The Debacle - Emile Zola [61]
It suddenly occurred to Maurice that if the advance were to be resumed the 7th would not come up through Le Chêne at all, and he saw himself left behind, cut off from his regiment, a deserter. The pain in his foot had gone; skilful dressing and some hours of absolute rest had brought down the inflammation. When Combette had given him a pair of his own boots, wide ones in which he felt comfortable, he wanted to be on his way, and at once, hoping he might still find the 106th on the road from Le Chêne to Vouziers. The chemist tried in vain to keep him, and was on the point of deciding to take him back himself in his own trap and just drive about in the hope of finding them, when the apprentice Fernand reappeared, explaining that he had been to see his girl cousin. He was a tall, weedy youth, looked a bit of a ninny, and he harnessed the horse and took Maurice. It was not quite four, a deluge of rain was falling from an inky sky, and the lanterns of the vehicle shone palely, hardly lighting the road in the great, sodden countryside, full of gigantic noises which brought them to a halt at every kilometre, thinking an army must be on the move.
And just outside Vouziers Jean had not slept either. Since Maurice had explained how the retreat was going to save the whole situation, he had kept awake, preventing his men from straying too far away, waiting for the order to leave which the officers might give at any moment. At about two, in the pitch darkness starred with red fires, a great noise of horses went through the camp: it was the cavalry setting off as advance guard for Ballay and Quatre-Champs so as to keep an eye on the roads from Boult-aux-Bois and La Croix-aux-Bois. One hour later the infantry and artillery began to move in their turn, finally giving up their positions at Falaise and Chestres, which they had obstinately defended for two whole days against an enemy who never appeared. The sky was overcast and it was still dark night as each regiment went off with the utmost silence, a procession of men disappearing into the blackness. But all hearts were beating with joy, as though they had escaped from an ambush. They already saw themselves at the walls of Paris and on the eve of taking their revenge.
Jean peered into the thick darkness. The road was lined with trees and it looked to him as though it went across open meadows. Then there were some ups and downs. They were entering a village which must be Ballay when the heavy clouds which darkened the sky burst into a deluge of rain. The men had already had so much wet that they had even given up grousing about it and just hunched their shoulders. But after Ballay, as they were approaching Quatre-Champs, the wind began to blow in furious squalls. Beyond there, when they had climbed up on to the great plateau stretching with its bare fields all the way to Noirval, the hurricane raged and they were lashed by a frightful cloudburst. And there, in the middle of this endless plain, came an order to halt which stopped all the regiments one by one. The whole 7th corps, thirty-odd thousand men, was standing there in a mass when day dawned – a muddy day in streams of grey water. What was up now? Why this halt? Already the ranks were getting restive, and some were suggesting that the order to march had been reversed.