The Debacle - Emile Zola [68]
A sudden shot woke up the squad. It was still pitch dark, it might be about three. They all leaped to their feet, the alert ran along the lines and it was believed to be an enemy attack. But it was only Loubet, who couldn’t sleep any more and so had thought of going into the oak wood where there might be rabbits. What a binge they would have if he brought back a pair of rabbits for his mates at dawn! But as he was looking for a good place to shoot from he heard some men coming towards him, snapping twigs and talking, and he panicked and fired his shot, thinking he had got some Prussians to deal with.
Maurice, Jean and others were already running up when a hoarse voice croaked:
‘Don’t fire, for God’s sake!’
On the edge of the wood was a tall, gaunt man whose thick, bushy beard could just be made out. He had on a grey smock pulled in at the waist with a red belt, and carried a rifle slung over his shoulder. He at once explained that he was French, a sergeant in the guerrillas, and that he had come with two of his men from the Dieulet woods to bring some information to the general.
‘Here, Cabasse, Ducat!’ he shouted behind him. ‘Come on, you lazy buggers!’
The two men had probably been scared, but now they came up. Ducat was short and stocky, pasty-looking with thinning hair, Cabasse tall and wiry, swarthy faced with a long, thin nose.
By now Maurice had had a close look at the sergeant, which gave him a shock, and now he asked:
‘Tell me, aren’t you Guillaume Sambuc, from Remilly?’
When after some hesitation the man nervously admitted that he was, Maurice recoiled slightly, because this Sambuc was said to be a terrible scoundrel, a worthy son of a family of woodcutters who had gone to the bad – the father, a drunkard, had been found one night in a wood with his throat cut, the mother and daughter had taken to begging and thieving and ended up in some brothel. This one, Guillaume, was a poacher and did a bit of smuggling. Only one whelp out of this litter of wolves had grown up to be respectable, Prosper, of the African Cavalry, who before he was lucky enough to get into the army had become a farm-hand because he hated the forest.
‘I saw your brother in Rheims and at Vouziers,’ Maurice went on. ‘He is quite well.’
Sambuc did not answer, but to cut things short:
‘Take me to the general. Tell him it’s the guerrillas from the Dieulet woods who have an important message to deliver.’
On their way back to camp Maurice thought about these freelance companies on whom so many hopes had been built, and who already were giving rise to complaints on all sides. They were supposed to carry on guerrilla warfare, lie in wait for the enemy behind hedges, harass him, pick off his sentries and keep an eye on the woods from which no Prussian would ever get out alive. But the truth of the matter was that they were becoming the terror of the peasants, whom they were not defending at all and whose fields they were plundering. Out of hatred for regular military service all the drop-outs were rushing to join these gangs and enjoy freedom from discipline, roam at large like a lot of bandits out on the spree, sleeping and guzzling any old where. The recruits in some of these companies were deplorable types.
‘Cabasse! Ducat!’ Sambuc went on shouting, looking behind at every step. ‘Come on, you lazy devils!’
Maurice felt that these two were just as terrible. Cabasse, the tall, wiry one, a native of Toulon, had once been a waiter in a Marseilles café and ended up in Sedan as an agent for produce from the south, and had almost been run in over