The Debacle - Emile Zola [95]
Near Delaherche, who was on tiptoe watching the ground-floor rooms, an old woman, some poor charwoman from near-by, with bent body and knotted, work-stained hands, was mumbling between her teeth:
‘An Emperor… I’d like to see one… yes, just for the sake of seeing…’
Suddenly Delaherche seized Maurice’s arm, exclaiming:
‘Look, there he is!… See, there in the left-hand window… Oh no, I’m making no mistake, I saw him yesterday quite near… He lifted the curtain, yes, that pale face pressed against the window-pane.’
The old woman had overheard and stood open-mouthed. It was indeed, pressed against the window-pane, a wraith with a cadaverous face, lack-lustre eyes, drawn features and a colourless moustache, in this final torture. And the old girl, quite taken aback, turned away at once and walked off with a gesture of sovereign contempt.
‘That an Emperor? Well, of all the sillies!’
A Zouave was there too, one of the soldiers on the loose and in no hurry to get back to the corps. He waved his rifle, swearing and spitting out threats, and said to a mate:
‘Just wait a minute while I put a bullet through his fucking head!’
Delaherche intervened in great indignation. But the Emperor had already disappeared. The loud swash of the Meuse went on and an unspeakably doleful moan seemed to have passed by in the deepening shadows. Other vague sounds could be heard far away. Was it the terrible order: March on! March on! shouted from Paris, which had hounded this man on from stage to stage, dragging the irony of his imperial escort along the roads of defeat until he was now cornered in the frightful disaster he had foreseen and come deliberately to meet? How many decent, ordinary people were about to die through his fault, and what an utter breakdown of this sick man’s whole being, this sentimental dreamer, silent while dully awaiting his doom!
Weiss and Delaherche took the two soldiers as far as the plateau of Floing.
‘Good-bye,’ said Maurice, embracing his brother-in-law.
‘No, no! Au revoir, good gracious me!’ cried Delaherche in his jolliest manner.
Jean, with his instinctive sense of direction, at once found the 106th, whose tents were aligned up the slope to the plateau behind the cemetery. It was now almost dark, but you could still make out the roofs of the town in great dark masses, and beyond them Balan and Bazeilles in the fields opening out as far as the line of hills from Remilly to Frénois; to the left stretched the black patch of the Garenne woods and down on the right gleamed the pale ribbon of the Meuse. For a moment Maurice watched the huge panorama vanish into the darkness.
‘Ah, here comes the corporal!’ said Chouteau. ‘Has he come back with the rations?’
A buzz of conversation arose. All through the day the men had been coming back singly or in dribs and drabs and in such confusion that the officers had given up even asking for explanations. They kept their eyes shut and were glad to welcome those who consented to return.
As a matter of fact Captain Beaudoin had only just got back, and Lieutenant Rochas had only returned at about two o’clock with the straggling company reduced by two thirds. Now it was more or less up to strength. Some of the soldiers were drunk, others were still famished, not having been able to scrounge a bit of bread. And once again rations had not turned up. Loubet,