The Downfall

When the story reached Jean’s ears, however, he was greatly disturbed. If the German authorities suspected that the people of Remilly were harboring the francs-tireurs from Dieulet wood they might at any time come and beat up his quarters and unearth him from his retreat. The idea that he should be the means of compromising his hosts or bringing trouble to Henriette was unendurable to him. Yielding to the young woman’s entreaties, however, he consented to delay his departure yet for a few days, for his wound was very slow in healing and he was not strong enough to go away and join one of the regiments in the field, either in the North or on the Loire.

From that time forward, up to the middle of December, the stress of their anxiety and mental suffering exceeded even what had gone before. The cold was grown to be so intense that the stove no longer sufficed to heat the great, barn-like room. When they looked from their window on the crust of snow that covered the frozen earth they thought of Maurice, entombed down yonder in distant Paris, that was now become a city of death and desolation, from which they scarcely ever received reliable intelligence. Ever the same questions were on their lips: what was he doing, why did he not let them hear from him? They dared not voice their dreadful doubts and fears; perhaps he was ill, or wounded; perhaps even he was dead. The scanty and vague tidings that continued to reach them occasionally through the newspapers were not calculated to reassure them. After numerous lying reports of successful sorties, circulated one day only to be contradicted the next, there was a rumor of a great victory gained by General Ducrot at Champigny on the 2d of December; but they speedily learned that on the following day the general, abandoning the positions he had won, had been forced to recross the Marne and send his troops into cantonments in the wood of Vincennes. With each new day the Parisians saw themselves subjected to fresh suffering and privation: famine was beginning to make itself felt; the authorities, having first requisitioned horned cattle, were now doing the same with potatoes, gas was no longer furnished to private houses, and soon the fiery flight of the projectiles could be traced as they tore through the darkness of the unlighted streets. And so it was that neither of them could draw a breath or eat a mouthful without being haunted by the image of Maurice and those two million living beings, imprisoned in their gigantic sepulcher.

From every quarter, moreover, from the northern as well as from the central districts, most discouraging advices continued to arrive. In the north the 22d army corps, composed of gardes mobiles, depot companies from various regiments and such officers and men as had not been involved in the disasters of Sedan and Metz, had been forced to abandon Amiens and retreat on Arras, and on the 5th of December Rouen had also fallen into the hands of the enemy, after a mere pretense of resistance on the part of its demoralized, scanty garrison. In the center the victory of Coulmiers, achieved on the 3d of November by the army of the Loire, had resuscitated for a moment the hopes of the country: Orleans was to be reoccupied, the Bavarians were to be put to flight, the movement by way of Etampes was to culminate in the relief of Paris; but on December 5 Prince Frederick Charles had retaken Orleans and cut in two the army of the Loire, of which three corps fell back on Bourges and Vierzon, while the remaining two, commanded by General Chanzy, retired to Mans, fighting and falling back alternately for a whole week, most gallantly. The Prussians were everywhere, at Dijon and at Dieppe, at Vierzon as well as at Mans. And almost every morning came the intelligence of some fortified place that had capitulated, unable longer to hold out under the bombardment. Strasbourg had succumbed as early as the 28th of September, after standing forty-six days of siege and thirty-seven of shelling, her walls razed and her buildings riddled by more than two hundred thousand projectiles. The citadel of Laon had been blown into the air; Toul had surrendered; and following them, a melancholy catalogue, came Soissons with its hundred and twenty-eight pieces of artillery, Verdun, which numbered a hundred and thirty-six, Neufbrisach with a hundred, La Fere with seventy, Montmedy, sixty-five. Thionville was in flames, Phalsbourg had only opened her gates after a desperate resistance that lasted eighty days. It seemed as if all France were doomed to burn and be reduced to ruins by the never-ceasing cannonade.

One morning that Jean manifested a fixed determination to be gone, Henriette seized both his hands and held them tight clasped in hers.

“Ah, no! I beg you, do not go and leave me here alone. You are not strong enough; wait a few days yet, only a few days. I will let you go, I promise you I will, whenever the doctor says you are well enough to go and fight.”

V

The cold was intense on that December evening. Silvine and Prosper, together with little Charlot, were alone in the great kitchen of the farmhouse, she busy with her sewing, he whittling away at a whip that he proposed should be more than usually ornate. It was seven o’clock; they had dined at six, not waiting for Father Fouchard, who they supposed had been detained at Raucourt, where there was a scarcity of meat, and Henriette, whose turn it was to watch that night at the hospital, had just left the house, after cautioning Silvine to be sure to replenish Jean’s stove with coal before she went to bed.

Outside a sky of inky blackness overhung the white expanse of snow. No sound came from the village, buried among the drifts; all that was to be heard in the kitchen was the scraping of Prosper’s knife as he fashioned elaborate rosettes and lozenges on the dogwood stock. Now and then he stopped and cast a glance at Charlot, whose flaxen head was nodding drowsily. When the child fell asleep at last the silence seemed more profound than ever. The mother noiselessly changed the position of the candle that the light might not strike the eyes of her little one; then sitting down to her sewing again, she sank into a deep reverie. And Prosper, after a further period of hesitation, finally mustered up courage to disburden himself of what he wished to say.

“Listen, Silvine; I have something to tell you. I have been watching for an opportunity to speak to you in private – ”

Alarmed by his preface, she raised her eyes and looked him in the face.

“This is what it is. You’ll forgive me for frightening you, but it is best you should be forewarned. In Remilly this morning, at the corner by the church, I saw Goliah; I saw him as plain as I see you sitting there. Oh, no! there can be no mistake; I was not dreaming!”

Her face suddenly became white as death; all she was capable of uttering was a stifled moan:

“My God! my God!”

Prosper went on, in words calculated to give her least alarm, and related what he had learned during the day by questioning one person and another. No one doubted now that Goliah was a spy, that he had formerly come and settled in the country with the purpose of acquainting himself with its roads, its resources, the most insignificant details pertaining to the life of its inhabitants. Men reminded one another of the time when he had worked for Father Fouchard on his farm and of his sudden disappearance; they spoke of the places he had had subsequently to that over toward Beaumont and Raucourt. And now he was back again, holding a position of some sort at the military post of Sedan, its duties apparently not very well defined, going about from one village to another, denouncing this man, fining that, keeping an eye to the filling of the requisitions that made the peasants’ lives a burden to them. That very morning he had frightened the people of Remilly almost out of their wits in relation to a delivery of flour, alleging it was short in weight and had not been furnished within the specified time.

“You are forewarned,” said Prosper in conclusion, “and now you’ll know what to do when he shows his face here – ”

She interrupted him with a terrified cry.

“Do you think he will come here?”

“Dame! it appears to me extremely probable he will. It would show great lack of curiosity if he didn’t, since he knows he has a young one here that he has never seen. And then there’s you, besides, and you’re not so very homely but he might like to have another look at you.”

She gave him an entreating glance that silenced his rude attempt at gallantry. Charlot, awakened by the sound of their voices, had raised his head. With the blinking eyes of one suddenly aroused from slumber he looked about the room, and recalled the words that some idle fellow of the village had taught him; and with the solemn gravity of a little man of three he announced:

“Dey’re loafers, de Prussians!”

His mother went and caught him frantically in her arms and seated him on her lap. Ah! the poor little waif, at once her delight and her despair, whom she loved with all her soul and who brought the tears to her eyes every time she looked on him, flesh of her flesh, whom it wrung her heart to hear the urchins with whom he consorted in the street tauntingly call “the little Prussian!” She kissed him, as if she would have forced the words back into his mouth.

“Who taught my darling such naughty words? It’s not nice; you must not say them again, my loved one.”

Whereon Charlot, with the persistency of childhood, laughing and squirming, made haste to reiterate:

“Dey’re dirty loafers, de Prussians!”

And when his mother burst into tears he clung about her neck and also began to howl dismally. Mon Dieu, what new evil was in store for her! Was it not enough that she had lost in Honore the one single hope of her life, the assured promise of oblivion and future happiness? and was that man to appear upon the scene again to make her misery complete?

“Come,” she murmured, “come along, darling, and go to bed. Mamma will kiss her little boy all the same, for he does not know the sorrow he causes her.”

And she went from the room, leaving Prosper alone. The good fellow, not to add to her embarrassment, had averted his eyes from her face and was apparently devoting his entire attention to his carving.

Before putting Charlot to bed it was Silvine’s nightly custom to take him in to say good-night to Jean, with whom the youngster was on terms of great friendship. As she entered the room that evening, holding her candle before her, she beheld the convalescent seated upright in bed, his open eyes peering into the obscurity. What, was he not asleep? Faith, no; he had been ruminating on all sorts of subjects in the silence of the winter night; and while she was cramming the stove with coal he frolicked for a moment with Charlot, who rolled and tumbled on the bed like a young kitten. He knew Silvine’s story, and had a very kindly feeling for the meek, courageous girl whom misfortune had tried so sorely, mourning the only man she had ever loved, her sole comfort that child of shame whose existence was a daily reproach to her. When she had replaced the lid on the stove, therefore, and came to the bedside to take the boy from his arms, he perceived by her red eyes that she had been weeping. What, had she been having more trouble? But she would not answer his question: some other day she would tell him what it was if it seemed worth the while. Mon Dieu! was not her life one of continual suffering now?

Silvine was at last lugging Charlot away in her arms when there arose from the courtyard of the farm a confused sound of steps and voices. Jean listened in astonishment.

“What is it? It can’t be Father Fouchard returning, for I did not hear his wagon wheels.” Lying on his back in his silent chamber, with nothing to occupy his mind, he had become acquainted with every detail of the routine of home life on the farm, of which the sounds were all familiar to his ears. Presently he added: “Ah, I see; it is those men again, the francs-tireurs from Dieulet, after something to eat.”

“Quick, I must be gone!” said Silvine, hurrying from the room and leaving him again in darkness. “I must make haste and see they get their loaves.”

A loud knocking was heard at the kitchen door and Prosper, who was beginning to tire of his solitude, was holding a hesitating parley with the visitors. He did not like to admit strangers when the master was away, fearing he might be held responsible for any damage that might ensue. His good luck befriended him in this instance, however, for just then Father Fouchard’s carriole came lumbering up the acclivity, the tramp of the horse’s feet resounding faintly on the snow that covered the road. It was the old man who welcomed the newcomers.

“Ah, good! it’s you fellows. What have you on that wheelbarrow?”

Sambuc, lean and hungry as a robber and wrapped in the folds of a blue woolen blouse many times too large for him, did not even hear the farmer; he was storming angrily at Prosper, his honest brother, as he called him, who had only then made up his mind to unbar the door.

“Say, you! do you take us for beggars that you leave us standing in the cold in weather such as this?”

But Prosper did not trouble himself to make any other reply than was expressed in a contemptuous shrug of the shoulders, and while he was leading the horse off to the stable old Fouchard, bending over the wheelbarrow, again spoke up.

“So, it’s two dead sheep you’ve brought me. It’s lucky it’s freezing weather, otherwise we should know what they are by the smell.”

Cabasse and Ducat, Sambuc’s two trusty henchmen, who accompanied him in all his expeditions, raised their voices in protest.

“Oh!” cried the first, with his loud-mouthed Provencal volubility, “they’ve only been dead three days. They’re some of the animals that died on the Raffins farm, where the disease has been putting in its fine work of late.”

“Procumbit humi bos,” spouted the other, the ex-court officer whose excessive predilection for the ladies had got him into difficulties, and who was fond of airing his Latin on occasion.

Father Fouchard shook his head and continued to disparage their merchandise, declaring it was too “high.” Finally he took the three men into the kitchen, where he concluded the business by saying:

“After all, they’ll have to take it and make the best of it. It comes just in season, for there’s not a cutlet left in Raucourt. When a man’s hungry he’ll eat anything, won’t he?” And very well pleased at heart, he called to Silvine, who just then came in from putting Charlot to bed: “Let’s have some glasses; we are going to drink to the downfall of old Bismarck.”

Fouchard maintained amicable relations with these francs-tireurs from Dieulet wood, who for some three months past had been emerging at nightfall from the fastnesses where they made their lurking place, killing and robbing a Prussian whenever they could steal upon him unawares, descending on the farms and plundering the peasants when there was a scarcity of the other kind of game. They were the terror of all the villages in the vicinity, and the more so that every time a provision train was attacked or a sentry murdered the German authorities avenged themselves on the adjacent hamlets, the inhabitants of which they accused of abetting the outrages, inflicting heavy penalties on them, carrying off their mayors as prisoners, burning their poor hovels. Nothing would have pleased the peasants more than to deliver Sambuc and his band to the enemy, and they were only deterred from doing so by their fear of being shot in the back at a turn in the road some night should their attempt fail of success.

It had occurred to Fouchard to inaugurate a traffic with them. Roaming about the country in every direction, peering with their sharp eyes into ditches and cattle sheds, they had become his purveyors of dead animals. Never an ox or a sheep within a radius of three leagues was stricken down by disease but they came by night with their barrow and wheeled it away to him, and he paid them in provisions, most generally in bread, that Silvine baked in great batches expressly for the purpose. Besides, if he had no great love for them, he experienced a secret feeling of admiration for the francs-tireurs, a set of handy rascals who went their way and snapped their fingers at the world, and although he was making a fortune from his dealings with the Prussians, he could never refrain from chuckling to himself with grim, savage laughter as often as he heard that one of them had been found lying at the roadside with his throat cut.

“Your good health!” said he, touching glasses with the three men. Then, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand: “Say, have you heard of the fuss they’re making over the two headless uhlans that they picked up over there near Villecourt? Villecourt was burned yesterday, you know; they say it was the penalty the village had to pay for harboring you. You’ll have to be prudent, don’t you see, and not show yourselves about here for a time. I’ll see the bread is sent you somewhere.”

Sambuc shrugged his shoulders and laughed contemptuously. What did he care for the Prussians, the dirty cowards! And all at once he exploded in a fit of anger, pounding the table with his fist.

“Tonnerre de Dieu! I don’t mind the uhlans so much; they’re not so bad, but it’s the other one I’d like to get a chance at once – you know whom I mean, the other fellow, the spy, the man who used to work for you.”

“Goliah?” said Father Fouchard.

Silvine, who had resumed her sewing, dropped it in her lap and listened with intense interest.

“That’s his name, Goliah! Ah, the brigand! he is as familiar with every inch of the wood of Dieulet as I am with my pocket, and he’s like enough to get us pinched some fine morning. I heard of him to-day at the Maltese Cross making his boast that he would settle our business for us before we’re a week older. A dirty hound, he is, and he served as guide to the Prussians the day before the battle of Beaumont; I leave it to these fellows if he didn’t.”