The Debacle - Emile Zola [78]
Honoré got up and went to fetch a jug of water from the sideboard.
‘Father, you might have given us some wine!’
Having now regained his composure and being sure of himself, Fouchard found his tongue again.
‘Wine! I haven’t got any, not a drop left! The other lot, the Ducrot lot, have drunk, eaten and pinched everything.’
He was lying, and try as he would it showed in the blinking of his pale bulging eyes. Two days before he had spirited away all his livestock, the few domestic animals he kept and the ones destined for his butchery, taking them by night and hiding them nobody knew where, in the depths of which wood or which abandoned quarry. And he had just been spending hours concealing everything in the house – wine, bread and the most unimportant provisions, even flour and salt, so that in fact all the cupboards could have been ransacked in vain. The house was swept clean. He had even refused to sell anything to the first soldiers who had appeared. You never knew, there might be better opportunities later, and vague ideas about trading were taking shape in the head of this patient and cunning miser.
Maurice, having eaten almost his fill, was the first to talk.
‘And my sister Henriette, how long is it since you saw her?’
The old man was still walking up and down, casting glances at Jean, who was putting away enormous hunks of bread; and then, without hurrying, as though after long reflection:
‘Henriette, yes, last month in Sedan… But I saw Weiss, her husband, this morning. He was with his boss, Monsieur Delaherche, who had taken him out with him in his carriage to see the army go through at Mouzon, just for the jaunt.’
An expression of heavy irony passed across the peasant’s inscrutable face.
‘But still, they may well have seen too much of the army and not have enjoyed themselves very much, because by three you couldn’t move on the roads, they were so cluttered up with soldiers on the run.’
In the same level and almost indifferent voice he gave a few details about the defeat of the 5th corps, taken by surprise at Beaumont just as they were preparing a meal, forced to withdraw and kicked back to Mouzon by the Bavarians. A lot of fleeing soldiers, rushing panic-stricken through Remilly, had called out to him that de Failly had once again sold them to Bismarck. Maurice recalled the frantic marches of the last two days, the orders from MacMahon stepping up the retreat so as to cross the Meuse at all costs, when they had lost so many precious days in incomprehensible hesitations. Now it was too late. Perhaps the marshal, who had been furious at finding the 7th corps in Oches when he thought it was at La Besace, had been convinced that the 5th was already encamped at Mouzon, whereas it was dallying at Beaumont and letting itself be annihilated. But what can you expect from troops badly commanded, demoralized by delay and flight, dying of hunger and fatigue?
Fouchard had finally come to a halt behind Jean, astounded to see the chunks disappearing, and coldly sarcastic:
‘You feel better, don’t you?’
The corporal looked up and answered with the same peasant aplomb:
‘Just beginning, thank you.’
Ever since he had been there Honoré had stopped now and again, in spite of his great hunger, and looked round thinking he heard a noise. The reason why after a great struggle he had broken his oath never to set foot in this house again was that he was urged on by an irresistible desire to see Silvine once more. He had kept under his shirt, in fact next to his body, the letter he had had at Rheims, that affectionate letter in which she told him she still loved him, and that she would never love anyone but him in spite of Goliath and the baby, little Charlot, she had had by this man. And now he