The Debacle - Emile Zola [148]
But he slowly got up again, felt himself all over, nothing wrong, not a scratch. Why not run away? There was still time, he could reach that low wall in a few bounds and would be safe. His fear came back and was turning into panic. He took one leap and was rushing away when he was checked by a bond stronger than death. No, it was impossible, he couldn’t abandon Jean. His whole body would have bled, the brotherly love that had grown up between this peasant and himself went down into the depths of his being, the very root of life itself. Perhaps it went back to the earliest days of the world, and it was as if there were only two men left in existence, and the one could not abandon the other without abandoning himself.
If Maurice had not eaten that crust of bread under fire an hour before he would never have found the strength to do what he now did. Not that he could remember anything about it later. He must have got Jean up on to his shoulders and then dragged himself along, with a score of failures and fresh starts, through stubble and briars, tripping over every boulder but somehow getting up again. Only invincible will-power kept him going and gave him strength that would have carried a mountain. Behind the low wall he found Rochas and the few men of the squad, still firing, defending the flag which the subaltern was holding under his arm.
No line of retreat had been indicated to the various army corps in the event of failure. This muddle and lack of foresight left each general free to act as he thought fit, and now they all found themselves being thrown back into Sedan in the formidable clutches of the victorious German armies. The second division of the 7th corps was withdrawing in reasonably good order, but the remnants of the other divisions, intermingled with those of the 1st corps, were already rushing towards the town in a frightful rabble, a torrent of anger and terror sweeping along men and beasts alike.
And then Maurice saw with joy that Jean’s eyes were opening, and as he ran over to a little stream for water to wash his face, he was very surprised to see once again on his right, down in a quiet valley, sheltered by the steep hills, the same peasant he had seen in the morning, who was still slowly ploughing, guiding his plough behind a big white horse. Why lose a day? They might be fighting, but that was no reason why the corn should stop growing and the world stop living.
6
UP on the flat roof where he had gone to take in the situation, Delaherche once again became impatient to know. Of course he could see that the shells were passing over the town and that the three or four which had damaged the roofs of neighbouring houses must be just casual replies to such slow and inefficient fire from the Palatinate fort. But he could not make out anything about the battle itself, and there was inside him an urgent need for information, sharpened by fear of losing his fortune and his life in the catastrophe. So he went down, leaving his telescope trained in the direction where the German batteries were.
But when he got downstairs he was held for a moment by the state of the central garden of the factory. It was nearly one, and the casualty station was crammed with wounded. The line of vehicles coming through the gateway was endless. Already the regulation two-wheel or four-wheel carts were insufficient, and now artillery ammunition waggons were appearing, forage or supply vans, anything that could be commandeered on the battlefield, and now indeed there were even traps and farm carts taken from farms and hitched to stray horses. Into them had been piled wounded picked up by the first-aid men