The Debacle - Emile Zola [109]
‘My lads, drink to your girlfriends if you’ve got any, and drink to the glory of France… That’s all I know about, so here’s to fun!’
‘Quite true, sir, here’s to your health and everybody else’s.’
They all drank, warmed up and friends again. This drink was a real treat in the chilly morning just before marching against the enemy. Maurice felt it running down into his veins, giving him the warmth and semi-tipsiness of illusion. Why shouldn’t they beat the Prussians? Didn’t battles have their surprises in store, the sudden changes of fortune that history looked at in wonderment? This devil of a man went on to say that Bazaine was on the march and was expected before the evening, and although it was actually Belgium he pointed to, when indicating the route Bazaine was taking, Maurice indulged in one of those upsurges of hope without which he could not live. Perhaps this was the moment of revenge after all.
‘What are we waiting for, sir?’ he ventured to ask. ‘Aren’t we going to start?’
Rochas made a sign meaning that he had no orders. Then after a pause:
‘Has anyone seen the captain?’
There was no answer. Jean recollected having seen him stealing away after dark towards Sedan, but a prudent soldier should never see an officer when off duty. So he was keeping his mouth shut, when turning round he saw a shadowy form coming along the hedge.
‘Here he is,’ he said.
It was indeed Captain Beaudoin. He amazed them all by the smartness of his dress – his spotless uniform and polished boots contrasted violently with the bedraggled state of the lieutenant. Moreover there was about him a certain elegance, something of the lady-killer in his white hands and curled moustache, a vague perfume of Persian lilac such as pervades the well-stocked dressing-room of a pretty woman.
‘Just look at that!’ sneered Loubet. ‘So the captain’s found his luggage again!’
But nobody smiled because he was known to be difficult. He was detested and kept his men in their places. A real bastard, according to Rochas. Ever since the first reverses he had looked positively outraged, and the disaster that everybody had foreseen seemed to him bad form rather than anything else. A convinced Bonapartist and heading for the highest promotion, backed up by several salons, he felt his fortune sinking into all this mud. It was said that he had a very fine tenor voice to which he already owed a great deal. Not without intelligence, though knowing nothing about his profession, he was solely concerned with being acceptable, and he was also very brave, if necessary, but no fanatic.
‘What a fog!’ was all he said, thankful to find his own company again which he had spent the last half-hour looking for as he was afraid of being lost.
Immediately after that an order at last came through and the battalion moved forward. New billows of fog must have been coming up from the Meuse, for they almost groped their way along in a sort of whitish dew coming down in a fine drizzle. At that moment Maurice was struck by a vision – Colonel de Vineuil suddenly looming ahead, motionless on his horse at the junction of two roads, very tall and pale, like a marble statue of despair, his mount shivering in the morning cold with his nostrils open and turned away towards the guns. But most striking of all, ten paces to the rear the regimental flag, already out of its cover and held by the lieutenant on duty and flapping in the soft moving whiteness of the vapour, seemed to be up in a sky of dreams, an apparition of glory, trembling and on the point of vanishing away. The golden eagle was soaking wet and the silk tricolor, on which the names of victories were embroidered, looked faded and dirty, riddled with old wounds, and the only thing to stand out from all this dimness was the gleaming enamel of the arms of the cross of honour attached to the tassels.
Flag and colonel disappeared, swallowed up in a new cloud, and the battalion still advanced without knowing where it was going, as though in damp cotton wool. They had come