The Debacle - Emile Zola [98]
‘You know,’ Delaherche went on, ‘the dyeworks will be strongly defended… I have a whole section. Come and look.’
And indeed forty or more marines had been posted there, under the command of a lieutenant, a tall, fair man, very young, who looked energetic and determined. His men had already taken over the building, some were making loopholes through the first-floor shutters facing the road, and others constructing battlements in the low wall of the yard overlooking the fields at the back.
It was in the middle of this yard that Delaherche and Weiss found the lieutenant on the look-out, trying to see into the distance through the morning mist.
‘This damn fog!’ he muttered. ‘We aren’t going to be able to fight by feel.’
Then, after a pause and with no apparent transition:
‘What day is it today?’
‘Thursday,’ said Weiss.
‘Thursday, quite right, so it is. Well I’m damned! We don’t know quite what we are doing, as though the world didn’t exist.’
But just then there leaped out from the ceaseless background of gunfire a rapid fusillade at the end of the fields themselves, five or six hundred metres away. It was like a stage effect: the sun was rising, the mists of the Meuse dispersed in shreds of fine muslin, the blue sky appeared, cleared itself and was cloudless. It was the flawless morning of a lovely summer day.
‘Oh,’ exclaimed Delaherche, ‘they’re crossing the railway bridge. Can you see them going along the line, trying to reach… But how idiotic not to have blown up the bridge!’
The lieutenant made a gesture of silent rage. The blast holes were charged, he explained; only, after fighting the day before for four hours to recapture the bridge, somebody had forgotten to light the fuse!
‘Just our luck,’ he snapped.
Weiss looked on, trying to take it all in. The French occupied a very strong position in Bazeilles. Built along both sides of the Douzy road, the village dominated the plain, and the only way to get to it was by this route, turning to the left in front of the castle, while another road to the right leading to the railway turned off at the Place de l’Eglise. So the Germans had to cross the meadows and ploughed fields, wide open spaces alongside the Meuse and the railway line. Their habitual prudence being well known, it seemed unlikely that the main attack would come from this direction. And yet dense masses of them were still coming over the bridge, in spite of the massacre from mitrailleuses set up at the entrance to Bazeilles, and those who did get through at once took shelter among the few willows, and columns re-formed and advanced. That was where the ever-growing fusillade was coming from.
‘Well fancy!’ said Weiss. ‘They are Bavarians, I can see the tufts on their helmets quite clearly!’
But he thought he could make out other columns, half hidden behind the railway line, that were making for their right, trying to reach the trees some way off so as to swing back on Bazeilles in an oblique movement. If they succeeded by this means in gaining cover in the park of Montvillers the village could be taken. That was a quick and vague impression, but as the frontal attack grew in intensity it faded from his mind.
He suddenly looked round at the heights of Floing which could be seen to the north rising above the town of Sedan. A battery up there had opened fire and puffs of smoke rose in the bright sunshine, then the detonations followed very clear. It might be about five o’clock.
‘Here we go,’ he murmured, ‘this will open the ball.’
The lieutenant was watching too, and he made a gesture of absolute certainty as he said:
‘Oh, Bazeilles is the key point. It’s here that the outcome of the battle will be decided.’
‘Do you think so?’ asked Weiss.
‘No doubt about it. It’s obvious that that was in the marshal