The Debacle - Emile Zola [228]
He confused him so with his flow of words, with such far-fetched theories that the captain furiously cut him short.
‘That’s enough of that! You’ve been warned, take care! And there’s something else. We suspect all of you in this village of harbouring the guerrillas from the Dieulet woods, who killed another of our sentries the day before yesterday. So take care, you understand?’
When the Prussians had gone old Fouchard shrugged his shoulders and sneered with infinite contempt. Cattle that had died of disease, well of course that’s what he sold them, that’s what he made them eat, and nothing else! All the corpses the peasants brought him that had died of diseases and the ones he picked up himself in the ditches – wasn’t that good enough for those filthy bastards?
He winked as he murmured with triumphant glee, and turning to Henriette, who was feeling very relieved:
‘And then to think, my dear, that there are people who say I’m unpatriotic!… Let them do as much, I say, let them give ’em old carrion and pocket their money. Unpatriotic! Well, for God’s sake! I shall have killed more of them with my dead cows than many a soldier with his rifle!’
But all the same, when he heard the story Jean was worried. If the German authorities suspected that the inhabitants of Remilly harboured the guerrillas from the Dieulet woods they might at any time do house-to-house searches and discover him. He could not bear the thought of compromising his benefactors or causing the least trouble to Henriette. But she prevailed on him to stay a few more days, and he agreed, for his wound was taking a long time to scar over, and he was not strong enough on his legs to join up with one of the fighting regiments in the north or on the Loire.
The days from then until the middle of December were the most disturbing and miserable of their solitude. The cold had become so intense that the stove could not heat the big, empty room. When they looked out of the window at the deep snow on the ground they thought of Maurice buried in a frozen, dead Paris, from which there was no reliable news. They always came back to the same questions. What was he doing? Why didn’t he give any sign of life? They dared not express their awful fears, a wound, sickness, perhaps death. The few odd bits of information that still came through to them in the papers were not calculated to reassure them. After claims of successful sorties, which were always proved false, there had been a rumour of a great victory won on 2 December at Champigny by General Ducrot, but later they knew that the very next day he had abandoned the conquered positions and been forced to recross the Marne. Every hour Paris was being held in a tighter stranglehold, famine was setting in, with potatoes being requisitioned as well as cattle, private people’s gas turned off and soon the streets in darkness, a darkness only streaked by the red paths of shells. Now the two of them could not warm themselves or eat anything without being haunted by a vision of Maurice and two million living souls shut up in that gigantic tomb.
Moreover the news from all directions, north as well as centre, was getting worse. In the north the 22nd army corps, made up of militia, men from supply depots and soldiers and officers who had escaped from the disasters of Sedan and Metz, had had to abandon Amiens and fall back towards Arras, while Rouen had fallen into enemy hands, for a handful of unattached, demoralized men had not seriously defended it. In the centre the victory at Coulmiers won on the 9 November by the army of the Loire had given rise to wild hopes: Orleans reoccupied, the Bavarians in flight, a march on Etampes and the early relief of Paris. But on 5 December Prince Friedrich Karl recaptured Orleans and cut in two the army of the Loire, three corps of which fell back to Vierzon and Bourges while two others under the command of General Chanzy withdrew to Le Mans in a heroic retreat during a whole week of marching and fighting. The Prussians were everywhere,