The Debacle - Emile Zola [37]
Then Maurice’s eyes, lost in a reverie, suddenly focused again on the slogan Long Live Napoleon chalked on the yellow wall in front of him. It gave him a sensation of unbearable distress, a twinge of pain that stabbed him to the heart. So it was true that this France, with her legendary victories, who had marched across Europe with drums rolling, had now been knocked over at the first push by a contemptible little country? Fifty years had sufficed to do it, the world had changed and ghastly defeat was swooping down on the eternal conquerors. He recalled all the things his brother-in-law Weiss had said on the dreadful night outside Mulhouse. Yes, he had been the only one to see clearly and guess at the long-standing hidden causes of our weakness, to sense the new wind of youth and strength blowing from Germany. Was it not the end of one military age and the beginning of another? Woe to whoever stands still in the ceaseless thrust of nations, victory is to those who march in the forefront, the most scientific, the healthiest, the strongest!
But just then there was a noise of laughing and screaming, of a girl struggling with a man and enjoying the fun. It was Lieutenant Rochas in the old dark kitchen with its gay Epinal prints, and he was holding the pretty waitress in his arms, like a conquering hero. He came out into the arbour, where he had a coffee brought to him, and as he had overheard the last words of Coutard and Picot he gaily chipped in:
‘Nonsense, my boys, that’s nothing! It’s just the opening of the ball, and now you are going to see our bloody revenge… Well, I ask you, up to now they’ve been five to one! But that’s going to change, you can take it from me. We are three hundred thousand here. All these movements we are carrying out and you don’t understand are meant to draw the Prussians after us while Bazaine, who’s got his eye on them, will catch them in the rear, and then we’ll squash ’em – crack, like this fly!’
He crushed a fly with a loud clap of his hands, and his mirth grew louder and louder for, innocent that he was, be believed in this simple plan, and he was now quite happy again with his faith in unconquerable courage. He kindly pointed out to the two soldiers exactly where their regiments were, then, with a cigar in his mouth, sat down to his coffee in perfect bliss.
‘The pleasure was mine, chums,’ Maurice said to Coutard and Picot, who thanked him for his cheese and bottle of wine and went off.
He had ordered a cup of coffee too, and looked at the lieutenant, catching a bit of his good humour, though somewhat surprised about the three hundred thousand men when they were hardly one hundred thousand, and at the singular ease with which he crushed the Prussians between the army of Châlons and that of Metz. But he, too, needed illusion so much! Why not still go on hoping, when the glorious past was still singing so loud in his memory? The old inn was so gay with its trellis from which hung the pale grapes of France, golden with sun! Once again he had an hour of confidence that lifted him out of the great, heavy sadness that had been building up in him.
Maurice’s eye had momentarily followed an officer of the Chasseurs d’Afrique and an orderly who had cantered out of sight round the corner of the silent house occupied by the Emperor. Then, as the orderly came back alone and stopped with the two horses outside the inn, he called out in surprise:
‘Prosper!… And I thought you were at Metz!’
He was a man from Remilly, a simple farm-hand he had known when he was a child and used to spend his holidays at Uncle Fouchard’s. He had drawn a call-up and had served in Africa for three years when the war broke out, and he looked well in his sky-blue tunic, wide red trousers with blue stripes