The Debacle - Emile Zola [224]
Towards the end of October Jean was much better. The doctor agreed to take out the tube, although he was still worried; yet the wound seemed to be drying up quite quickly. Already he was convalescent and getting up, spending hours walking about the room, sitting at the window, looking sadly at the flying clouds. Then he began to get bored and talked of doing something to occupy himself and be of some help on the farm. One of his private worries was the money question, for he felt sure that in a good six weeks his two hundred francs must have been spent. So to keep old Fouchard in a good humour Henriette must have had to pay. This thought upset him and he did not dare bring it out into the open with Henriette, and so he felt a considerable relief when it was decided that he would be given out to be a new employee whose job was indoor work with Silvine, while Prosper got on with the crops outside.
In spite of the terrible times an additional hand was not superfluous at old Fouchard’s, for his business affairs were doing well. While the whole region was in agonies and bleeding in every limb he had contrived to increase his trade as itinerant butcher to such an extent that he was now slaughtering three or four times as many animals. It was said that by 31 August he had had highly profitable dealings with the Prussians. The man who on the 30th had defended his door against the soldiers of the 7th corps, with his gun cocked and refusing to sell them a single crumb, shouting that his house was empty, had set up as a general trader on the 31st at the appearance of the first enemy soldier, and had unearthed from his cellars huge quantities of provisions, and brought back vast flocks from remote fastnesses where they had been hidden. From that day onwards he had been one of the biggest suppliers of meat to the German armies, and quite astonishing in his skill at finding a market for his goods and getting paid between two requisitions. Other people suffered from the often brutal commandeerings of the victors, but he had not yet supplied a single bushel of flour, cask of wine or quarter of beef without picking up good hard cash at the end of the transaction. This gave rise to much talk in Remilly, and it was considered pretty low on the part of a man who had just lost his son in the war and never went to visit his grave, which Silvine was the only one to look after. Yet all the same he was respected for making money when even the most astute came off so badly. And he just grinned, shrugged and growled in his straight-from-the-shoulder manner:
‘Patriotic, I’m more patriotic than all of them put together!… Is it being patriotic to bloody well fill the Prussians with food up to their eyes, free, gratis and for nothing? I make them pay for everything… we shall see, we shall see how it all works out later on!’
By the second day Jean stood too long on his feet, and the doctor’s private fears were realized – the wound reopened and there was considerable inflammation and swelling of the leg, so that he had to go back to bed. Dalichamp came to suspect that a splinter of bone must still be there and that the effort of the two days of exercise had finally freed it. He looked for it and was fortunate enough to be able to extract it, but only at the cost of a shock to the system with a very high temperature which exhausted Jean once again. He had never so far fallen into such a state of weakness. So Henriette took up her position again as faithful nurse in this room which was getting gloomier and colder with the approach of winter. It was now the beginning of November, the east wind had already brought a flurry of snow, and it was very cold on the bare tiled floor between these four bare walls. As there was no fireplace they decided to have a stove put in, and its roaring enlivened their solitude.
The days went monotonously by, and this first week of his relapse was certainly for Jean and Henriette the most miserable of their long enforced intimacy. Would the suffering never end? Was there always going to be fresh danger without