The Debacle - Emile Zola [246]
‘So you have come to consult us about Papa Fouchard’s fate?’ Delaherche went on. ‘I’m so sorry to have to go away tonight… But my wife will fix it up for you, she’s irresistible and gets everything she wants.’
He laughed away as he said this with complete openness, merely flattered by this power of hers, for which he took some personal credit. Then he suddenly went on:
‘By the way, my dear, didn’t Edmond tell you what he has found?’
‘No, what?’ Gilberte gaily asked, turning her pretty, beaming eyes on the young sergeant.
The latter blushed as though overcome with rapture every time a woman looked at him like that.
‘Oh, Madame, it’s only some old lace that you would be sorry not to have for your mauve négligée. I was lucky enough yesterday to discover five metres of old Bruges point, really very lovely and quite cheap. The lady is coming to show it to you quite soon.’
She was thrilled and could have kissed him.
‘Oh you are nice! I’ll see you get your reward!’
Then as a pot of foie-gras, bought in Belgium, was being served, the conversation turned for a moment to the fish in the Meuse which were being poisoned and dying, and led to the danger of an epidemic threatening Sedan when the thaw came. Some cases had already occurred in November. Although immediately after the battle six thousand francs had been spent on cleaning the town and burning piles of kit, ammunition pouches and all sorts of nasty rubbish, the surrounding country was still full of horrible stenches whenever the weather was at all muggy, for the ground was so full of corpses not properly buried and covered with only a few centimetres of earth. Everywhere graves made hummocks in the fields, the earth cracked from internal pressure and the putrefaction oozed out and polluted the air. And now during these last days a new source of infection had been found – the Meuse itself – although over twelve hundred bodies of horses had already been pulled out. The generally held view had been that there was not a single human corpse left in the river when a gamekeeper, looking carefully at some water over two metres deep, had noticed some white objects in it that might have been taken for stones. It was a carpet of corpses, bodies that had been slit open and so had never swollen up and floated to the surface. They had been lying there for nearly four months, in this water, among the weeds. Arms, legs and heads could be fished up with boathooks, and sometimes the mere strength of the current could detach and carry away a hand. The water went muddy and great bubbles of gas came up, burst and poisoned the air with a foul stench.
‘It’s a good thing it is freezing,’ remarked Delaherche. ‘But as soon as the snow has gone we shall have a thorough search and disinfect the whole thing, otherwise we shall all be goners.’
As his wife laughingly begged him to change to some nicer topic while they were eating, he concluded lamely:
‘Ah well, the Meuse fish will be chancy for quite a time.’
By now they had finished and coffee was being served, when the maid said that Captain von Gartlauben was asking for the favour of being allowed in for a moment. There was a sensation because he had never come at this time, in the middle of the day. Delaherche at once said that he must come in, seeing a fortunate circumstance that would allow him to introduce Henriette. The captain, seeing another woman, was even more extravagantly polite. He even accepted a cup of coffee, which he took without sugar as he had seen many people do in Paris. As a matter of fact the only reason