Complete Works of Emile Zola (1809 page)

Chauvin, who saw me smile, imagined I could not believe that such an immense liking for peace existed in the French army. He was deliciously simple. I sometimes drew him out considerably. I asked him:

“And you, were you never afraid?”

“Oh! I,” he replied, laughing modestly, “I was like the others — I didn’t know. Do you suppose you are aware whether you are courageous or not? You tremble and strike, that’s the truth. I was once knocked down by a spent bullet. I remained on the ground, thinking to myself that if I got up, something worse might happen to me.”

XIII

He died gallantly as he had lived.

Do you remember, my friends, that mild spring, when we used to go and see him at his little house at Clamart. Jacques welcomed us with his pleasant smile. And we dined in the bower covered with ivy grape, whilst Paris out there, on the horizon, was roaring in the falling night.

You never knew all about him. I, who grew up in the same place as he did, can read his heart to you. He had been living at Clamart for two years, with that tall, fair girl who faded away so sweetly. It is quite a story, as charming as it is painful.

Jacques had met Madeleine at the Fête of Saint Cloud. He took to loving her because she was sad and ailing. He wished to give the poor girl two seasons of affection before she entered her grave. And he went and hid himself with her, in that dip in the ground at Clamart, where roses grow as thick as poppies.

You know the house. It is a very modest one, all white, buried like a nest among the green foliage. From the threshold one breathed an atmosphere of quiet affection. Jacques, little by little, had become extremely fond of the dying girl He watched the disease making her paler every day, with feelings of bitter tenderness. Madeleine, like one of those small oil lamps in churches, which flare up brightly before going out, was all smiles and shed lustre on the little white house with her blue eyes.

The child hardly went abroad for two seasons. She filled the small garden with her charming being, her light gowns and nimble footsteps. It was she who planted the large fallow wall-flowers with which she made us nosegays. And the geraniums, the rhododendrons, the heliotropes, all those living flowers, lived by her and for her. She was the soul of this bit of nature.

Then, in the autumn, you remember, Jacques came one night and said to us in his drawling voice: “She is dead.” She had died in her bower, like a child going off to sleep at the pale hour when the sun retires for the night. She had died amidst her verdure, in the out-of-the-way corner where love had soothed her agony for two years.

I had never seen Jacques after that. I knew he still lived at Clamart, in the bower, with his thoughts on Madeleine. I had been so broken down with fatigue since the commencement of the siege, that I had quite forgotten him, when hearing on the morning of the 13th, that they were fighting in the vicinity of Meudon and Sèvres, I all at once recalled to mind the little white house hidden among the green leaves, with Madeleine, Jacques, all of us taking tea in the garden, amidst the intense peacefulness of evening, in front of Paris which was snoring with a rumbling, hollow noise on the horizon.

Then I went out by the Vanves gate and proceeded straight before me. The roads were encumbered with wounded. I thus reached Moulineaux, where I heard of our success; but, when I had turned the wood and found myself on the hillside, I felt a terrible pang in my heart.

Opposite me, in the trampled down, devastated fields, I saw nothing more on the site of the little white house, than a black hole where shot and fire had passed. I descended the hill with tearful eyes.

Ah! my friends, what a frightful sight! You know, the hawthorn hedge, it was levelled to the roots by bullets. The large fallow wall flowers, the geraniums, the rhododendrons, were lying around, cut to pieces, pounded to bits, so lamentable to see, that I felt the same pity for them, as if I had had the bleeding limbs of poor fellows of my acquaintance before me.

All one side of the house has fallen down. Its gaping wound displays Madeleine’s room, that chaste apartment, hung with rose-coloured chintz, the curtains of which one could always see drawn, from the road. That room, brutally thrown open by the Prussian cannonade, that love-pervaded alcove that can now be seen from any spot in the valley, made my heart bleed, and I said to myself that I was in the centre of the cemetery of our youth. The ground covered with remnants of all kinds, ploughed up by shells, resembled land recently upheaved by the shovels of grave-diggers, and where in mind’s eye one pictures to oneself the new coffins.

Jacques must have had to abandon this house riddled by shot. I went on further, I entered the bower, which, by miracle, has remained almost intact. There, Jacques was sleeping on the ground, in a pool of blood, his chest pierced by more than twenty wounds. He had not quitted the ivy grape where he had loved, he had died where Madeleine had died.

I picked up his empty cartridge-box, his broken chassepot at his feet, and I saw the hands of the poor departed were black with powder. Jacques, alone with his weapon, had madly defended Madeleine’s white phantom for the space of five hours.

XIV

Poor Neuilly! I shall long remember the lamentable walk I took yesterday, April 25, 1871. At nine o’clock, as soon as the armistice concluded between Paris and Versailles became known, a large crowd went towards the Porte Maillot. This gate no longer exists; the batteries at Courbevoie and Mount Valerian have reduced it to a heap of rubbish. When I passed through the ruin National Guards were occupied in repairing the gate — a useless task, for a few cannon-shots will suffice to dash away the sacks and paving-stones they were piling-up there.

From the Porte Maillot you walk amidst destruction. All the neighbouring houses have fallen in. Through the broken windows I catch sight of bits of costly furniture; a curtain in ribbons hangs from a balcony, a canary still lives in a cage suspended at the top of a garret window. The more one advances the greater are the disasters. The avenue is strewn with remnants, ploughed up by shells; any one would call it the vale of tears, the accursed Calvary of civil war.

I turned into the cross streets, hoping to escape this horrible high-road along which one came upon pools of blood at every step. Alas! in the narrow thoroughfares that run into the avenue the devastation is perhaps more terrible still. There they fought foot to foot with cold steel. The houses have been taken and retaken ten times over; the soldiers of the two parties have broken through the walls to effect an entrance into the interior, and they have struck down with pickaxes what the shells have spared. It is particularly the gardens that have suffered. The poor spring gardens! The surrounding walls have gaping breaches, the flower beds are up-heaved, the paths trampled down, laid waste. And over all this vision of spring, tainted with blood, a mass of lilac is blossoming all alone. Never has the month of April seen such bloom. Persons who feel curious enter the gardens by the open breaches. They carry armfuls of lilac away on their shoulders, and the bunches are so cumbrous that sprigs of them fall away at every step, so that the streets of Neuilly are soon all strewn with flowers, as if made ready for a procession.

The crowd is grieved at the damage done to the houses, at the holes in the walls. But there is something that looks still more sad. It is the removing of the inhabitants of the unfortunate village. There are three or four thousand persons hurrying away, carrying their most precious articles along with them. I see some people returning to Paris with a small basket of linen, and an enormous clock in imitation gilt bronze in their arms. All the carts for removing furniture have been retained. The people go even so far as to carry away wardrobes with looking-glass doors, on stretchers, like wounded mortals whom the slightest shock might kill.

The inhabitants have suffered frightfully. I had some conversation with one of the fugitives who had been shut up in a cellar for a fortnight with some thirty others. These unfortunate creatures were dying of hunger. One of them having volunteered to go and fetch food, was struck down on the threshold of the cellar, and his corpse remained for six days at the bottom of the steps. Is not such warfare, which permits of dead bodies rotting thus amidst the living, real nightmare? Is it not ungodly warfare? Sooner or later the country will suffer for these crimes.

The crowd strolled about on the scene of the struggle until five o’clock. I saw little girls who had come quietly from the Champs Elysées playing with their hoops among the ruins. And their smiling mothers talked together, and occasionally stopped, with a delightful little look of horror. Strange people are those of Paris, who forget themselves amongst loaded ordnance, who indulge in their love of sauntering idly to and fro, and examining everything that excites their interest, to the point of wishing to see whether the shot is really in the cannon’s mouth. Some National Guards, at the Porte Maillot, had to get angry with ladies who insisted on touching a mitrailleuse in order to understand its mechanism.

When I left Neuilly, at about seven o’clock, not a cannon-shot had been fired. The crowd was slowly re-entering Paris. One might have imagined, when in the Champs Elysées, that one was watching a late return of the public from the Long-champs races. And for a long time afterwards, up to dark, you met pedestrians, whole families, bowed down under loads of lilac. There is naught at this hour on our mantelpieces, but bunches of sweet-scented flowers from the sinister village where people of the same nationality are slaughtering one another, or from the accursed avenue with houses wrecked in gore.

We have just had three days’ sunshine. The boulevards were swarming with people sauntering to and fro. What causes me unremitting astonishment is the lively aspect of the squares and public gardens. In the Tuileries ladies are embroidering in the shade of the chestnuts, children are at play, whilst up there, in the direction of the Arc de Triomphe, shells are bursting. This intolerable sound of artillery no longer even causes this little playful world to turn their heads. You see mothers holding young children in each hand, who go close to the formidable barricades thrown up on the Place de la Concorde, and examine them.

But the most characteristic feature are the pleasure-parties the Parisians have been making for a week to the knoll of Montmartre. All Paris has fixed a rendezvous there, in some waste ground on the western slope. This is a magnificent amphitheatre for viewing the battle which is being fought between Neuilly and Asnières. They had brought chairs and camp-stools with them. Enterprising people had even placed forms there; for two sous you were seated as in the pit of a theatre. Women particularly, came in great numbers. Then there were loud bursts of laughter among the crowd. Each time they perceived a shell burst in the distance they stamped with joy, and made some good joke which ran through the groups like a squib of gaiety. I even saw people bring their luncheons there, a piece of pork-butcher’s delicacy on bread. So as not to quit the spot, they ate standing upright, and sent for wine at a retailer’s in the neighbourhood. These crowds require sights; when the theatres close and civil war opens they go and see people die in earnest, with the same bantering curiosity as they display in waiting for the fifth act of a melodrama.

“It’s so far off,” said a charming young woman, who was fair and pale, “that it does not affect me at all to see them jump. When men are cut in two, one would think they were being folded up like skeins of silk or thread.”

JEAN GOURDON’S FOUR DAYS

SPRING

ON that particular day, at about five o’clock in the morning, the sun entered with delightful abruptness into the little room I occupied at the house of my uncle Lazare, parish priest of the hamlet of Dourgues. A broad yellow ray fell upon my closed eyelids, and I awoke in light.

My room, which was whitewashed, and had deal furniture, was full of attractive gaiety. I went to the window and gazed at the Durance, which traced its broad course amidst the dark green verdure of the valley. Fresh puffs of wind caressed my face, and the murmur of the trees and river seemed to call me to them.

I gently opened my door. To get out I had to pass through my uncle’s room. I proceeded on tip-toe, fearing the creaking of my thick boots might awaken the worthy man, who was still slumbering with a smiling countenance. And I trembled at the sound of the church bell tolling the Angelus. For some days past my uncle Lazare had been following me about everywhere, looking sad and annoyed. He would perhaps have prevented me going over there to the edge of the river, and hiding myself among the willows on the bank, so as to watch for Babet passing, that tall dark girl who had come with the spring.

But my uncle was sleeping soundly. I felt something like remorse in deceiving him and running away in this manner. I stayed for an instant and gazed on his calm countenance, with its gentle expression enhanced by rest, and I recalled to mind with feeling the day when he had come to fetch me in the chilly and deserted home which my mother’s funeral was leaving. Since that day, what tenderness, what devotedness, what good advice he had bestowed on me! He had given me his knowledge and his kindness, all his intelligence and all his heart.

I was tempted for a moment to cry out to him:

“Get up, uncle Lazare! let us go for a walk together along that path you are so fond of beside the Durance. You will enjoy the fresh air and morning sun. You will see what an appetite you will have on your return!”

And Babet, who was going down to the river in her light morning gown, and whom I should not be able to see! My uncle would be there, and I would have to lower my eyes. It must be so nice under the willows, lying flat on one’s stomach, in the fine grass! I felt a languid feeling creeping over me, and, slowly, taking short steps, holding my breath, I reached the door. I went downstairs, and began running like a madcap in the delightful, warm May morning air.

The sky was quite white on the horizon, with exquisitely delicate blue and pink tints. The pale sun seemed like a great silver lamp, casting a shower of bright rays into the Durance. And the broad, sluggish river expanding lazily over the red sand, extended from one end of the valley to the other, like a stream of liquid metal. To the west, a line of low rugged hills threw slight violet streaks on the pale sky.