The Debacle - Emile Zola [158]
Delaherche did not find Rose in the porter’s lodge at the Sub-Prefecture. Every door was open and the rout was setting in. So he went up the stairs, every person he ran into was in a panic and nobody asked him any questions. As he was hesitating on the first floor he saw the girl.
‘Oh, Monsieur Delaherche, it’s all going to pieces… Look sharp if you want to see the Emperor.’
And indeed to his left a door was ajar, and through the opening the Emperor could be seen once again taking his faltering walk between the fireplace and the window. He kept on walking, never stopping in spite of his intolerable pain.
An aide-de-camp had gone in, and he it was who had neglected to shut the door after him, so the Emperor could be heard asking in a voice exhausted with grief:
‘But why, sir, are they still firing, since I had the white flag run up?’
This torture had become unbearable, the gunfire never stopping, but increasing in violence every minute. He could not go near the window without being cut to the heart. More blood, more human lives cut off and through his fault! Every minute added more dead to the pile, pointlessly. Tender-hearted dreamer that he was, he could not stand it, and ten times already he had asked his desperate question of people coming in:
‘But why are they still firing, since I had the white flag run up?’
The aide-de-camp muttered some answer Delaherche could not catch. Not that the Emperor had stopped, for he was continually giving in to his compulsive need to go back to that window where the ceaseless thunder of gunfire made him feel faint. His pallor was more marked than ever, and his long, tragic, drawn face, with the morning’s make-up not properly wiped off, betrayed his agony.
Just then a bustling little man in a dusty uniform, whom Delaherche recognized as General Lebrun, crossed the landing and pushed open the door without having himself announced. At once, yet again, the anguished voice of the Emperor could be heard :
‘But, general, why are they still firing, since I had the white flag run up?’
The aide-de-camp came out and the door was shut, and Delaherche could not hear the general’s reply. The scene had vanished.
‘Oh,’ Rose said again, ‘it’s all going to pieces, I can tell from those gentlemen’s faces. Now there’s that cloth of mine, that I shan’t see again! Some of them say it’s been torn up… In all this it’s the Emperor who makes me feel so sorry, for he’s more of a sick man than the marshal, and would be better off in bed than in that room where he’s wearing himself out with always walking up and down.’
She was deeply moved, and her pretty fair face was full of sincere pity. So Delaherche, whose Bonapartist fervour had been cooling off remarkably for two days, thought she was a bit silly. But downstairs he stayed with her a minute or two longer watching out for General Lebrun’s departure. When he came down again Delaherche followed him.
General Lebrun had explained to the Emperor that if he wanted to ask for an armistice a letter signed by the commander-in-chief of the French army would have to be delivered to the commander-in-chief of the German forces. Then he had undertaken to write this letter and go in search of General de Wimpffen who would sign it. He was now bearing the letter, but was only too afraid of not finding the general, not knowing whereabouts on the battlefield he might be. Moreover the pack in Sedan was so thick that he had to ride his horse at a walking pace, which enabled Delaherche to keep up with him as far as the