The Debacle - Emile Zola [231]
‘Oh,’ said the first, with his loud southern chatter, ‘they’re not more than three days gone… They died at Raffins farm, where there is a bad epidemic among the animals.’
‘Procumbit humi bos,’ declaimed the other, the ex-process-server, whose excessive taste for little girls had lost him his job and who liked airing his Latin quotations.
Old Fouchard went on shaking his head and running down the goods, which he pretended to find too far gone. But he concluded as he went into the kitchen with the three men:
‘Oh well, they’ll have to put up with it… It’s as well that they’ve no meat left at Raucourt. When you’re hungry you eat anything, don’t you?’
Inwardly delighted, he hailed Silvine who was just coming in from putting Charlot to bed.
‘Bring me some glasses and we’ll all drink to Bismarck going to kingdom come.’
Fouchard kept on good terms with the guerrillas of Dieulet woods, who for nearly three months had been emerging from their impenetrable thickets at dusk and prowling on the roads, killing and robbing any Prussians they could surprise, and falling back on the farms and extorting money from the peasants when enemy game was scarce. They were the terror of the villages, particularly because after every attack on a convoy or killing of a sentry the German authorities took reprisals on places in the district, accusing them of aiding and abetting, levying fines, imprisoning mayors, burning cottages. Much as they would have liked to, the peasants did not betray Sambuc and his band simply out of fear of stopping a bullet round some corner if the deal misfired.
Fouchard had had the extraordinary idea of doing business with them. Combing the countryside in all directions as they did, ditches as well as cowsheds, they had become suppliers of dead animals. Not an ox or a sheep gave up the ghost for three leagues around but they stole it at night and brought it to him. He paid them in provisions, especially bread, batches of loaves that Silvine baked specially for them. Besides, although he had no particular liking for them, he had a sneaking admiration for the guerrillas, bright lads who made a good thing out of it by cocking a snook at everybody; and although he was making a fortune out of his dealings with the Prussians, he had a good laugh to himself, a savage laugh, whenever he heard that another of them had been found by the roadside with his throat cut.
‘Your good health,’ he said, clinking glasses with the three men.
Then, wiping his lips with the back of his hand:
‘By the way, they’ve made quite a thing of those two Uhlans they picked up near Villecourt, with their heads chopped off… You know Villecourt’s been on fire since yesterday, what they call a sentence on the village to punish them for harbouring you… Must be careful, you know, and don’t you come back here too soon. We’ll deliver your bread elsewhere.’
Sambuc shrugged and gave a fearful sneer. Never you fear, the Prussians could run after him! Then he suddenly came over angry and banged the table with his fist.
‘God Almighty, the Uhlans are all very well, but between you and me it’s that other bloke I should like to lay my hands on, you know, the spy, the one who worked for you…’
‘Goliath, you mean.’
Silvine, who had taken up her sewing again, stopped dead and listened.
‘That’s it, Goliath! Ah, the bastard, he knows the Dieulet woods like the back of his hand, and he can get us pinched one of these mornings, especially as he boasted at the Croix de Malte today that he’d settle our account within a week… A dirty sod who for certain must have guided the Bavarians the day before Beaumont, don’t you think so, you chaps?’
‘As true as that candle’s lighting us,’ Cabasse agreed.
‘Per amica silentia lunae,’ added Ducat, whose Latin tags sometimes went awry.
Sambuc shook the table with another thump of his fist.
‘That swine is judged and condemned! If some day you get to know which way he’s going, let me know, and his head will join those of the Uhlans in the Meuse. By God, yes, you can take it from me!’
In the silence that followed Silvine watched