The Debacle - Emile Zola [92]
‘Don’t you see over there along the tops those black lines moving like a procession of black ants?’
Jean opened his eyes wide and Maurice, kneeling on his bed, craned his neck.
‘Oh yes,’ they exclaimed together. ‘There’s one line, and there’s another, and another and another! It’s crawling with them.’
‘Well,’ said Weiss, ‘those are the Prussians… I’ve been watching them ever since this morning, and they keep going on and on! Oh, I can tell you, if our soldiers are waiting for them they are in a hurry to get here! And all the inhabitants of this town have seen them, same as me, and really the generals are the only ones with their eyes blindfolded. I was talking just now to a general and he shrugged his shoulders and told me that Marshal MacMahon was absolutely convinced he had scarcely seventy thousand men opposing him. God grant he is well informed… But just look at them, the ground is covered with them, and still they come and come, like black ants!’
At that moment Maurice threw himself back on the bed and burst into violent sobbing. Henriette was coming in with the smiling face she had had that morning, but she ran over in alarm.
‘What is it?’
But he pushed her away.
‘No, no, leave me alone, I’ve never given you anything but trouble. When I think that you went without clothes and I was at college! Oh yes, an education I’ve made fine use of! And then I pretty nearly dishonoured our name, and I don’t know where I’d be now if you hadn’t bled yourself white to pay the price of my idiocy.’
She began to smile again.
‘Really, my poor darling, you’re not waking up in a very happy mood… But you know all that is over and forgotten. Aren’t you doing your duty as a Frenchman now? Since you enlisted I’ve been very proud of you, I really have.’
She turned to Jean as though to call in his help. He looked at her and was a little taken aback to find her not so pretty as before, but thinner and paler now he was no longer seeing her through the near-hallucination of his fatigue. What was still striking was the likeness to her brother, and yet all the profound difference between their natures showed clearly at that moment. He was as highly-strung as a woman, shattered by the disease of the age they were living in, going through the historical and social crisis of his race, capable of passing from one minute to the next from the most noble enthusiasms to the most craven discouragements, but she, so weak-looking, a self-effacing Cinderella with the resigned look of a little housewife, had the firm brow and brave eyes of the blessed stock that martyrs are made of.
‘Proud of me!’ exclaimed Maurice. ‘There’s no reason at all for that, really there isn’t. For a whole month now we’ve been running away like the cowards we are.’
‘Well, after all,’ said Jean with his usual good sense, ‘we aren’t the only ones, we do what we are told to do.’
But at that the young man’s attack burst out more violently than ever.
‘That’s just what I mean, and I’ve had enough!… Doesn’t it make you weep tears of blood, these continual defeats, these fools of commanders, these soldiers just being led by stupid people to the slaughterhouse like a lot of cattle?… Now look at us here in a blind alley. It is perfectly clear that the Prussians are closing in from every direction and we are going to be crushed, the army is doomed… No, no, I’m staying here, I prefer to be shot as a deserter. Jean, you can go without me. No, I’m staying here.’
He fell back on to the pillow in another flood of tears. It was an irresistible nervous reaction, an all-destroying collapse, one of those sudden plunges into despair and contempt for the world and for himself to which he was so often subject. Knowing him well, his sister remained calm.
‘It would be very