The Debacle - Emile Zola [125]
‘Oh, what the hell! It’s too ridiculous!’
So he wandered about in Sedan, a citizen full of curiosity and not wanting to miss any of the sights, but also full of growing anxiety. What was it all going to lead to? If the army was beaten wouldn’t the town be in for a very bad time? The answers to these questions remained obscure and depended too much on the turn of events. But that did not prevent him from trembling for his mill, his buildings in the rue Maqua, even though he had moved away all his valuables and hidden them in a safe place. He went to the Hôtel de Ville and found the council in permanent session. He hung about there for a long time but learned nothing new unless it was that the battle was going very badly. The army did not know whom to obey, moved backwards by General Ducrot during the two hours of his command and forwards again by General de Wimpffen who had succeeded him, and these incomprehensible comings and goings, positions they had to reconquer after abandoning them, the whole absence of any plan or energetic leadership were precipitating the disaster.
Next Delaherche moved on to the Sub-Prefecture to find out whether the Emperor had reappeared or not. The only news anyone could give him was about Marshal MacMahon whose wound, not at all dangerous, had been dressed by a surgeon and who was now peacefully in bed. But towards eleven, while he was still tramping the streets, he was held up for a moment in the Grande-Rue in front of the Hôtel de l’Europe by a slow procession of horsemen covered with dust whose weary mounts were going at a walking pace. At their head he recognized the Emperor, returning after spending four hours on the field of battle. Death hadn’t any use for him, obviously. In the anguished sweat of this ride through defeat the make-up had gone from his cheeks and his waxed moustache had got soft and drooping, the ashen face had taken on the agonized stupor of a dying man. An officer who dismounted in front of the hotel began explaining to a group of people the route they had followed, from La Moncelle to Givonne all along the little valley, among the soldiers of the 1st corps whom the Saxons had thrown back on to the right bank of the stream; and they had come along the road in the cutting of Fond de Givonne, in such a jam already that even if the Emperor had wanted to go back to his front line troops he could only have done so with the greatest difficulty. Besides, what was the good?
As Delaherche was listening to these details a loud report shook the neighbourhood. It was a shell that had demolished a chimney in the rue Sainte-Barbe, near the Keep. There was a panic, and women screamed. He had flattened himself against a wall when another explosion shattered the windows of a house near-by. This was getting terrible if they were bombarding Sedan, and he raced home to the rue Maqua, so possessed with anxiety to know the worst that without stopping he rushed up to the roof where there was a flat terrace with a view over the town and its surroundings.
He was at once reassured, for they were firing right over the town and the German batteries on La Marfée and Frénois were aiming beyond the built-up area so as to rake the plateau of Algérie. He even found the flight of the shells interesting – the immense curve of light smoke they left above Sedan, like invisible birds leaving trails of grey feathers. To begin with it seemed clear that the few shells that had smashed roofs round him had been strays. They were not yet bombarding the town. But on