The Debacle - Emile Zola [194]
On the Meuse bridge the donkey was stopped by a great crush of people. The officer commanding the post guarding the bridge was suspicious, thinking there might be some smuggling of bread or meat, and insisting on checking what was in the cart. He pulled back the cover, took one horrified look at the corpse and waved them through. But still they could not get on because the crowd got denser; it was one of the first convoys of prisoners being taken to the Iges peninsula by a detachment of Prussians. The herd went on and on, men shoving each other and treading on each other’s heels, looking ashamed in their tattered uniforms and averting their eyes, and their hunched backs and dangling arms suggested beaten men without even a knife left to cut their own throats. The harsh commands of their guards urged them on like the lashing of a whip in their mute confusion, in which the only other sound was the flop-flop of heavy boots in the thick mud. There had been yet another shower, and nothing could be more distressing than this rabble of humiliated soldiers, looking like tramps or beggars on the road.
Prosper, as a veteran African campaigner, felt his heart thumping with helpless rage. Suddenly he nudged Silvine and pointed at two of the passing soldiers. He had recognized Maurice and Jean being taken off with the rest, walking side by side like two brothers, and when the little cart started up again at the tail of the convoy he was able to follow them with his eye as far as Torcy, on the flat road leading to Iges through gardens and small-holdings.
‘Ah’, murmured Silvine, glancing towards Honoré’s body and distressed at what she saw, ‘perhaps the dead are happiest!’
Night caught them at Wadelincourt, and it had been dark for a long time when they got back to Remilly. Seeing the body of his son old Fouchard was overcome with amazement, for he was convinced it would never be found. He had spent the day concluding a nice bit of business. The current price for officer’s horses stolen on the battlefield was twenty francs each, and he had got three for forty-five.
2
AS THE column of prisoners was leaving Torcy there was such a crush that Maurice was cut off from Jean. He tried to catch up but got even more lost. By the time he reached the bridge over the canal which cuts across the isthmus of the Iges peninsula, he was mixed up with a lot of Chasseurs d’Afrique and could not get back to his own regiment.
The bridge was defended by two guns facing the peninsula. Immediately past the canal the Prussian headquarters had set up a post in a large house under an officer responsible for receiving and guarding the prisoners. The formalities were brief, the incoming men were simply counted like sheep as the crowd came through and not much notice was taken of uniforms or numbers, after which the crowds poured in and camped wherever the roads took them.
Maurice thought he could venture to speak to a Bavarian officer who was calmly smoking as he straddled a chair.
‘Which way for the 106th regiment of the line, sir?’
Was this one of the few officers who did not understand French? Or did he find it amusing to misdirect a poor devil of a soldier? He smiled, raised his hand and pointed straight on.
Although he belonged to this part of the world, Maurice had never been into the peninsula, so from then onwards he was on a voyage of discovery, as though he had been cast up on a desert island. At first he skirted along the side of La Tour à Glaire on his left, a fine country house with its charming little park on the river Meuse. The road next followed the river, flowing to the right at the foot of steep banks. Gradually the road climbed in wide bends, going round the little hill in the centre of the peninsula, and there were some disused quarry workings with narrow wandering paths. Still further, at water level, was a mill. Then the road turned away and went downhill again to the village of Iges, built on