The Debacle - Emile Zola [177]
Then he noticed the bruise on Henriette’s forehead, and remembered that he had not yet been able to speak to her.
‘Oh yes, of course, you went there, and that’s where you got that… Oh, poor Weiss!’
Then, seeing from her red eyes that she knew her husband was dead, he let out an appalling detail that the carpenter had just told him.
‘Poor Weiss! It seems they burned him… Yes, they collected the bodies of the civilians they had shot, poured paraffin on them and threw them into the middle of a burning house.’
Henriette listened to this, frozen with horror. Oh God, not even the consolation of claiming and burying her beloved dead, the wind would scatter his ashes! Maurice once again tightened his arms round her, calling her his poor Cinderella in a caressing voice and begging her not to give in to her grief too much – she was so brave!
After a pause Delaherche, who had been at the window watching it getting lighter, turned round quickly to say to the two soldiers:
‘Oh, I forgot… I came up to tell you that down there in the coach-house where they deposited the cash, there’s an officer distributing the money to the men so that the Prussians don’t get it… You should go down, some money might be useful if we aren’t all dead by tonight.’
It was sound advice. Maurice and Jean went down after Henriette had consented to take her brother’s place on the sofa. As for Delaherche, he went through the adjoining room in which Gilberte, with her calm face, was still sleeping like a child, and the sounds of talking and crying had not even made her turn over. And from there he peeped into the room in which his mother was watching over Monsieur de Vineuil, but she had dozed off in her armchair and the colonel, his eyes shut, had not moved, for he was exhausted by fever.
He opened his eyes wide and asked:
‘Well, it’s all over, isn’t it?’
Vexed by this question which caught him just when he was hoping to escape, Delaherche answered angrily, keeping his voice down:
‘Oh yes, all over until it starts again! Nothing’s been signed.’
The colonel went on very softly, beginning to wander again:
‘Oh God, let me die before the end!… I can’t hear the guns. Why have they stopped firing?… Up there at Saint-Menges and Fleigneux we’re commanding all the routes, and we’ll throw the Prussians into the Meuse if they try to come round Sedan and attack us. The town is at our feet like an obstacle strengthening our positions… Come on the 7th! We’ll take the lead, the 12th will cover the retreat…’
His hands went up and down on the sheet as though he were riding his horse in his dream. Gradually they slackened and his words thickened and he fell asleep again. The hands stopped, and he remained motionless, knocked out.
‘Have a rest,’ Delaherche whispered. ‘I’ll come back when I get some news.’
After making sure that he had not awakened his mother he made his escape and disappeared.
Down in the coach-house Jean and Maurice did find a paymaster, sitting on a kitchen chair with only a little whitewood table in front of him, and no pen, no receipts, no papers of any kind, doling out fortunes. All he did was thrust his hands into money-bags bursting with gold coins, and without even bothering to count he quickly put handfuls into the képis of all the sergeants of the 7th corps who were passing him in line. It was understood that the sergeants would share out the sums among the soldiers in their half-sections. Each one received it awkwardly, like a ration of coffee or meat, and went off in embarrassment, emptying the képi into his pockets so as not to be out in the street in broad daylight with all that gold. Not a word was being said, and there was no sound except the clear tinkle of the coins, to the amazement of these poor devils seeing themselves loaded with riches when there wasn’t a loaf of bread or litre of wine left to be bought.
When Jean and Maurice came up the officer at first held back the handful of gold louis he was holding.