a moment of hesitation because the town seemed so dark still in the impenetrable fog which enveloped it. The light of dawn had not reached down to the damp cobbles between the black walls of the old houses. In the rue au Beurre all she saw was two drunken Algerians with a girl in a sleazy bar lit by one flickering candle. She had to turn into the rue Maqua before she found any sign of life – shapes of soldiers furtively making their way along the pavements, probably deserters looking for somewhere to hide; a tall cuirassier wandering about, sent to find his captain and knocking violently on doors; a stream of bourgeois sweating with fear because they had dallied so long in deciding to pile into a cart and try to see whether there was still time to reach Bouillon in Belgium, where half Sedan had been emigrating over the past two days. She instinctively made for the Sub-Prefecture, feeling sure she would get some information there, and as she wanted to avoid meeting anybody she thought she would cut through side streets. But at the rue du Four and rue des Laboureurs she could not get through, for there was an unbroken line of guns, gun-carriages and ammunition waggons that must have been parked in this back street the day before and apparently forgotten. There was not even a single man guarding them. It struck cold into her heart to see all this useless artillery dismally sleeping abandoned in these deserted alleys. So she had to retrace her steps through the Place du College towards the Grand-Rue where, in front of the Hôtel de l’Europe, orderlies were holding horses in readiness for high officers whose loud voices could be heard coming from the dining-room, which was brilliantly lit. On the Place du Rivage and Place Turenne there were still more people, groups of worried townsfolk, women and children mingling with some of the soldiers who had deserted and were running wild, and there she saw a general come swearing out of the Hôtel de la Croix d’Or and gallop off madly without bothering about knocking everyone down. For a moment it looked as if she might go into the Hôtel de Ville, but in the end she took the rue du Pont de Meuse and went on to the Sub-Prefecture.
Never before had Sedan given her this impression of being a tragic, doomed town as it did now, seen in the murky, misty early morning. The very houses seemed dead, and many had been abandoned and empty for two days, others remained hermetically sealed and one sensed inside them a frightened insomnia. It was a really shivery morning, with streets still half deserted and only peopled by anxious shadows or enlivened by some hurried departure, with doubtful characters still hanging about since the day before. It was beginning to get lighter and soon the town would become crowded and overwhelmed by the disaster. It was half-past five and the noise of the gunfire, deadened between these lofty, dark buildings, could hardly be heard.
At the Sub-Prefecture Henriette saw the concierge’s daughter Rose, a fair, delicate-looking pretty little thing, who worked at the Delaherche mill. She went straight to the lodge. The mother was not there, but Rose greeted her in her charming way.
‘Oh, dear lady, we’re simply dropping! Mother has just gone for a little rest. Just think, all night long and we have had to be on our feet with these continual comings and goings!’
And without waiting to be asked, she talked on and on, thoroughly worked up about the extraordinary things she had seen since the day before.
‘Oh, the marshal slept all right, he did. But the poor Emperor! No, you can’t imagine what he is going through. Just fancy, yesterday evening I went upstairs to help put out some linen. Well, going into the room next to the bathroom I heard groans, yes, groans, as though somebody was dying. And there I stood trembling, and my blood ran cold when I realized that it was the Emperor… It seems he has some awful illness that makes him cry out like that. When there are people about he holds it in, but as soon as he is alone it gets the better of his self-control, and he shouts and