The Debacle - Emile Zola [74]
‘We’ve been sold down the river, everybody knows that,’ Chouteau went on in a dangerous voice.
There broke out murmurings and then a swelling growl of exasperation under the lash of fear. Yes, yes, they had been brought here to be sold, to be handed over to the Prussians. The relentless piling-up of mishaps and the countless mistakes made had planted in these limited minds the idea of betrayal as the only possible explanation of such a series of disasters.
‘We’ve been sold,’ repeated panic-stricken voices.
Then Loubet thought up something.
‘It’s that sod of an Emperor further on, stuck across the road with all his luggage, just to hold us up.’
The news at once flew round. It was affirmed that the jam was due to the movement of the imperial household cutting across the column. There was an outbust of execration, with abominable words, all the hatred prompted by the insolence of the Emperor’s servants, taking over whole towns to sleep in, unpacking their provisions, their hampers of wine, their silver plate in front of soldiers stripped of everything, lighting roaring fires in kitchens while other poor buggers tightened their belts. Oh, that bloody Emperor with neither throne nor power, like a lost child in his Empire, being carried round now like a useless parcel in the baggage of his troops, condemned to drag about with him the irony of his gala household, his bodyguard, carriages, horses, vans, all the pomp of his state robe embroidered with bees, used to sweep up the blood and mud on the highways of defeat!
One after another two more shells came down. Lieutenant Rochas had his cap knocked off by a bit of shrapnel. The ranks closed and there was a thrust, a sudden surging wave which communicated itself further and further. Voices were spluttering with rage, Lapoulle was furiously bawling for them to get a move on. In another minute, perhaps, there was going to be an appalling catastrophe, a stampede that would crush men to death in a struggling mass.
The colonel turned round, looking very grim.
‘Now now, my boys, my boys, be a bit patient. I have sent somebody to find out… we are just going…’
But they were not just going, and the seconds were like centuries. Jean had already taken hold of Maurice’s hand, and with perfect self-control was softly explaining to him that if the chaps were to start shoving the two of them would jump to the left and climb up through the woods on the other side of the river. He cast his eye round to find the guerrillas, thinking that they must know the by-ways, but somebody said they had sloped off on the way through Raucourt. And then the march suddenly started again, they rounded a bend in the road and from there onwards were screened from the German batteries. Later on it was known that in the confusion of that unfortunate day it was the Bonnemain division, four regiments of cuirassiers, who had cut across the 7th corps and stopped it in this way.
Night was falling by the time the 106th went through Ange-court. The hilltops went on to the right, but the gorge widened out on the left and a bluish valley appeared in the distance. At last, from the heights of Remilly, there could be seen through the evening mists a ribbon of pale silver in the immense panorama of meadows and cultivated land. It was the Meuse, the longed-for Meuse, where there would be victory, it seemed.
And Maurice, pointing to little distant lights twinkling merrily through the trees in this rich valley, making a charming picture in the tints of twilight, said to Jean, with the joyful relief of a man finding himself back in his beloved homeland:
‘Oh, look down there… that’s Sedan!’
7
IN Remilly there was a dreadful mix-up of men, horses, and vehicles jamming the street which zigzags down the hill to the Meuse. Half way