Читать книгу The Downfall (La Débâcle) - Emile Zola - Страница 14

'Thunder!' exclaimed Chouteau, when he awoke on the following morning in the tent, feeling weary and icy cold; 'I'd willingly accept some hot broth with plenty of meat round it.'

When they had encamped on the previous evening at Boult-aux-Bois, only some scanty rations of potatoes had been distributed, the commissariat becoming more and more bewildered and disorganised by the incessant marching and counter-marching, and failing to meet the troops at any of the appointed places. In the confusion prevailing on the roads, no one knew where to find those migratory droves of cattle intended for the army, and famine seemed near at hand.

'Yes, dash it all!' rejoined Loubet, with a sneer of desperation, as he stretched himself. 'But it's all over now. No more roast goose!'

The squad was in a bad humour. Things were not lively when there was nothing to eat; and besides there was that incessant rain, and that mud in which they had been sleeping.

Seeing that Pache was crossing himself, after saying his morning prayer with closed lips, that infidel Chouteau furiously resumed: 'Why don't you pray for a couple of sausages and a pint of wine for each of us?'

'Ah! if we only had some bread even,' sighed Lapoulle, who, with his excessive appetite, suffered more hunger than the others.

However, Lieutenant Rochas silenced them. They ought to be ashamed of themselves, always thinking of their stomachs! For his part, when he felt hungry he simply tightened his belt. Since affairs had been going from bad to worse, and a fusillade could occasionally be heard, the lieutenant had recovered all his stubborn confidence in victory. It was so simple now that the Prussians were there: the French would just give them a licking. And he shrugged his shoulders behind Captain Beaudoin, that whipper-snapper, as he called him, who, quite distracted by the loss of his baggage, was now always in a furious passion, with his lips set and his face extremely pale. Nothing to eat? A man could put up with that! What made the Captain so indignant was that he could not change his shirt.

Maurice awoke, depressed and shivering. Thanks to his broad shoes, his foot had not again become inflamed; but the deluge of the previous day, which still made his great-coat very heavy, had again left him aching in every limb. When he was sent to fetch the water for the coffee he gazed for a moment over the plain at the edge of which Boult-aux-Bois is situated. Forests climb the hills on the west and the north, where a ridge extends as far as Belleville; whilst a vast open expanse, amid the gentle undulations of which various hamlets are hidden, stretches towards Buzancy on the east. Was it from that side that the enemy was expected? As he came back from the stream with his can full of water, a family of weeping peasants, clustering on the threshold of a little farmhouse, called him and asked him if the soldiers would stay there to defend them. Three times already, owing to contrary orders, had the Fifth Army Corps crossed this part of the country. A cannonade in the direction of Bar had been heard during the previous day, so that the Prussians could not now be more than a couple of leagues distant. When Maurice told these poor people that the Seventh Corps would in all probability soon set out again, they began to bewail their lot. So they were to be abandoned; so the soldiers did not come to fight, since they simply saw them appear and disappear, invariably fleeing from the foe.

'Those who want any sugar,' said Loubet, when he served the coffee, 'must suck their thumbs.'

Nobody laughed, however. It was, indeed, vexatious, not even to have any sugar for their coffee. And if they had only had a scrap of biscuit to eat! However, during that long halt on the plateau of Quatre-Champs the day before, almost all of them, by way of passing the time, had nibbled the fragments, devoured even the crumbs remaining in their knapsacks. Fortunately, Jean's squad discovered that they possessed a dozen potatoes, and these were divided among the men.

'Ah! if I had only known, I would have bought some bread at Le Chêne,' regretfully said Maurice, whose stomach craved for food.

Jean sat there listening in silence. He had had a quarrel that morning with Chouteau, who when ordered to fetch the firewood had insolently refused to do so, saying that it was not his turn. Since affairs had been going from bad to worse, the indiscipline was increasing, until at last the officers dared not even reprimand their men. Jean, with his admirable calmness, realised that he must sink his authority as corporal, if he did not wish to provoke open mutiny. So he played the part of a good-natured fellow, appearing to be simply the comrade of his men, to whom, thanks to his experience, he was able to render important services. If his squad was no longer so well fed as formerly, at all events it did not perish of hunger like others did. It was especially Maurice's sufferings that touched Jean. He realised that this delicate little fellow was getting very weak, and he watched him with an uneasy eye, wondering how he would manage to keep up to the end.

When he heard him complaining that he had no bread, he rose to his feet, went off for a moment to rummage in his knapsack, and then, on returning, slipped a biscuit into Maurice's hand.

'Take that and hide it,' he whispered to him, 'I haven't enough for everyone.'

'But how about yourself?' asked the young fellow, deeply touched.

'Oh! never mind me. Besides, I still have a couple left.'

This was a fact. Jean had been carefully preserving three biscuits in case there should be any fighting, for he knew by experience that a man feels frightfully hungry on the battlefield. For the moment he had eaten a potato, and that sufficed him. Later on, something else might turn up.

The Seventh Corps was again set in motion at about ten o'clock. The marshal's original intention, no doubt, was to despatch it by way of Buzancy to Stenay, where it would have crossed the Meuse. But the Prussians, who were marching faster than the army of Châlons, must by this time already be at Stenay; indeed, it was said, they were even at Buzancy. Driven in this way towards the north, the Seventh Corps had consequently received orders to proceed to La Besace, some fourteen or fifteen miles from Boult-aux-Bois, with the view of reaching and crossing the Meuse at Mouzon on the morrow. The start was a dreary one; the men, with their stomachs almost empty and their limbs unrested, exhausted by the fatigue and waiting of the previous days, were audibly growling; and the gloomy officers, giving way to uneasiness at thought of the catastrophe to which they were marching, talked complainingly of their inaction, and were indignant that they had not been sent to Buzancy to support the Fifth Corps, whose guns had been heard there. This corps must also be retreating—no doubt towards Nouart, whilst the Twelfth, bound for Mouzon, was setting out from La Besace, and the First was taking the road to Raucourt.

All these masses of men now tramped along like so many flocks, urged on and worried by dogs, and hustling one another, as they at last advanced towards the longed-for Meuse, after endless dawdling and delay.

When the 106th started from Boult-aux-Bois, following the cavalry and artillery—the three divisions streaking the plain with a long stream of marching men—the sky again became covered with large, livid clouds, the gloom of which put the finishing stroke to the men's sadness. For a time the regiment followed the high road to Buzancy, which was edged with superb poplars. At Germond, a village where heaps of manure were smoking before the doors on either side of the road, the women sobbed, and taking their children in their arms, held them out to the passing troops as though begging the latter to carry them away. Not a morsel of bread or a potato remained in the place. And now, instead of proceeding any farther in the direction of Buzancy, the 106th wheeled to the left towards Authe; and when on a hill across the plain, the men again saw Belleville, through which they had marched the day before, they at once became conscious that they were retracing their steps.

'Thunder!' growled Chouteau; 'do they take us for spinning tops?'

And Loubet added, 'There are generals for you! Pulling first one way, then another! One can easily see that they don't care a fig for our legs.'

They all became angry. It was too bad to weary men out in this fashion simply for the purpose of promenading them up and down. They were now marching across the barren plain in a column of two files, one on either side of the road, the centre of which was reserved to the officers; but no jokes were cracked, no songs were sung to enliven the march as on the day when they had left Rheims—the day when they carried their knapsacks so jauntily, their shoulders lightened by the hope of outstripping the Prussians and beating them. Now they were silent and irritated, and crawled along wearily, hating their guns, which made their shoulders sore, and their knapsacks, which weighed them down; no longer, moreover, having any confidence in their commanders, but giving way to such despair that they were like cattle, which only fear of the goad can impel onward. The wretched army was now beginning to ascend its Calvary.

For a few minutes, however, something had greatly interested Maurice. He had seen a horseman ride out of a little wood, far away on the left, where the ground rose in a succession of ridges of increasing height, parted by narrow valleys. Almost immediately afterwards a second horseman appeared and then another. They all three remained there motionless, looking no larger than the fist, like toys, sharply and precisely outlined. Maurice thought they must belong to some outpost of Hussars, or to some returning reconnoitring-party, but he was suddenly astonished to see some brilliant specks on their shoulders—the glitter, no doubt, of brass epaulettes.