.”

“Well, then, go,” she said. “But remember, if you are not back in good season you will see me out there looking for you.”