The Debacle - Emile Zola [14]
‘A beating,’ Weiss said eventually. ‘May God hear your prayer!’
Jean, who was still sitting a few yards away, pricked up his ears, and Lieutenant Rochas, who had overheard this wish with its tremulous doubt, stopped short to listen.
‘What!’ said Maurice. ‘Aren’t you completely confident? Do you think a defeat is possible?’
His brother-in-law raised a shaking hand to stop him, and his kindly face suddenly looked tired and pale.
‘Defeat, God preserve us from that! You know I belong to this province, and my grandfather and grandmother were murdered by the Cossacks in 1814, and whenever I think of invasion my fists clench of their own accord, and I would fight in my ordinary clothes like a trooper!… Defeat, no, no! I refuse to consider the possibility.’
His emotion subsided, and he slumped his shoulders in utter weariness.
‘But all the same, look here, I’m uneasy… I know my Alsace well, and I’ve just come through it again on business, and we Alsatians have seen what was staring the generals in the face but they have refused to see. Oh, we wanted war against Prussia, and had been waiting a long time to settle that old score. But that didn’t prevent our having good neighbourly relations with Baden and Bavaria, for we’ve all got family or friends across the Rhine. We thought they were longing like us to take down the insufferable pride of the Prussians. And calm and resolute though we may be, we’ve been giving way to impatience and worry for the past fortnight as we’ve seen how everything is going from bad to worse. From the moment war was declared they have let the enemy cavalry terrify villages, reconnoitre the terrain, cut telegraph wires. Baden and Bavaria are mobilizing and enormous troop movements are going on in the Palatinate, and information from all sides, markets, fairs and suchlike, proves that the frontier is threatened. And when the inhabitants, the mayors of communes, now thoroughly scared, rush to report all that to officers passing through, the latter merely shrug their shoulders: cowardly hallucinations, the enemy is miles away… When not an hour should have been lost, days and days go by! What can they be waiting for? The whole of Germany to fall on top of us?’
His voice was soft and heartbroken, as though he were repeating these things aloud to himself after having thought them over for a long time.
‘Oh, and I know Germany well, too, and the terrible thing is that all you people seem to know as little about it as you do about China… Maurice, you remember my cousin Gunther, who came last spring and looked me up in Sedan. He is a cousin on my mother’s side, his mother was my mother’s sister and she married a man in Berlin. And he is typical of them in his hatred of France. Now he is serving as an officer in the Prussian Guard. I can still hear his voice as he said to me that evening when I saw him off at the station: “If France declares war on us she will be beaten.” ’
This made Lieutenant Rochas, who had contained himself up to then, come forward in a rage. A man of nearly fifty, he was a tall, thin fellow with a long, lantern-jawed face, tanned and leathern. His huge hook nose came down over a wide, strong but good-natured mouth with an untidy bristling grey moustache. Now he went right off the deep end and bellowed in a thundering voice:
‘Here, what are you fucking well doing, discouraging the men!’
Without taking part himself in the quarrel Jean thought that really the lieutenant was right, for although he was beginning to be surprised at the long delays and the muddle they were in, he had never had any doubt either about the bloody good hiding they were going to give the Prussians. That was a