The Debacle - Emile Zola [103]
‘Mind what you’re doing, clumsy!’ shouted the lieutenant, forcing Weiss to flatten himself out against the wall. ‘You’ll get cut in half!’
This stout man in his spectacles, so courageous, had ended by rousing his interest, though he had to smile; and as he heard a shell coming he had pushed him aside in a brotherly way. The projectile fell some ten metres away and burst, covering them both with shrapnel. The civilian was still standing, but the lieutenant had both legs broken.
‘This is it,’ he murmured. ‘I’ve got my packet.’
Knocked down on the pavement, he had himself put in a sitting posture against the doorway, near the dead woman lying across the step. And his young face kept its keen, steadfast expression.
‘Never mind that, boys, just listen to me… Fire away and take your time. I’ll tell you when to go for them with bayonets!’
He continued in command, head up, keeping an eye on the distant enemy. Another house opposite was on fire. The crackling of bullets and explosions of shells rent the air which was filled with dust and smoke. Soldiers fell at every street corner and the dead, isolated or in heaps, made dark, bloodstained patches. Over the village, swelling in an immense clamour, was the threat of thousands of men bearing down upon a few hundred brave men resolved to die.
Delaherche, who had never stopped calling to Weiss, asked for the last time:
‘Aren’t you coming? Oh well, don’t then! I’ll leave you, good-bye!’
It was now about seven, and he had hung about too long. As long as the houses lasted he took advantage of doorways and bits of wall, squeezing into the tiniest corners at each burst of firing. He would never have believed he was so young and agile as he glided along as lithe as a snake. But at the end of Bazeilles, when he had to negotiate nearly three hundred metres of empty, open road, raked by the batteries at Le Liry, he felt himself shivering although he was soaked in sweat. For one moment he was able to get along bent double in a ditch, but then he had to run for it, madly, straight ahead, his ears full of explosions like peals of thunder. His eyes smarted as though he were walking through fire. It seemed to go on for an eternity. Suddenly he saw a little house on the left, and he leaped for it and shelter, and a huge weight was lifted from him. There were people all round him, men and horses. At first he had not recognized anyone. Then what he saw amazed him.
Surely it was the Emperor with all his staff? For all the personal knowledge he had been boasting about since he nearly spoke to him at Baybel, he hesitated, and then stood gaping. It was indeed Napoleon III, who looked taller now that he was on horseback, and his moustache was so waxed and his cheeks were so rouged that he at once thought he looked much younger, and made up like an actor. Surely he must have had himself made up so as not to go round displaying to the army the horror of his colourless face all twisted with pain, his fleshless nose and muddy eyes. Having been warned at five in the morning that there was fighting at Bazeilles, he had come like a silent, gloomy ghost with its flesh all brightened up with vermilion.
There was a brickworks there, affording some protection. On the other side the walls were being pitted with bullets, and every second a shell came down on the road. The whole escort had stopped.
‘Your Majesty,’ a voice ventured, ‘it really is dangerous…’
But the Emperor turned and made a sign to his staff to go and stand in the narrow lane that ran along the side of the brickworks. There men and horses would be completely hidden.
‘Really, sir, it’s madness… Sir, we beg of you…’
But all he did was repeat his gesture, as though to indicate that the sudden appearance of a group of uniforms on the open road would certainly attract the attention of the batteries on the other side of the river. And he advanced all alone