The Downfall

straight for you in a jiffy; there's no resisting her, she has only to ask for a thing to get it.' He laughed as he concluded his speech, which was uttered in perfect simplicity of soul, evidently pleased and flattered that his wife possessed such influence, in which he shone with a kind of reflected glory. Then turning suddenly to her: 'By the way, my dear, has Edmond told you of his great discovery?'

'No; what discovery?' asked Gilberte, turning her pretty caressing eyes full on the young sergeant.

The cherub blushed whenever a woman looked at him in that way, as if the exquisiteness of his sensations was too much for him. 'It's nothing, madame; only a bit of old lace; I heard you saying the other day you wanted some to put on your mauve peignoir. I happened yesterday to come across five yards of old Bruges point, something really handsome and very cheap. The woman will be here presently to show it to you.'

She could have kissed him, so delighted was she. 'Oh, how nice of you! You shall have your reward.'

Then, while a terrine of foie-gras, purchased in Belgium, was being served, the conversation took another turn; dwelling for an instant on the quantities of fish that were dying of poison in the Meuse, and finally coming around to the subject of the pestilence that menaced Sedan when there should be a thaw. Even as early as November, there had been several cases of disease of an epidemic character. Six thousand francs had been expended after the battle in cleansing the city and collecting and burning clothing, knapsacks, haversacks, all the debris that was capable of harboring infection; but, for all that, the surrounding fields continued to exhale sickening odors whenever there came a day or two of warmer weather, so replete were they with half-buried corpses, covered only with a few inches of loose earth. In every direction the ground was dotted with graves; the soil cracked and split in obedience to the forces acting beneath its surface, and from the fissures thus formed the gases of putrefaction issued to poison the living. In those more recent days, moreover, another center of contamination had been discovered, the Meuse, although there had already been removed from it the bodies of more than twelve hundred dead horses. It was generally believed that there were no more human remains left in the stream, until, one day, a garde champetre, looking attentively down into the water where it was some six feet deep, discovered some objects glimmering at the bottom, that at first he took for stones; but they proved to be corpses of men, that had been mutilated in such a manner as to prevent the gas from accumulating in the cavities of the body and hence had been kept from rising to the surface. For near four months they had been lying there in the water among the eel-grass. When grappled for the irons brought them up in fragments, a head, an arm, or a leg at a time; at times the force of the current would suffice to detach a hand or foot and send it rolling down the stream. Great bubbles of gas rose to the surface and burst, still further empoisoning the air.

'We shall get along well enough as long as the cold weather lasts,' remarked Delaherche, 'but as soon as the snow is off the ground we shall have to go to work in earnest to abate the nuisance; if we don't we shall be wanting graves for ourselves.' And when his wife laughingly asked him if he could not find some more agreeable subject to talk about at the table, he concluded by saying: 'Well, it will be a long time before any of us will care to eat any fish out of the Meuse.'

They had finished their repast, and the coffee was being poured, when the maid came to the door and announced that M. de Gartlauben presented his compliments and wanted to know if he might be allowed to see them for a moment. There was a slight flutter of excitement, for it was the first time he had ever presented himself at that hour of the day. Delaherche, seeing in the circumstance a favorable opportunity for presenting Henriette to him, gave orders that he should be introduced at once. The doughty captain, when he beheld another young woman in the room, surpassed himself in politeness, even accepting a cup of coffee, which he took without sugar, as he had seen many people do at Paris. He had only asked to be received at that unusual hour, he said, that he might tell Madame he had succeeded in obtaining the pardon of one of her proteges, a poor operative in the factory who had been arrested on account of a squabble with a Prussian. And Gilberte thereon seized the opportunity to mention Father Fouchard's case.

'Captain, I wish to make you acquainted with one of my dearest friends, who desires to place herself under your protection. She is the niece of the farmer who was arrested lately at Remilly, as you are aware, for being mixed up with that business of the francs-tireurs.'

'Yes, yes, I know; the affair of the spy, the poor fellow who was found in a sack with his throat cut. It's a bad business, a very bad business. I am afraid I shall not be able to do anything.'

'Oh, Captain, don't say that! I should consider it such a favor!'

There was a caress in the look she cast on him, while he beamed with satisfaction, bowing his head in gallant obedience. Her wish was his law!

'You would have all my gratitude, sir,' faintly murmured Henriette, to whose memory suddenly rose the image of her husband, her dear Weiss, slaughtered down yonder at Bazeilles, filling her with invincible repugnance.

Edmond, who had discreetly taken himself off on the arrival of the captain, now reappeared and whispered something in Gilberte's ear. She rose quickly from the table, and, announcing to the company that she was going to inspect her lace, excused herself and followed the young man from the room. Henriette, thus left alone with the two men, went and took a seat by herself in the embrasure of a window, while they remained seated at the table and went on talking in a loud tone.

'Captain, you'll have a petit verre with me. You see I don't stand on ceremony with you; I say whatever comes into my head, because I know you to be a fair-minded man. Now I tell you your prefet is all wrong in trying to extort those forty-two thousand francs from the city. Just think once of all our losses since the beginning of the war. In the first place, before the battle, we had the entire French army on our hands, a set of ragged, hungry, exhausted men; and then along came your rascals, and their appetites were not so very poor, either. The passage of those troops through the place, what with requisitions, repairing damages and expenses of all sorts, stood us in a million and a half. Add as much more for the destruction caused by your artillery and by conflagration during the battle; there you have three millions. Finally, I am well within bounds in estimating the loss sustained by our trade and manufactures at two millions. What do you say to that, eh? A grand total of five million francs for a city of thirteen thousand inhabitants! And now you come and ask us for forty-two thousand more as a contribution to the expense of carrying on the war against us! Is it fair, is it reasonable? I leave it to your own sense of justice.'

M. de Gartlauben nodded his head with an air of profundity, and made answer:

'What can you expect? It is the fortune of war, the fortune of war.'

To Henriette, seated in her window seat, her ears ringing, and vague, sad images of every sort fleeting through her brain, the time seemed to pass with mortal slowness, while Delaherche asserted on his word of honor that Sedan could never have weathered the crisis produced by the exportation of all their specie had it not been for the wisdom of the local magnates in emitting an issue of paper money, a step that had saved the city from financial ruin.

'Captain, will you have just a drop of cognac more?' and he skipped to another topic. 'It was not France that started the war; it was the Emperor. Ah, I was greatly deceived in the Emperor. He need never expect to sit on the throne again; we would see the country dismembered first. Look here! there was just one man in this country last July who saw things as they were, and that was M. Thiers; and his action at the present time in visiting the different capitals of Europe is most wise and patriotic. He has the best wishes of every good citizen; may he be successful!'

He expressed the conclusion of his idea by a gesture, for he would have considered it improper to speak of his desire for peace before a Prussian, no matter how friendly he might be, although the desire burned fiercely in his bosom, as it did in that of every member of the old conservative bourgeoisie who had favored the plebiscite. Their men and money were exhausted, it was time for them to throw up the sponge; and a deep-seated feeling of hatred toward Paris, for the obstinacy with which it held out, prevailed in all the provinces that were in possession of the enemy. He concluded in a lower tone, his allusion being to Gambetta's inflammatory proclamations:

'No, no, we cannot give our suffrages to fools and madmen. The course they advocate would end in general massacre. I, for my part, am for M. Thiers, who would submit the questions at issue to the popular vote, and as for their Republic, great heavens! let them have it if they want it, while waiting for something better; it don't trouble me in the slightest.'

Captain de Gartlauben continued to nod his head very politely with an approving air, murmuring:

'To be sure, to be sure-'

Henriette, whose feeling of distress had been increasing, could stand their talk no longer. She could assign no definite reason for the sensation of inquietude that possessed her; it was only a longing to get away, and she rose and left the room quietly in quest of Gilberte, whose absence had been so long protracted. On entering the