Some acclamations from the men of the 106th had greeted the first discharge. At last, then, they were going to stop the jabbering of those Prussian cannon. But a feeling of disappointment immediately followed when it was seen that the shells did not travel the distance, most of them bursting in the air before reaching the bushes among which the enemy's artillery was hidden.
'Honoré,' resumed Maurice, 'says that the other guns are mere nails by the side of his. In his estimation his one will never be matched! See how lovingly he looks at it, and how carefully he has it sponged so that the dear thing may not feel too warm.'
In this way he jested with Jean, both of them quite inspirited by the smart, calm bravery of the artillerymen. In three shots, however, the Prussian batteries had regulated their fire; their range had at first been too long, but their practice now became so wonderfully accurate that their shells fell upon the French guns, which, despite every effort to increase their range, still failed to carry the distance. One of Honoré's men, on the left, was killed. The corpse was pushed aside, and the firing continued, still with the same careful regularity, and without the slightest display of haste. Projectiles were coming from, and exploding on all sides, whilst around each piece the same methodical manœuvres were repeated, the gun was loaded with its charge and shell, the sighting was regulated, the shot was fired, and the piece, having recoiled, was run up again as though the work absorbed these men to such a degree that they could neither see nor hear anything else.
Maurice, however, was especially struck by the demeanour of the drivers, who, stiffly erect on their horses, confronted the enemy, fifteen yards or so in the rear of the guns. Adolphe was among them with his broad shoulders, bushy fair moustaches, and rubicund face; and a man needed to be brave, indeed, to stay there like that, without so much as blinking his eyes, whilst he watched the shells coming straight towards him, and without being able even to bite his nails by way of occupation, and in order to divert his thoughts. The gunners on their side were working; they had so much to attend to that they could not think of danger, whereas the motionless drivers saw but death before their eyes, and had full leisure to ponder upon it and await its coming. They were compelled to face the enemy, because, had they turned their backs upon him, an irresistible impulse to flee might have carried both men and horses away. A man can brave danger when he sees it. There is no more obscure and yet no greater heroism than this.
Another gunner had just had his head carried off; two horses, harnessed to a caisson, had fallen with their bellies ripped open; and the fire of the foe was proving so slaughterous that it was evident the entire battery would be dismounted, if they obstinately remained on this same spot. Despite all the inconvenience of a change of position, it was necessary to foil the enemy's terrible fire, and the captain no longer hesitated, but ordered up the fore-carriages.
The dangerous manœuvre was executed with lightning-like rapidity; the drivers wheeled round again, bringing back the limbers, to which the gunners at once hooked the carriage trails. Whilst this was being accomplished, however, a lengthy front was developed, at sight of which the enemy redoubled his fire. Three more men thereupon fell to the ground. Then the battery dashed off at a fast trot, describing an arc through the fields, and establishing itself some fifty yards farther away on the right, upon a little plateau on the other side of the position held by the 106th. The guns were unlimbered, the drivers again found themselves confronting the foe, and the fire began afresh, without a pause, and with so much commotion that the ground did not cease shaking.
All at once Maurice raised a cry. In three shots the Prussian batteries had again regulated their fire, and the third shell had fallen upon Honoré's gun. Honoré was seen to dart forward and feel the freshly made wound with a trembling hand; a large piece had been chipped off the bronze muzzle. The gun could still be worked, however, and as soon as the wheels had been cleared of the corpse of another gunner, whose blood had splashed the carriage, the practice was resumed.
'No, it isn't little Louis,' continued Maurice, venting his thoughts aloud. 'There he is aiming; he must be wounded, however, for he's only using his left arm. Ah! little Louis—he got on so well with Adolphe, on condition though that the gunner, the footman, should, in spite of his superior education, act as the humble servant of the driver, the mounted man——'
At this moment Jean, hitherto silent, interrupted Maurice with a cry of anguish: 'They can never stay there; we are done for!'
In less than five minutes, indeed, this new position had become as untenable as the previous one. The enemy's projectiles rained upon it with precisely the same accuracy. One shell smashed a gun and killed a lieutenant and two men. Every shot took effect, to such a degree, in fact, that if they obstinately lingered there neither a gun nor an artilleryman would soon remain. The enemy's fire was destruction incarnate; it swept everything away. And so, for the second time, the captain's voice rang out, ordering up the limbers.
Once more was the manœuvre executed, the drivers setting their horses at a gallop, and wheeling so that the gunners might again limber the pieces. This time, however, during the movement, a splinter gashed Louis' throat and tore away his jaw, and he fell across the block-trail which he had been raising. And just as Adolphe came up, at the moment when the enemy obtained a flank view of the line of teams, a furious volley swooped down. Adolphe fell, with his chest split open, and his arms outstretched, and in a last convulsion he caught hold of his comrade; and there they lay embracing, fiercely contorted, coupled together even in death.
But, despite the killing of many horses, despite the disorder which the slaughterous volley had wrought in the ranks, the entire battery was already ascending a slope, establishing itself in a more advanced position at a few yards from the spot where Maurice and Jean were lying. The guns were now unlimbered for the third time, the drivers again found themselves facing the enemy, whilst the gunners immediately reopened fire with the obstinacy of unconquerable heroism.
'This is the end of everything,' said Maurice, in a dying voice.
It seemed, indeed, as though earth and sky were mingled. The stones split asunder, dense smoke occasionally hid the sun. The horses stood with their heads low, dizzy, stupefied amid the fearful uproar. Wherever the captain appeared he seemed abnormally tall. At last he was cut in two—snapped, and fell like a flag-staff.
The effort was being tenaciously, deliberately prolonged, however, especially by Honoré and his men. He, himself, despite his stripes, now had to help work the gun, for only three gunners remained to him. He levelled and fired whilst the three men fetched the ammunition, loaded the piece, and handled the sponge and the rammer. Spare men and horses had been asked for to fill up the gaps that death had made, but they were a long time coming, and meanwhile it was necessary to do without them. The worry was that the gun still failed to carry the distance, almost all the projectiles bursting in the air, and doing but little harm to those terrible batteries of the foe whose fire was so efficacious. And all at once Honoré swore an oath which rang out above all the thunder of the cannonade: there was no end to their ill luck, the gun's right wheel had just been pounded to pieces. Thunder! So now the poor creature had a leg broken, and was thrown on her side, with her nose on the ground, crippled and useless! Honoré shed big tears at the sight, and clasped her neck with his twitching hands, as though he hoped to set her erect again by the mere warmth of his affection. To think of it!—the best gun of all, the only one that had managed to send a few shells over yonder! Then a mad resolution took possession of him, that of immediately replacing the shattered wheel under the enemy's fire. With the assistance of a gunner, he himself went to fetch a spare wheel from the ammunition waggon, and the work then began, the most dangerous that can be performed on the field of battle. Fortunately the spare men and horses had eventually arrived, and a couple of fresh gunners lent a helping hand.
But once again the battery was dismantled. This heroic madness could be carried no farther. Orders to fall back for good were on the point of being given.
'We must make haste, comrades!' shouted Honoré. 'We'll take her away at any rate; they sha'n't have her.'
'Twas his one idea, to save his gun, like others save the colours. And he was still speaking when he was annihilated, his right arm torn away and his left side ripped open. He fell upon the gun and remained there as though stretched upon a bed of honour, his head still erect, and his face unscathed, turned with a fine expression of anger towards the enemy yonder. A letter—Silvine's—had slipped through a rent in his uniform and was stained with drop after drop of his blood, as he grasped it with his twisted fingers.
The only lieutenant who had not been killed now shouted the command: 'Limber up!'
One of the caissons had already blown up with the commotion of fireworks, fusing and bursting. The horses of another caisson had to be taken to save a gun whose team was lying on the ground. And, this last time, when the drivers had wheeled, and the four remaining guns had again been limbered, the battery galloped off without stopping until it was some eleven hundred yards away, behind the fringing trees of the wood of La Garenne.
Maurice had seen everything, and with a faint shudder of horror he repeated in a mechanical fashion: 'Oh! the poor fellow, the poor fellow!'
It seemed as though his grief imparted increased intensity to the growing pain that was griping his stomach. The animal part of his nature was rebelling; his strength was exhausted; he was dying of hunger. His eyesight was becoming dim, he was no longer conscious even of the danger to which the regiment was exposed, now that the battery had been compelled to fall back. At any moment, indeed, the plateau might be attacked by the enemy in force.
'I say,' he remarked to Jean, 'I really must eat—I'd rather eat and be killed at once.'
Having opened his knapsack, he took the bread in his trembling hands and began to bite it voraciously. The bullets whistled by, a couple of shells exploded a few yards away, but nothing had any existence for him save his hunger, which must be satisfied.
'Will you have a bit, Jean?'
Stupefied, his eyes swollen, and his stomach rent by a similar craving, Jean looked at him and answered: 'Yes, all the same I'll have some; I feel too bad.'
They divided the bread and ate it gluttonously, without a thought of anything else so long as a mouthful of it remained. And it was only after they had finished that they again saw their colonel, on his big charger, with his bloody boot. The 106th was being overlapped on either side. Some companies must have already fled, and M. de Vineuil, compelled to give way to the torrent, raised his sword, and, with his eyes full of tears, exclaimed, 'God shield us, my lads, since He would not take us!' Bands of fugitives were surrounding him, and he disappeared from view in a depression of the ground.
Without knowing how they had got there, Jean and Maurice next found themselves with the remnants of their company behind the hedge which they had skirted in the morning. There remained at most some forty men under the command of Lieutenant Rochas. The colours were with them, and with a view of trying to save them, the sub-lieutenant, acting as ensign, had just rolled the silk around the staff. They all filed along to the end of the hedge, and then threw themselves among some little trees on a slope, where Rochas ordered them to open fire again. Sheltered and scattered in skirmishing order, the men were able to hold out here, the more especially as a mass of cavalry was being set in motion on their right, and regiments of infantry were again being brought into line to support it.
And now Maurice realised the slow, invincible encompassment which was on the point of being completed. Early in the morning he had seen the Prussians debouching from the defile of St. Albert, reaching first St. Menges, and then Fleigneux, and now he could not only hear the cannon of the Prussian Guard thundering behind the wood of La Garenne, but began to perceive some other German uniforms coming up by the heights of Givonne. But a few minutes more and the circle would close up, and the Guard would join hands with the Fifth German Corps, surrounding the French army with a living wall, an annihilating belt of artillery. It must have been with the desperate thought of making a last effort, of striving to break through this marching wall, that a division of the reserve cavalry, that commanded by General Margueritte, was now being massed behind a fold in the ground in readiness to charge. They, were, indeed, about to charge to death, without any possibility of effecting their object, but for the honour of France. And Maurice, thinking of Prosper, witnessed the terrible sight.
Since early morning Prosper had done nothing but urge on his horse, continually marching and counter-marching from one to the other end of the plateau of Illy. He and his comrades had been wakened one by one at dawn, without any trumpet call; and in order that they might make their coffee they had ingeniously contrived to screen each fire with a cloak so as not to set the Prussians on the alert. After that they had remained in ignorance of everything. They could certainly hear the guns, see the smoke, espy distant movements of infantry, but in the complete inaction in which they were left by the generals they knew nothing of the incidents of the battle, its importance and its results. Prosper, for his own part, was so sleepy that he could hardly keep up. Fatigue was the great suffering: bad nights, an accumulation of weariness, followed by invincible somnolence when the men rocked in the saddle. Prosper himself became a prey to hallucinations—fancied at times that he was on the ground, snoring on a mattress of pebbles; or dreamt that he was in a comfortable bed with clean white sheets. Sometimes he actually slept in the saddle for minutes together, becoming a mere moving thing, carried along according to the chances of the trot. In this way some of his comrades had occasionally fallen from their mounts. They were all so weary that the trumpet calls no longer awoke them; it was only by dint of kicking that they could be roused from oblivion and set upon their legs.
'What game are they having, what game are they having with us?' Prosper kept on saying, in the hope that by doing so he might shake off his irresistible torpor.
The cannon had been thundering since six o'clock. A couple of comrades had been killed by a shell beside him while they were ascending a hill, and, farther on, three others had fallen to the ground, riddled with bullets which had come no one knew whence. This useless, dangerous military promenade across the battlefield was altogether exasperating. At last, however, at about one o'clock, he realised that the commanders had decided to get them killed in a decent fashion, at any rate. The whole of General Margueritte's division, three regiments of Chasseurs d'Afrique, one of Chasseurs de France, and one of Hussars had just been assembled in a fold of the ground, on the left of the road, and slightly below the Calvary. The trumpets had sounded 'Dismount,' and the officers thereupon gave orders to tighten the girths and secure the kits.
Prosper dismounted, stretched himself, and fondled Zephyr with his hand. Poor Zephyr! he was as stultified as his master, quite worn out by the stupid life he was led. Besides, he carried such a multitude of things: First, there was the linen in the holsters, and the cloak rolled up above them; then the blouse, the overalls, and the haversack, with everything required for grooming, behind the saddle; and in addition there was the provision bag thrown across the horse's back, without mentioning the goat-skin, the water-can, and the mess-tin. The Chasseur's heart was flooded with tender compassion for his steed as he tightened the girth and made sure that all the paraphernalia on his back was properly secured.
It was a trying moment. Prosper, who was not more of a coward than his comrades, felt his mouth quite parched, and lighted a cigarette. When orders are given to charge, each man may fairly say: 'It's all up with me this time;' so few, indeed, are the chances in his favour.
Some five or six minutes went by, and the men told one another that General Margueritte had gone forward to reconnoitre the ground. Meantime, they waited. The five regiments had been assembled in three columns; each column was seven squadrons deep, so there would be plenty of food for the enemy's cannon.
All at once the trumpets sounded: 'To horse!' And almost immediately afterwards another command rang out: 'Draw swords!'
The colonel of each regiment had already galloped forward, taking up his regulation position—at seven-and-twenty yards in advance of the front. The captains were at their places at the head of their men. Then the spell of waiting began again, amid death-like silence. No longer a sound, not even the faintest breath was heard under the fierce sun. The men's hearts alone were beating. But another command, the last, and then this motionless mass would spring forward, and rush onward with the speed of a tempest.
At that moment, however, a mounted officer, wounded and supported by two men, appeared upon the hill-crest. At first he was not recognised; then a roar resounded, swelling into a furious clamour. It was General Margueritte, whose cheeks had been transpierced by a bullet, and who was destined to die of his wound. He was unable to speak, but he waved his arm towards the enemy.
The clamour was still increasing: 'Our general! Vengeance! vengeance!'
Thereupon the colonel of the first regiment raised his sabre in the air, and cried in a voice like thunder: 'Charge!'
The trumpets sounded and the mass started off, first of all at a trot. Prosper was in the front rank, but almost at the end of the right wing. The greatest danger is in the centre, upon which the enemy instinctively directs his more violent fire. When they had reached the crest of the Calvary and were beginning to descend the other slope, in the direction of the broad plain, Prosper could distinctly see, a thousand yards ahead of him, the Prussian squares against which they were being hurled. He trotted along, however, as though he were in a dream, swaying like a man asleep, feeling light and buoyant, and with his brain so empty that he had no idea of anything. He had become a mere machine worked by an irresistible power. Orders were repeated for the men to keep as close together as possible, knee to knee, so that they might acquire the resistive strength of granite. And as the trot became swifter and changed into a desperate gallop, the Chasseurs d'Afrique in Arab fashion began raising savage yells which maddened their horses. It soon became a diabolical race, at hellish speed, and as an accompaniment to the furious gallop and the ferocious howls there resounded the crackling of the fusillade, the bullets striking the cans and pans of the advancing squadrons, the brass on the uniforms of the men and on the harness of the horses, with the loud pit-a-pat of hail. And through this hail swept the shells—the hurricane of wind and thunder which shook the ground and impregnated the sunlight with a stench akin to that of burning wool and sweating beasts.
At five hundred yards from the foe a furious eddy, sweeping everything away, threw Prosper from his horse. He caught Zephyr by the mane, however, and managed to get into the saddle again. Riddled and broken by the fusillade, the centre had just given way, and the two wings were whirling round, falling back to re-form and rush forward once more. This was the fatal, foreseen annihilation of the first squadron. The fallen horses barred the ground; some had been struck dead on the spot; others were struggling in violent throes; and dismounted soldiers could be seen running hither and thither at the full speed of their little legs in search of other horses. The dead were already strewing the plain, and many riderless chargers continued galloping, coming back to the ranks of their own accord so that they might return at a mad pace to the fight, as though the powder fascinated them. The charge was resumed; the second squadron swept on with growing fury, the men bending low over their horses' necks, with their sabres on a level with the knee, ready to strike. Another couple of hundred yards were covered amid a deafening, tempestuous clamour. Yet again did the bullets make a gap in the centre, men and horses fell, arresting the onslaught with the inextricable obstruction of their corpses. And thus, in its turn, was the second squadron mowed down, annihilated, leaving the front place to those that followed behind it.
When, with heroic obstinacy, the third charge was made, Prosper found himself mixed up with some Hussars and Chasseurs de France. The regiments were mingling; there was now only a huge wave of horsemen which incessantly broke and re-formed, carrying whatever it met along with it. Prosper no longer had any idea of anything; he had surrendered himself to his horse, brave Zephyr, whom he was so fond of, and who seemed maddened by a wound in the ear. At present he was in the centre; other horses reared and fell around him; some men were thrown to the ground as by a hurricane, whilst others, though shot dead, remained in the saddle, and continued charging, showing but the whites of their eyes. And, this time, again, another two hundred yards having been covered, the stubble in the rear of the squadrons was littered with dead and dying. There were some whose heads had sunk deep into the soil. Others, who had fallen on their backs, gazed at the great round sun with terrified eyes starting from their sockets. Then there was a big black horse, an officer's charger, whose belly had been ripped open, and who vainly strove to rise with the hoofs of both forelegs caught in his entrails. Whilst the foe redoubled his fire, the wings whirled once again, and fell back, to return, however, to the charge with desperate fury.
It was, indeed, only the fourth squadron, at the fourth onslaught, that reached the Prussian lines. Prosper, with his sabre uplifted, smote the helmets and the dark uniforms that he saw through the smoky mist. Blood flowed, and on noticing that Zephyr's mouth was ensanguined, he imagined that it was through having bitten the foe. So frightful was the clamour becoming, that he could no longer hear himself shout, and yet his throat was being almost torn away by the yells that issued from it. Behind the first Prussian line, however, there was yet another one, then another, and then another. Heroism remained of no avail; those deep masses of men were like lofty herbage amid which horses and horsemen disappeared. Mow them down as you might, there were always thousands left standing. The firing continued with such intensity, the muzzles of the needle guns were so close, that uniforms were set on fire. All foundered, sank down among the bayonets; chests were transpierced, and skulls were split. Two-thirds of those regiments of horsemen were to remain on the field, and of that famous charge there would abide but the memory of the glorious madness of having attempted it. And, all at once, Zephyr, in his turn, was struck by a bullet full in the chest, and fell to the ground, crushing under him Prosper's right thigh, the pain of which was so acute that the Chasseur fainted.
Maurice and Jean, who had been watching the heroic gallop of the squadrons, gave vent to a cry of rage: 'Thunder! Bravery's not a bit of good.'
And then they continued discharging their chassepots, on their haunches behind the bushes of the little hillock, where they and their comrades were scattered in skirmishing order. Rochas himself had picked up a gun and joined in the firing. This time, however, the plateau of Illy was well lost, the Prussian troops were invading it from all sides. It must now have been about two o'clock, the junction of the hostile forces was at last being effected, the Fifth Corps and the Prussian Guard were meeting and buckling the belt.
All at once Jean was thrown to the ground. 'I'm done for,' he stammered.
A heavy blow, like that of a hammer, had struck him on the crown of the head, and his cap, torn and carried off, was lying behind him. He at first thought that his skull was split, that his brain was bare, and for a few seconds he dared not raise his hand to the spot, feeling certain he should find a hole there. Then, having ventured to do so, he drew away his hands and found them red with a thick flow of blood. And the pain was so great that he fainted.
At that same moment Rochas gave orders to fall back. A Prussian company was now no more than two or three hundred yards distant. If they remained they would be caught. 'Don't hurry, though,' said he, 'turn on the way and fire another shot. We will rally behind that low wall.'
Maurice, however, was in despair. 'We are surely not going to leave our corporal here, sir?'
'But what can be done if his account's settled?'
'No, no; he still breathes. Let's carry him.'
Rochas shrugged his shoulders as though to say that they could not encumber themselves with every man who fell. Then Maurice turned supplicatingly to Pache and Lapoulle: 'Come,' said he, 'lend me a hand. I'm not strong enough by myself.'
But they did not listen to him, did not hear him; the instinct of self-preservation was so absorbing that neither had thought for any but himself. They were already gliding along on their knees, disappearing at a gallop in the direction of the low wall. And now the Prussians were only a hundred yards away.
Shedding tears of rage, Maurice, who had remained alone with Jean, took him in his arms and endeavoured to carry him off. But he was indeed too weak, too puny, exhausted moreover by fatigue and anguish. Almost at the first step he staggered and fell with his burden. If he could only have seen a bearer! He looked about him wildly, fancied he could distinguish some bearers among the fugitive soldiers, and waved his arm to them. But nobody came. Then, collecting all his remaining strength, he again took up Jean, and succeeded in carrying him some thirty paces, when a shell having exploded near them, he fancied it was all over, and that he also was about to die on his comrade's body.
He slowly picked himself up, felt himself, found himself unscathed, without a scratch. Why did he not flee? There was still time; he could reach the wall in a few bounds, and that would mean salvation. Fear was coming back again, distracting him, and he was on the point of rushing away, when bonds, stronger even than death, held him back. No! it was impossible; he could not abandon Jean. It would have made him bleed from every pore; the fraternity that had sprung up between that peasant and himself extended to the depths of his being, to the very roots of life. Its origin might have been traced back, perhaps, to the first days of the world; for it was as though there had been but two men left in all creation, one of whom could not part from the other without parting from himself.
If Maurice had not eaten that crust of bread amid the shells, an hour previously, he would never have found the strength to do that which he now did. Later on, moreover, he was unable to recollect how he had accomplished it. He must have lifted Jean on to his shoulders, have dragged himself along, have halted and set out afresh a score of times amid the stubble and the bushes, stumbling over each stone he encountered, but still and ever setting himself upon his legs again. He was sustained by an unconquerable will, a resistive power that would have enabled him to carry a mountain. When he at last got behind the wall, he there again found Rochas and the few remaining men of the company, who were still firing, defending the colours which the sub-lieutenant was carrying under his arm.
No line of retreat had been indicated to the different army corps for adoption in the event of a defeat. This lack of foresight and the prevailing confusion left each general free to act as he pleased, and now they all found themselves thrown back on Sedan, within the formidable embrace of the victorious German armies. The Seventh Corps' Second Division was retiring in fairly good order, but the remnants of its other divisions, mingled with the remnants of the First Corps, were already rolling towards the town in a fearful mob—a torrent of rage and fright, in which men and horses were swept along.
Just then, however, Maurice was delighted to see Jean opening his eyes. He wished to wash his face for him, and as he was hastening to a rill near by, he was greatly astonished when, on his right hand, in the depths of a secluded valley, sheltered by rugged slopes, he again espied the same peasant whom he had seen in the morning, and who was still leisurely turning up the sod, guiding his plough drawn by a big white horse. Why should a day be lost? Corn would not cease growing, nor would the human race cease living simply because it pleased some men to fight.
At last, up above on the lofty terrace, whither he had climbed to obtain some idea of the situation, Delaherche again became excited by impatience to know what was happening. He saw very well that the shells were passing over the town, and realised that the three or four, which had burst through some of the surrounding roofs, could merely be infrequent replies to the fire of the Palatinate fort, so slack and inefficacious. But he distinguished nothing of the battle, and experienced a pressing desire for information which was quickened by the dread that he might lose both fortune and life in the catastrophe. So he went down, leaving the telescope up there, levelled upon the German batteries.
Once below, however, the sight which the central garden of the factory presented momentarily arrested his steps. It was nearly one o'clock, and the wounded were crowding into the ambulance. There was already a deficiency of the regulation conveyances, both of the two and the four wheelers; and ammunition and forage waggons, vans for the transport of matériel, in fact, whatever vehicles it had been possible to requisition on the battlefield, now made their appearance. Eventually there even came tilted and other carts belonging to cultivators, taken from farms, and to which stray horses had been harnessed. And heaped together in all these vehicles were the men who had been picked up and summarily attended to by the field ambulance. Frightful was the unloading of these poor fellows, some greenly pallid, and others violet from congestion. Many of them had fainted, and others were raising shrill plaints. Some, who were struck with stupor, surrendered themselves to the attendants with a look of terror, whilst a few expired as soon as touched, unable to endure the slightest shaking. To such a degree was the ambulance being invaded that in another moment there would not remain a single unoccupied mattress in the spacious drying-hall, and Surgeon-Major Bouroche was accordingly ordering the attendants to utilise the large litter of straw which he had spread at one end of the structure. As yet, however, he and his assistants sufficed for the requisite operations. He had merely asked that a second table, with a mattress and some oilcloth, might be placed in the shed where he operated. Here an assistant swiftly applied a napkin dipped in chloroform to the patient's nose, the narrow steel blades flashed before the eyes; the saws gave out a faint rasping sound, and the blood flowed in sudden spurts, instantly arrested. The wounded were brought in and carried away amid a rapid coming-and-going, time being scarcely allowed for wiping the oilcloth with a sponge. And at the farther end of the lawn, behind a clump of laburnums, it had been necessary to form a kind of charnel-place where the attendants disembarrassed themselves of the dead, and whither they also went to throw the amputated legs and arms, all the remnants of flesh and bones remaining on the tables.
Old Madame Delaherche and Gilberte, seated under one of the lofty trees, could no longer roll bands enough, and Bouroche, who passed by with his face flaming and his apron already crimson with blood, threw a packet of linen to Delaherche, exclaiming: 'Here! do something, make yourself useful.'
'Excuse me,' protested the manufacturer, 'but I must go out for news; we no longer know whether we are alive.' And then, lightly touching his wife's hair with his lips, 'My poor Gilberte,' he added, 'to think that a shell might set everything on fire here. It's frightful!'
She was very pale, and raising her head, glanced around her with a shudder. But that involuntary, invincible smile of hers speedily came back to her lips: 'Yes, frightful!' she said, 'all those men whom they are cutting up. It's a wonder that I can stay here without fainting.'
Old Madame Delaherche had looked at her son as he kissed his wife's hair, and had made a gesture as though to push him aside, for she thought of that other man by whom that same hair must also have been kissed. Her old hands trembled, however, and she let them fall, murmuring: 'How much suffering, good Lord! One forgets one's own.'
Delaherche then went off, explaining that he should speedily return with positive information. As soon as he was in the Rue Maqua he was surprised at the number of soldiers who were already returning from the field without their weapons, and with their uniforms in shreds, soiled with dust. He could not, however, obtain any precise details from those whom he endeavoured to question. Some, who were quite stupefied, replied that they didn't know; whilst others had such a deal to relate, and gesticulated so furiously, and talked so extravagantly, that they resembled madmen. He thereupon directed his steps once more towards the Sub-Prefecture, thinking to himself that all the news must flow thither. As he was crossing the Place du Collège, a couple of guns, doubtless the only remaining pieces of some battery, came up at a gallop, and stranded beside the footway. On reaching the High Street he had to acknowledge that the town was becoming quite crowded with fugitives. Three dismounted Hussars were sitting in a doorway, dividing a loaf of bread; two others were slowly leading their horses by the bridle, at a loss for a stable where they might tether them; officers, too, were running wildly hither and thither, looking as if they did not know where they were going. On the Place Turenne a sub-lieutenant advised Delaherche not to linger there, for the shells were falling very frequently, a splinter of one of them having just broken the railing around the statue of the great captain, the victor of the Palatinate. And, as Delaherche was swiftly gliding along the Rue de la Sous-Préfecture, he saw a couple of projectiles explode, with a frightful crash, on the bridge spanning the Meuse.
Reaching the Sub-Prefecture, he was standing in front of the porter's lodge, seeking a pretext to ask for one of the aides-de-camp and question him, when a youthful voice called him by name: 'Monsieur Delaherche! come in quick; it's anything but pleasant outside.'
The speaker was Rose, his work-girl, whom he had not thought of. Thanks to her, however, every door would be opened to him. He entered the lodge and accepted a seat.
'Just fancy,' began Rose, 'all this business has made mother quite ill; she's in bed and can't get up. So there's only me, you see, for father is at the citadel, being a National Guard. A little while ago the Emperor again wanted to show his bravery, for he went out again and was able to get to the end of the street, as far as the bridge. But then a shell fell in front of him, and the horse of one of his equerries was killed. And so he came back again—not surprising, is it? What would you have him do?'
'Then you know how we are situated—what do the officers say?'
She gave him a look of astonishment. Amid all these abominations, but little of which she understood, she bustled about assiduously, retaining her gay freshness, with her fine hair and her clear eyes, the eyes of the child she was. 'No, I know nothing,' she said; 'at twelve o'clock I took up a letter for Marshal MacMahon. The Emperor was with him. They remained shut up together for nearly an hour, the marshal in bed, and the Emperor on a chair close to the mattress. I know that, because I saw them when the door was opened.'
'What were they saying?'
She again looked at him, and could not help laughing.
'Why, I don't know,' she answered. 'How could I know? Nobody in the world knows what they said to one another.'[30]
That was true, and Delaherche made a gesture as though to apologise for his foolish question. Still the idea of that supreme conversation worried him; how interesting it must have been! What decision could they have come to?
'And now,' added Rose, 'the Emperor has gone back into his private room, where he's conferring with two generals who arrived just now from the battlefield.' She paused and glanced towards the house-steps: 'Look! here comes one of the generals—and look! here's the other.'
Delaherche hastily stepped out of the lodge and recognised Generals Douay and Ducrot, whose horses were waiting. He watched them get into the saddle again and gallop off. After the abandonment of the plateau of Illy, each, on his own side, had hastened into the town to warn the Emperor that the battle was lost. They furnished him with precise details of the situation; the army and Sedan were now completely enveloped, and the disaster would prove frightful.
For a few minutes the Emperor walked up and down his room in silence, with the wavering step of a sick man. The only person there besides himself was an aide-de-camp, standing erect and silent near a door. And, with a disfigured face which was now twitching with a nervous tic, Napoleon kept pacing to and fro between the chimney-piece and the window. His back appeared to have become more bent, as though a world had fallen upon it; and his dim eyes, veiled by their heavy lids, bespoke the resignation of the fatalist who has played and lost his final game with Destiny. Each time, however, that he reached the window, set ajar, he gave a start which, for a second, made him pause; and during one of those brief halts he raised a trembling hand and muttered: 'Oh! those guns, those guns! one has heard them ever since the morning.'
From that spot, indeed, the roaring of the batteries of the Marfée and Frénois hills reached the ear with extraordinary violence—it was a rolling thunder, which not merely rattled the window panes, but shook the very walls, a stubborn, incessant, exasperating uproar. And the Emperor must have reflected that the struggle was henceforth a hopeless one, that all resistance was becoming a crime. What could it avail, why should more blood be spilt, more limbs be shattered, more heads be carried off, more and more dead be ever and ever added to those already scattered across the country-side? Since they, the French, were vanquished, since it was all over, why continue the massacre any longer? Sufficient abomination and suffering already cried out aloud under the sun.
Once more did the Emperor reach the window, and again he began to tremble, with his hands raised: 'Oh! those guns, those guns! Will they never stop?'
Perhaps the terrible thought of his responsibility was arising within him, with a vision of the thousands of bleeding corpses stretched upon the ground over yonder, through his fault. Perhaps, though, it was but the melting of his heart—the pitiful heart of a dreamer, of a man in reality good-natured and haunted by humanitarian notions. And albeit Fate had dealt him this frightful blow—which was crushing and sweeping away his fortune as though it were but a bit of straw—he yet found tears for others, was distracted that this useless butchery should still continue, and lacked the strength to endure it any longer. That villainous cannonade was now rending his breast, at each moment increasing his agony.
'Oh! those guns, those guns! Make them stop firing at once—at once.'
And then this Emperor, who, having confided his powers to the Empress-Regent, no longer had any throne; this generalissimo, who, since he had surrendered the supreme command to Marshal Bazaine, no longer commanded, awoke once more to the exercise of his power—to the irresistible needment of being the master for the last time. Since his stay at Châlons he had kept in the background, had not given an order; content, in his resignation, to become nothing more than a nameless and cumbersome inutility, a troublesome parcel carried along among the baggage train of the troops. And it was only in the hour of defeat that the emperor again awoke within him; the first, the only order that he was yet to give, in the scared compassion of his heart, was to hoist the white flag upon the citadel to beg a truce.
'Oh! those guns, those guns! Take a sheet, a table-cloth, no matter what! Run quickly, tell them to stop those guns!'
The aide-de-camp hastily left the room, and the Emperor continued his wavering march from the chimney-piece to the window, whilst the batteries kept on thundering, shaking the house from top to bottom.
Delaherche was still talking with Rose when a sergeant, on duty at the Sub-Prefecture, ran into the lodge: 'Mademoiselle,' said he, 'we can't find anything. I can't see a servant anywhere. Do you happen to have any linen—a piece of white linen?'
'Will a napkin do?'
'No, no; that wouldn't be large enough. Half a sheet would do.'
Rose, ever obliging, had already darted to the wardrobe. 'I haven't any half-sheets,' said she. 'A large piece of white linen—no, I don't see anything that would suit you—Oh! would you like a table-cloth?'
'A table-cloth? Nothing could be better; that's exactly what we want.' And as he turned to go he added: 'We are going to make a white flag of it, and hoist it on the citadel, to ask for peace. Much obliged, mademoiselle.'
Delaherche gave a start of involuntary delight. At last, then, they were going to have quietness. It occurred to him, however, that his joy was unpatriotic, and he restrained it. Nevertheless his lightened heart beat quickly, and he eagerly watched a colonel and a captain, who, followed by the sergeant, were now coming out of the Sub-Prefecture with hasty steps. The colonel was carrying the table-cloth, rolled up, under his arm. It occurred to Delaherche to follow them, and he took leave of Rose, who was quite proud of having provided that cloth. Just then it struck two o'clock.
In front of the town-hall Delaherche was hustled by a stream of haggard soldiers coming from the Faubourg of La Cassine. He lost sight of the colonel, and thereupon renounced his intention of going to see the hoisting of the white flag. He would certainly not be allowed to enter the keep; and besides, on hearing some people say that shells were falling on the college, he was once more filled with anxiety. Perhaps his factory had caught fire during his absence. Thereupon he darted off again, possessed by a feverish desire to be on the move, which he endeavoured to satisfy by running through the streets. Groups of people barred his way, however; at each crossing there were fresh obstacles. It was only on reaching the Rue Maqua that he gave a sigh of relief, on finding that the monumental front of his house was intact, that neither a puff of smoke nor a spark of fire was to be seen. He went in and called out to his mother and his wife: 'Things are going all right; they are hoisting the white flag, so the firing will soon be over.'
Then he stopped short, for the scene which the ambulance presented was really terrible. Not only was every mattress occupied in the spacious drying-room, the door of which was open, but there no longer remained any space even on the litter of straw spread out at one end of the building. More straw was now being laid between the beds: the wounded were being closely packed, one beside the other. There were already more than a couple of hundred of them, and others were still arriving. A white light streamed from the broad windows upon all this accumulation of human suffering. At times there arose some involuntary cry occasioned by too sudden a movement; and now and again the rattle of the death pangs was wafted through the moist atmosphere. From one end of the room there long resounded a continuous, gentle, almost musical wail. Then the silence became deeper, like a kind of resigned stupor, like the oppressive mournfulness of a death room, broken only by the steps and whispers of the attendants. The wounds, most of which had been hastily dressed on the battlefield, though some had remained bare, untended, were displayed in all their distressful horror, amid shreds of torn capotes and trousers. Feet were stretched out, still booted, but crushed and bleeding. Inert limbs dangled from knees and elbows which had been smashed as though by blows of a hammer. There were broken hands and hanging fingers, too, sustained by mere strips of skin. Most numerous, apparently, were the fractured legs and arms, stiffened by pain and as heavy as lead; but the disquieting wounds were especially those that had opened up the stomach, the chest, or the head. Blood was flowing from flanks that had been frightfully lacerated; bowels had become knotted under upraised skin; some men, through their loins being gashed and hacked, were twisted into frightfully distorted postures. Some lungs had been perforated through and through with so small a hole that no blood flowed; others had a gaping aperture whence life was ebbing in a red stream; and there were men, too, who suddenly became delirious and black, killed all at once by internal hæmorrhage. The heads had suffered yet more severely than the bodies; jaws had been smashed, teeth and tongue formed but a bloody mixture; eyes had been driven half out of their torn sockets; skulls had been split open, and cerebral substance was visible. All those whose brains or marrow had been touched by the projectiles lay like corpses, in the prostration of coma; whilst others, the fractured, the feverish ones, moved restlessly and begged for water in low, supplicating voices.
And in the shed close by, where the operations were performed, there were yet more horrors. In this first scramble, only the more urgent operations were proceeded with, those necessitated by the desperate condition of the wounded. Whenever there was any danger of hæmorrhage Bouroche immediately began to amputate. And, in the same way, when the projectiles were lodged in any dangerous part, the base of the neck, the region of the axilla, the origin of the thigh, the bend of the elbow, or the knee joint, he did not spend time in feeling for them and removing them. The wounds which he preferred to leave under observation, were simply dressed by the attendants in accordance with his instructions. For his own part he had already performed four amputations, spacing them out, resting himself, as it were, between these more serious operations by extracting a few bullets. And he was now beginning to feel tired. There were only two tables, his own and another, at which one of his assistants operated. A sheet had just been hung up between them, so that the men operated upon might not see one another. And, despite all the washing with sponges, the tables remained blood-red, whilst the pails, which were emptied a few paces off over a bed of China asters, those pails, whose clear water a glassful of blood sufficed to dye, seemed to be pails of pure blood—blood flung in a splashing, drenching shower over the flowers of the lawn. And, although the air freely circulated in the open shed, a nauseous stench now arose from the tables, linen and instruments there, mingling with a vague smell of chloroform.
Pitiful at heart, Delaherche was shuddering with compassion, when he felt interested at sight of a landau entering the porch. This carriage, the only vehicle, no doubt, that the men of the field ambulance had been able to find, was packed full of wounded. There were eight of them inside it, one atop of another; and when, in the last man who was lifted out, the manufacturer recognised Captain Beaudoin, he raised a cry of mingled terror and surprise: 'Oh! my poor friend! Wait a moment, I will call my mother and my wife.'
They hastened to the spot, leaving a couple of servant-girls to continue making the linen-rollers. The attendants, who had taken the captain out of the carriage, carried him into the drying-room, and were about to lay him on some straw there, when, upon one of the mattresses, Delaherche perceived a soldier with ashy face and open eyes, who no longer stirred.
'I say, that fellow's dead!' the manufacturer exclaimed.
'So he is,' muttered an attendant. 'We'll get rid of him and make room for that officer.' Thereupon he and a comrade took up the corpse and carried it to the charnel-place behind the laburnums. There were already a dozen dead men lying there, stiffened in the last rattle, some with their feet stretched out as though distended by suffering, others all awry, twisted into atrocious postures. There were some showing only the whites of their eyes, and sneering, with their lips turned outwardly and displaying their white teeth; whilst several, upon whose drawn, elongated faces there lingered a fearfully mournful expression, were yet shedding big tears. One skinny, youthful little fellow, whose head had been split open, was convulsively pressing a woman's portrait—a common, faded, blood-smeared photograph—to his heart. And, pell-mell, at the feet of the corpses, were piled the amputated legs and arms, everything that was cut away, hewn off on the operating tables—the parings of flesh and bone of a butcher's shop, swept, as it were, into a corner.
Gilberte had shuddered at sight of Captain Beaudoin. Good God! how pale he was, lying on that mattress there, his face quite white under the filth that soiled it. And she was frozen with appalment, remembering that but a few hours previously he had been full of life. She fell upon her knees: 'What a misfortune, my friend! But it's nothing dangerous, is it?'
She had pulled out her handkerchief in a mechanical fashion, and wiped his face with it, unable to tolerate him in that dirty state, grimed with earth, gunpowder, and sweat. It seemed to her also that by cleansing him a little, she gave him some relief: 'It is not dangerous, is it? It's only your leg.'
Emerging from a kind of somnolence the captain painfully opened his eyes, and, recognising his friends, he tried to smile at them: 'Yes, only my leg; I did not even feel the blow, I thought I had slipped and was falling.' He had to pause, for he could only speak with difficulty: 'Oh! I'm so thirsty,' he added, 'so thirsty.'
Thereupon, old Madame Delaherche, who was leaning over him on the other side of the mattress, went off in all haste to fetch a glass and a decanter of water with which a small quantity of cognac had been mixed. And when the captain had eagerly drained the glass, she had to divide what remained in the decanter among the wounded near by; every hand was outstretched, and ardent voices supplicated her. A Zouave, for whom there was none left, began to sob.
Delaherche, meantime, was seeking an opportunity to speak to the major, in order that the captain might receive prompt attention. Bouroche had just come in with his bloody apron, his broad perspiring face and flaming leonine mane; and, as he passed along, the men raised themselves up and tried to stop him, each burning with a desire to secure the next turn, anxious to be succoured and to learn his fate.
'Me, monsieur le major, me!' they called. Faltering, prayerful voices pursued him, and fumbling fingers clutched at his clothes. Without listening to anyone, however, quite absorbed, breathing hard with fatigue, he decided how he would proceed with his work. He talked aloud, counted the men with his finger, numbered and classified them: this one, that one, and that other one; numbers one, two, and three; a jaw, an arm, and a thigh. Meantime, an assistant surgeon who accompanied him listened attentively, so that he might remember which men were to be brought, and in what order, into the operating shed.
'Major,' said Delaherche, 'there's a captain here, Captain Beaudoin——'
'What! Beaudoin here!' interrupted Bouroche; 'poor devil!'
He posted himself in front of the wounded officer, and no doubt realised the gravity of the case at a glance, for without even stooping to examine the damaged leg he immediately added: 'All right! he shall be brought to me at once, as soon as I've performed the operation which is being prepared.'
Thereupon he went back into the outhouse, followed by Delaherche, who did not want to lose sight of him for fear lest he should forget his promise.
The disarticulation of a shoulder-joint in accordance with Lisfranc's[31] method was this time in question, a pretty operation as surgeons say, something elegant and prompt, lasting barely forty seconds from first to last. The patient was already being chloroformed, whilst an assistant caught hold of his shoulder with both hands; the fingers under the arm-pit, the thumbs up above. Thereupon Bouroche, who was armed with a large, long knife, called out, 'Set him up,' grasped the deltoid, transfixed the arm and severed the muscle; then stepping back, he detached the articulation at one stroke, and the arm fell, amputated in three movements. The assistant had immediately stopped the axillary artery with his thumbs. 'Lay him down again,' said Bouroche, laughing involuntarily as he proceeded with the ligation, for the operation had only taken him five-and-thirty seconds. All that now remained was to press the shreds of flesh down upon the wound like a shoulder strap. Altogether it was a pretty piece of work, notably on account of the danger, for, by the axillary artery, a man may lose all his blood in three minutes; besides which, the life of a patient under the influence of chloroform is invariably imperilled when he is raised from a recumbent to a sitting posture.
Frozen with horror. Delaherche had turned to go, but before he could do so the arm was already lying on the table. The man who had been amputated, a sturdy young peasant, emerged from his torpor and saw an attendant carrying his arm away, to throw it behind the laburnums. He hastily glanced at his shoulder, and, on seeing the bleeding stump, flew into a violent rage: 'Good heavens! that's a nice thing you've done!'
Bouroche, who was terribly tired, did not at first reply; but at last in a good-natured way he said: 'I did it for the best, I didn't want you to kick the bucket, my boy. Besides, I asked you beforehand if you'd have it off, and you said "yes."'
'I said "yes"? I said "yes"? Did I know what you meant?' Then, as his anger fell, he began shedding bitter tears, and gasped: 'What shall I ever be able to do with myself now?'
He was carried back to the litter of straw; the oilcloth and the table were violently washed; and the pailfuls of red water which were again flung across the lawn made the white bed of China asters quite bloody.
Delaherche, however, felt astonished at still hearing the cannonade. Why did it not stop? Rose's table-cloth must now be hoisted over the citadel. And yet it seemed as if the fire of the Prussian batteries were increasing in intensity. Such was the uproar, that one could no longer hear oneself; the commotion shook the least nervous from head to foot, amid growing anguish. These shocks which tore away the heart were suited neither to amputators nor amputated. They upset, fevered the entire ambulance to the point of exasperation.
'But it was all finished; so why do they keep on firing?' exclaimed Delaherche, listening anxiously, and imagining every second that the shot he heard would be the last.
Then, as he turned to remind Bouroche of the captain, he was astonished to find the surgeon lying on his stomach atop of a truss of straw, with both arms bared to the shoulders and plunged in a couple of pails full of icy water. In this fashion was the major refreshing himself, for he was both physically and morally worn out, crushed, overwhelmed by immense sadness and distress, experiencing one of those momentary agonies of the practitioner who realises his powerlessness. Bouroche, albeit, was a sturdy fellow, hard-skinned and stout-hearted. But the thought 'what avails it?' had flashed across his mind, and filled him with sorrow. He had been suddenly paralysed by the consciousness that he would never be able to accomplish everything; that it was not given to him to do so. So of what use was it all, since Death was bound to prove the stronger?
Two attendants came up, with Captain Beaudoin on a stretcher. 'Here's the captain, major,' Delaherche ventured to say.
Bouroche opened his eyes, took his arms out of the pails, shook them, and wiped them in the straw. Then, raising himself on his knees: 'Yes, dash it!' said he; 'come, come, the day is by no means over.'
He was already getting up, shaking his lion-like head and tawny hair; set erect again by habit and imperious discipline. Gilberte and Madame Delaherche had followed the stretcher, and when the captain had been laid on the oilcloth-covered mattress, they still lingered there, standing just a few paces away.
'Good! it's above the right ankle,' said Bouroche, who talked a good deal by way of occupying the minds of his patients. 'That's not so bad. Wounds there can be cured—I'll examine it.'
It was evident, however, that Beaudoin's state of torpor preoccupied him. On looking at the provisional dressing—a simple band tightened and secured to the trousers by a bayonet sheath—he began growling between his teeth, asking what fool was responsible for that. Suddenly, however, he became silent again. The truth had just dawned upon him. During the transport, no doubt—in the landau packed full of wounded—the bandage had loosened and slipped, ceasing to compress the wound, so that an abundant loss of blood had ensued.
Guessing this, Bouroche—by way of venting his feelings—flew into a violent rage with an attendant who was helping him. 'You —— dawdler; make haste with that cutting,' he shouted.
The captain's trousers and drawers, shoe and sock were thereupon cut open. First the leg, then the foot appeared; their wan nudity stained with blood. And above the ankle there was a frightful hole, into which a splinter of a shell had driven a shred of red cloth. A swelling of lacerated flesh, a protuberance of the muscle emerged in a pulpous state from the wound.
Gilberte had to lean against one of the posts supporting the roof of the shed. Ah! that flesh, that flesh so soft and white, now bleeding and mangled! Despite her horror, she could not turn her eyes away from it.
'The devil!' said Bouroche, 'they've put you in a nice state!'
He felt the foot and found it cold; no beat of the pulse could be detected. His face had become very grave, and his lips were drawn down, as always happened when he found himself confronted by a disquieting case. 'The devil!' he repeated, 'that foot's bad.'
Roused from his somnolence by anxiety, the captain looked at him, waiting; and ended by saying: 'Do you think so, major?'
Although amputation might be a matter of necessity, Bouroche's system was never to ask a wounded man point-blank for the customary authorisation. He preferred that the sufferer should, of his own accord, resign himself to the operation. 'A bad foot,' he muttered, as if he were thinking aloud; 'we can't save it.'
'Come, major, to the point,' resumed Beaudoin, nervously; 'what do you think of it?'
'I think you are a brave man, captain, and that you are going to let me do what must be done.'
Beaudoin's paling eyes were dimmed by a kind of ruddy smoke. He had understood. However, despite the insupportable fear that was throttling him, he replied simply, like a gallant man: 'Do it, major.'
The preparations did not take long. The assistant, who had already dipped the napkin in chloroform, immediately applied it to the patient's nose. Then, at the moment when the slight agitation preceding anæsthesia manifested itself, two attendants slid the captain along the mattress so that his legs might project beyond it; and, whilst one of them held up the left leg, an assistant-surgeon, seizing hold of the right one, grasped it tightly with both hands, at the origin of the thigh, for the purpose of compressing the artery.
On seeing Bouroche approach with his narrow blade, Gilberte felt she could endure no more: 'No, no, it's too dreadful!'
She felt faint, and leant upon the arm which Madame Delaherche held out to prevent her from falling.
'Why do you stop, then?'
However, they both remained there; averting their heads, it is true, not wishing to see any more, and standing motionless and trembling, pressed close to one another, despite the little affection there was between them.
At no other time that day did the cannon thunder so loudly as it thundered now. It was three o'clock, and Delaherche, disappointed, exasperated, declared the uproar to be incomprehensible. Far from ceasing their fire, the German batteries were redoubling it. Why? What could be taking place? It was a hellish bombardment; the ground shook, the very atmosphere seemed on fire. The belt of artillery encircling Sedan, the eight hundred guns of the German armies, were firing simultaneously, ravaging all the surrounding fields with continuous thunderbolts; and a couple of hours of this converging fire directed centreward from all the encompassing heights would suffice to burn and pulverise the town. The situation was serious, for shells were again beginning to fall on the houses. The detonations were heard more and more frequently. One shell burst in the Rue des Voyards. Another chipped a corner off the high factory chimney, and some fragments of brick and cement fell just outside the operating-shed.
Bouroche raised his eyes, and growled: 'Do they want to finish off our wounded? That row is insupportable.'
In the meantime an attendant had caught hold of the captain's wounded leg by the foot, and by a rapid circular incision the major now cut the skin below the knee, at a couple of inches from the point where he contemplated sawing the bone. Then, with the same narrow knife, which he did not exchange for another, since he wished to accomplish the operation as speedily as possible, he detached the skin, raising it up all round, much in the fashion in which one peels an orange. Just as he was about to sever the muscles, however, an attendant approached him and whispered in his ear: 'Number two has dropped off.'
So frightful was the din that the major could not hear. 'Speak louder, will you? My ears are tingling with that cursed cannonade.'
'Number two has dropped off.'
'Who's number two?'
'The arm.'
'Oh! all right! Well, you'll bring me number three—the jaw.'
Then, with extraordinary skill, he at one stroke severed the muscles to the bone. He bared the tibia and the fibula, and, as a support, passed the three-tail compress between them. Then, with a single kerf of the saw, he lopped them off, the foot remaining in the hands of the attendant who was holding it.
But little blood flowed, thanks to the pressure which the assistant was maintaining higher up, around the thigh; and the ligation of the three arteries was swiftly accomplished. Nevertheless, the major shook his head; and when his assistant had taken his hands away, he examined his work, and, certain that his patient could not as yet hear him, muttered: 'It's a nuisance; no blood comes from the little arteries.'
Then, with a wave of the hand, he completed his diagnosis. Another poor devil done for! Again upon his perspiring face appeared that expression of immense fatigue and sadness, that despair summed up in the words: 'Of what use is it?' And, indeed, what did his labour avail since he did not succeed in saving four out of ten? However, he wiped his forehead, and having turned down the flesh of the captain's stump, he began to sew the three sutures.
Gilberte had just turned round, Delaherche having told her that it was finished, and that she could look. However, she caught sight of the captain's foot as the attendant carried it off into the garden. The charnel-place was now becoming more and more crowded; two more corpses were lying there, one with the mouth wide open and black, looking as though it were still howling; the other shrunk by an abominable agony, reduced to the size of a puny, deformed child. The annoyance was that the pile of remnants was now stretching into the path near by. The attendant hesitated for a moment as to where he might fitly deposit the captain's foot, but at last he made up his mind to throw it on the heap.
'Well, it's all finished,' said the major to Beaudoin, who was being roused; 'you're out of danger.'
The captain's, however, was not that gladsome awakening which follows upon successful operations. He slightly raised himself, but fell back stammering in a feeble voice: 'Thanks, major. I would rather it were all over.'
However, he could feel the smart of the spirit dressing. And just as the stretcher was being brought near, so that he might be carried back to his mattress, a terrible detonation shook the entire factory; a shell had burst behind the shed, in the little yard where the pump was. Several window-panes were smashed to pieces, and thick smoke poured into the ambulance. In the drying-room, panic raised the wounded up on their straw pallets, and all cried out in terror, and all were eager to flee.
Delaherche rushed off in distraction to ascertain the extent of the damage. Were they now going to demolish his house, set it on fire? What could be happening? Why did they keep on firing when the Emperor wanted them to stop?
'D——n! bestir yourselves!' shouted Bouroche to his attendants, whom terror rooted to the spot. 'Wash the table; go and fetch me number three!'
The table was washed, and once again the pailfuls of red water were flung across the lawn. The bed of China asters had become a bloody hash—the chopped stalks and flowers were swimming in blood. And now, by way of relaxation, the major, having had number three brought to him, began searching for a bullet which, after shattering the inferior maxilla, must have lodged itself under the tongue. A deal of blood was flowing, and made his fingers quite sticky.
Captain Beaudoin was again lying on his mattress in the drying-room. Gilberte and her mother-in-law had followed the stretcher, and Delaherche himself came to chat for a moment, despite his agitation. 'Keep quiet and rest yourself, captain,' said he; 'we will have a room got ready, you shall stay with us.'
Amid his prostration, however, the captain awoke to a short interval of lucidity. 'No,' said he, 'I really think I am going to die.' And he gazed at the three of them, with dilated eyes full of the fear of death.
'Oh! what are you saying, captain?' murmured Gilberte, forcing herself to smile, though she felt quite frozen. 'You will be up again in a month's time.'
He shook his head, however; and now he looked at her alone, with immense regret for life in his eyes, quailing at the thought that he must go off like that, before his time, and without having exhausted the delights of existence.
'I'm going to die, I'm going to die. Ah! it's awful.'
Then all at once his glance fell on his soiled, torn uniform and black hands, and it made him uncomfortable to find himself in such a horrid state in the presence of ladies. He felt ashamed, too, of his self-abandonment; and the thought that he was wanting in smartness restored to him a deal of bravery. 'Well,' he managed to resume, in a gay voice, 'if I am to die, I should at least like to die with my hands clean. Would you have the kindness, madame, to dip a towel in some water and give it me?'
Gilberte darted off, and on returning with the towel, insisted upon cleaning his hands for him. From that moment he displayed very great courage, desirous as he was that his end might be that of a well-bred man. Delaherche encouraged him, and assisted his wife in arranging him in a becoming manner. And in presence of this dying man, on seeing husband and wife so assiduous in their attentions, old Madame Delaherche felt her rancour pass away. Once more would she keep silent, she who knew and had sworn to tell her son everything. But why plunge the house in affliction, since death was carrying away the sin?
The end came almost immediately. Captain Beaudoin, growing weaker and weaker, again fell into a state of prostration. An icy sweat streamed from his forehead and his neck. For a moment he reopened his eyes, and fumbled as though he were seeking a blanket, and drawing it up close to his chin, with a gentle, stubborn pull of his twisted hands: 'Oh! I am so cold, so very cold.'
And he passed away, expired without a sob, his calm, wasted face retaining an expression of infinite sadness.
Delaherche did not allow the corpse to be carried to the charnel-place, but saw to its being deposited in a coach-house; and he then tried to induce Gilberte, who was sobbing, quite upset, to go back into the house. She declared, however, that she should feel too frightened if she remained alone, and that she preferred staying with her mother-in-law amid the bustle of the ambulance, which diverted her thoughts. She was already running off to give some water to a Chasseur d'Afrique delirious with fever, and to help dress the hand of a little Linesman, a recruit of twenty, who had come on foot from the battlefield. One of his thumbs had been carried away; and as he was a good-looking, comical fellow, who jested about his wound with the heedless air of a Parisian wag, she ended by getting quite lively in his company.