The Debacle - Emile Zola [32]
It was past the canal, as you enter the village of Courcelles, that he found the meal of his dreams. He had been told the day before that the Emperor was putting up in one of the grander houses of the village, and he had gone that way for a walk out of curiosity. He remembered noticing this inn on a corner, its arbour hanging with fine bunches of grapes already golden and ripe. Beneath this climbing vine there were some tables painted green, and through the open door could be seen the huge kitchen with its ticking clock, Epinal prints gummed to the walls amidst the crockery, and the massive hostess turning the spit. Behind the inn there was a bowling alley. It was friendly, gay and pretty, the typical old-fashioned French eating-house.
A nice buxom girl came up, showing her fine teeth.
‘Are you having lunch, sir?’
‘Yes, rather! Give me some eggs, a cutlet and cheese… Oh, and some white wine!’
He called her back.
‘Tell me, isn’t it in one of these houses that the Emperor is staying?’
‘Yes, look, sir, the one straight in front of you. You can’t see the house itself, it’s behind that high wall with the trees hiding it.’
He went into the arbour, loosening his belt for comfort, choosing a table on which the sun, filtering through the creepers, cast flecks of gold. But his mind kept coming back to the high yellow wall guarding the Emperor. It was indeed a hidden, mysterious house, not even the roof of which could be seen from outside. The entrance was on the other side, on the village street, a narrow street without a shop or even a window, winding its way between dreary walls. Behind them its grounds made a sort of island of dense greenery among the few neighbouring buildings. And then he noticed at the far end of the road a large courtyard surrounded by sheds and stables all cluttered up with a great many carriages and vans, and in all this there was a continual coming and going of men and horses.
‘Is all that because of the Emperor?’ he asked the waitress by way of a joke as she was spreading a spotlessly white cloth on the table.
‘Yes, just that, for the Emperor all by himself,’ she answered in her jolly way, glad to be showing her white teeth.
And no doubt informed by the stable-boys who had been coming in for drinks since the day before, she went through the inventory: a general staff of twenty-five officers, the sixty household cavalry and detachment of guides for escort duty, six military police, then the household, comprising seventy-three persons, chamberlains, menservants and waiters, cooks, kitchen hands; in addition, four saddle-horses and two carriages for the Emperor, ten horses for the equerries, eight for the outriders and grooms, to say nothing of forty-seven post horses, an open waggon for personnel, twelve baggage vans, two of which, reserved for the cooks, had won her admiration for the quantity of utensils, plates and bottles inside, all in perfect order.
‘Oh, sir, those saucepans, you’ve no idea! They shine like suns. And all sorts of dishes, receptacles and gadgets for I don’t know what all! And a cellar, yes, bordeaux, burgundy, champagne, enough to give a fine old beano!’
In his joy at seeing a white cloth and delight with the white wine twinkling in his glass, Maurice ate two boiled eggs with a gusto he didn’t recognize in himself. When he turned his head to the left he could get a view through one of the entrances of the arbour of the great plain dotted with tents – a whole town buzzing with life that had sprung up in the fields of stubble between the canal