The Debacle - Emile Zola [182]
In Sedan the paraphernalia of the imperial household, the cumbersone, accursed baggage, had remained forlorn behind the sub-prefect’s lilac bushes. Nobody knew how to spirit it all away out of the sight of the poor people dying of hunger, for the look of aggressive insolence it had acquired and the dreadful irony due to defeat were becoming so intolerable. They had to wait for a very dark night. The horses, the carriages, the vans, with their silver casseroles, spits, hampers of vintage wine, took their leave of Sedan in deepest mystery and went off into Belgium too, through dark byways, almost noiselessly, like thieves in the night.
PART THREE
1
THROUGHOUT the endless day of the battle Silvine had never stopped watching Sedan from the hill on which old Fouchard’s farmhouse stood, and in the thunder and smoke of guns she was tortured by the thought of Honoré. And the following day her anxiety increased because of the impossibility of getting accurate news, with Prussians guarding the roads, refusing to answer questions and in any case knowing nothing themselves. Yesterday’s bright sun had gone and rain showers cast a melancholy gloom over the valley.
Towards evening old Fouchard, also finding his self-imposed silence a torment and not giving his son much thought, but anxious to know how he might be affected by other people’s troubles, was standing at his door hoping to see something happen when he noticed a tall fellow in a smock, who had been prowling along the road for a minute or two looking very ill at ease. When he recognized him he was so surprised that he called out in spite of three passing Prussians:
‘What, is that you, Prosper?’
The Chasseur d’Afrique frantically signed to him to be quiet, then he approached and said softly:
‘Yes, it’s me. I’ve had enough of fighting for nothing, so I’ve sloped off… I say, Pa Fouchard, I suppose you don’t want a farm-hand?’
At once the old man recovered all his wariness. As a matter of fact he did want one. But there was no point in saying so.
‘A new hand, oh dear no, not just now… But come in all the same and have a drink. I’m certainly not going to leave you high and dry in the middle of the road.’
Indoors, Silvine was putting the stew on the fire and little Chariot was hanging on to her skirt, playing and laughing. At first she did not recognize Prosper, although he had worked with her once, and it was only when she was bringing two glasses and a bottle of wine that she looked at him. She uttered an exclamation, but she was only thinking about Honoré.
‘Oh, you’ve come from there, haven’t you? Is Honoré all right?’
Prosper started to answer, then hesitated. For two days he had been living in a daze, going through a violent sequence of vague things that had left no clear impression on his mind. True, he thought he had seen Honoré’s dead body lying over his gun, but he could no longer vouch for it, and why upset people when you’re not sure?
‘Honoré,’ he mused, ‘I don’t know… I can’t say…’
She looked hard at him and insisted.
‘You haven’t seen him, then?’
He slowly spread his hands and shook his head.
‘How do you think I can know? Such a lot of things have happened, such a lot! You see, out of all this bloody battle I should have my work cut out to tell you as much as that! No, not even the places I have been through… It makes you just silly, it really does!’
He drank off a glass of wine and sat there miserably gazing far away, into the mists of his memory. ‘All I can remember is that night was already falling when I came to… When I had my fall while charging, the sun was high in the sky… I must have been there for hours, with my right leg crushed under poor Zephir, who had had a bullet right in the chest… I can tell you, it wasn’t a bit funny being in that position, with heaps of dead comrades all round and not even a cat about, with the thought that I was going to peg out too unless somebody came