The Debacle - Emile Zola [101]
‘Oh no, I’m off!’ stammered Delaherche. ‘If you’re not coming, I’m going on my own.’
The lieutenant who was sick to death of them, chimed in:
‘Certainly, gentlemen, you would be well advised to go… We may be attacked at any minute.’
Then, after another glance at the meadows where the Bavarians were gaining ground, Weiss made up his mind to follow Delaherche. But first he wanted to double-lock his house on the other side, the road side. He was finally joining his friend when a new sight rooted them both to the spot.
At the end of the street, about three hundred metres away, the Place de l’Eglise was being attacked by a strong force of Bavarians coming from the Douzy road. The regiment of marines responsible for defending the square appeared to slacken fire for a moment as if to let them advance. Then suddenly, when they were massed right in front of them, there was an extraordinary and unforeseen manoeuvre: the French soldiers threw themselves to one side or the other of the road and many lay flat on the ground, and, through the space thus suddenly opened, the machine guns, concentrated in a battery at the other end, suddenly belched forth a hail of bullets, sweeping the enemy force away. The soldiers leaped up again with one bound and charged with bayonets on the scattered Bavarians, which pushed and toppled them right back. Twice the process was repeated with the same success. At the corner of a narrow lane three women were still in a little house and there, in one of the windows, they were calmly laughing and applauding, apparently delighted to see the show.
‘Oh damn,’ Weiss suddenly said, ‘I forgot to shut the cellar door and take the key… Wait for me, I shan’t be a minute.’
The first attack seemed to have been repulsed, and Delaherche, giving in to his curiosity again, was in less of a hurry. He was standing in front of the dyeworks talking to the caretaker, who had come for a moment out of the door of the room she occupied on the ground floor.
‘Poor Françoise, you should come with us. It’s terrible, a woman on her own in the middle of all these horrors.’
She raised her trembling arms.
‘Oh sir, of course I should have gone but for my little Auguste’s illness… Come in, sir, and you’ll see.’
He did not go in, but craned his neck and shook his head on seeing the lad in a spotlessly clean bed, his face flushed with fever, staring at his mother with burning eyes.
‘Well, yes, but why don’t you carry him away? I will fix you up in Sedan… Wrap him up in a warm blanket and come with us.’
‘Oh no, sir, it isn’t possible. The doctor said I would kill him… If only his poor father were still alive! But there are only the two of us now and we must save ourselves for each other… And besides, those Prussians surely won’t do any harm to a woman on her own and a sick child!’
Weiss reappeared at that moment, satisfied that he had barricaded everything in his house.
‘There! If they want to get in they’ll have to smash up the whole show… Now let’s be off, and it’s not going to be all that easy either. Let’s slip along near the houses so as not to be hit by something.’
And indeed the enemy must have been working up for a fresh attack, for the fusillade redoubled its intensity and the screaming of shells never let up. Two had already come down on the road a hundred metres away and another had buried itself in the soft earth of the garden without exploding.
‘Oh Françoise, I want to give your little Auguste a kiss,’ Weiss went on. ‘But he’s not as bad as all that, another couple of days and he’ll be out of danger… Cheer up, and now hurry indoors and don’t show your nose outside.’
At last the two men were setting off.
‘Be seeing you, Françoise.’
‘Be seeing you, gentlemen.’
At that very second there was an appalling crash. A shell had demolished a chimney of Weiss’s house and fallen on to the pavement, where it went off with such an explosion that all the windows nearby were broken. A thick dust and heavy smoke at first