The Debacle - Emile Zola [16]
He was bursting with joy, and all the traditional gaiety of the French soldier rang in his triumphant laugh. It was the legendary French trooper going through the world between his girl on one side and a bottle of good wine on the other, conquering the world singing ribald choruses. One corporal and four men, and great armies licked the dust.
Suddenly his voice roared out:
‘Beaten! What, France beaten! Those Prussian swine beat us! Us?’
He came up and took Weiss roughly by the lapel of his coat, and his tall, lean body, the body of a knight-errant, expressed utter contempt for the enemy, whoever he was, and he couldn’t care less about time and place.
‘Just you listen, Mister… If the Prussians dare to come here we’ll send them back home with kicks up the arse. You understand, kicks up the arse all the way to Berlin!’
He made a superb gesture, with the serenity of a child, the candid conviction of the innocent who knows nothing and fears nothing.
‘Good God, that’s how it is because that’s how it is!’
Dazed and almost convinced, Weiss hastened to declare that nothing could suit him better. And Maurice, who was keeping quiet, not daring to rush in with his superior officer present, finally joined in the burst of laughter, for this great oaf of a man, who was a fool in his opinion, warmed his heart. Jean too had been nodding his agreement with the lieutenant’s every word. He also had been at Solferino, where it had rained so hard. Now that was what you called talking! If all the officers had talked like that nobody would have cared a damn whether there weren’t any stewpans or flannel body-belts!
For a long time now it had been quite dark, and still Rochas was waving his great limbs about in the night. He had only ever managed to read through one book, the victories of Napoleon, which had found its way from a pedlar’s box into his knapsack. He was thoroughly wound up now, and all his learning gushed forth in one impetuous cry:
‘Austria whacked at Castiglione, Marengo, Austerlitz, Wagram! Prussia whacked at Eylau, Jena, Lützen! Russia whacked at Friedland, Smolensk, Borodino! Spain and England whacked everywhere! The whole world whacked from top to bottom, one side to the other! And are we to be whacked now? Why? How? Has the world been changed?’
He drew himself higher still, raising his arm like a flagstaff.
‘Look! There has been fighting over yonder today and we are expecting news. Well, I’ll tell you what the news is… They have whacked the Prussians, whacked them so as to leave them neither wings nor feet, so that we’ll have to sweep up the crumbs!’
Just then a great moan of grief swept across the sombre sky. Was it some night bird’s plaint? Was it some mysterious voice from afar, full of woe? The whole camp shuddered in the darkness, and the anxiety which had spread because of the slow arrival of dispatches was thereby heightened to fever pitch. In the distant farmhouse the light by which the headquarters staff were anxiously waiting through the night burned up higher, with the straight, still flame of an altar candle.
It was now ten o’clock, and Gaude rose up from the black ground into which he had disappeared and was the first to blow lights out. Other bugles answered and tailed off one by one in a dying fanfare, as though they were already stupefied with sleep. Weiss, who had not realized it was so late, put his arms tenderly round Maurice: good luck and keep smiling! He would give Henriette a kiss for her brother and go and give his love to Uncle Fouchard. And as he was really going a rumour ran round, a sort of feverish excitement. It was a great victory won by MacMahon: the Crown Prince of Prussia taken prisoner with twenty-five thousand men, the enemy pushed back, destroyed, leaving its guns and baggage in our hands.
‘There you are!’ was all Rochas exclaimed, in his booming voice.
Then, overjoyed, he ran after Weiss who was hurrying back to Mulhouse:
‘With kicks up the arse, sir, kicks up the arse all the way to Berlin!’
A quarter of an hour later another dispatch