The Downfall

Bouroche had considered it would be best to establish himself in Sedan at the commencement, foreseeing the dreadful slaughter and the inevitable panic that would sooner or later drive the troops to the shelter of the ramparts. All that he had deemed it necessary to leave with the regiment was two flying ambulances and some 'first aids,' that were to send him in the casualties as rapidly as possible after applying the primary dressings. The details of litter-bearers were all out there, whose duty it was to pick up the wounded under fire, and with them were the ambulance wagons and fourgons of the medical train. The two assistant- surgeons and three hospital stewards whom he had retained, leaving two assistants on the field, would doubtless be sufficient to perform what operations were necessary. He had also a corps of dressers under him. But he was not gentle in manner and language, for all he did was done impulsively, zealously, with all his heart and soul.

'Tonnerre de Dieu! how do you suppose we are going to distinguish the cases from one another when they begin to come in presently? Take a piece of charcoal and number each bed with a big figure on the wall overhead, and place those mattresses closer together, do you hear? We can strew some straw on the floor in that corner if it becomes necessary.'

The guns were barking, preparing his work for him; he knew that at any moment now the first carriage might drive up and discharge its load of maimed and bleeding flesh, and he hastened to get all in readiness in the great, bare room. Outside in the shed the preparations were of another nature: the chests were opened and their contents arranged in order on a table, packages of lint, bandages, compresses, rollers, splints for fractured limbs, while on another table, alongside a great jar of cerate and a bottle of chloroform, were the surgical cases with their blood- curdling array of glittering instruments, probes, forceps, bistouries, scalpels, scissors, saws, an arsenal of implements of every imaginable shape adapted to pierce, cut, slice, rend, crush. But there was a deficient supply of basins.

'You must have pails, pots, jars about the house-something that will hold water. We can't work besmeared with blood all day, that's certain. And sponges, try to get me some sponges.'

Madame Delaherche hurried away and returned, followed by three women bearing a supply of the desired vessels. Gilberte, standing by the table where the instruments were laid out, summoned Henriette to her side by a look and pointed to them with a little shudder. They grasped each other's hand and stood for a moment without speaking, but their mute clasp was eloquent of the solemn feeling of terror and pity that filled both their souls. And yet there was a difference, for one retained, even in her distress, the involuntary smile of her bright youth, while in the eyes of the other, pale as death, was the grave earnestness of the heart which, one love lost, can never love again.

'How terrible it must be, dear, to have an arm or leg cut off!'

'Poor fellows!'

Bouroche had just finished placing a mattress on each of the three tables, covering them carefully with oil- cloth, when the sound of horses' hoofs was heard outside and the first ambulance wagon rolled into the court. There were ten men in it, seated on the lateral benches, only slightly wounded; two or three of them carrying their arm in a sling, but the majority hurt about the head. They alighted with but little assistance, and the inspection of their cases commenced forthwith.

One of them, scarcely more than a boy, had been shot through the shoulder, and as Henriette was tenderly assisting him to draw off his greatcoat, an operation that elicited cries of pain, she took notice of the number of his regiment.

'Why, you belong to the 106th! Are you in Captain Beaudoin's company?'

No, he belonged to Captain Bonnaud's company, but for all that he was well acquainted with Corporal Macquart and felt pretty certain that his squad had not been under fire as yet. The tidings, meager as they were, sufficed to remove a great load from the young woman's heart: her brother was alive and well; if now her husband would only return, as she was expecting every moment he would do, her mind would be quite at rest.

At that moment, just as Henriette raised her head to listen to the cannonade, which was then roaring with increased viciousness, she was thunderstruck to see Delaherche standing only a few steps away in the middle of a group of men, to whom he was telling the story of the frightful dangers he had encountered in getting from Bazeilles to Sedan. How did he happen to be there? She had not seen him come in. She darted toward him.

'Is not my husband with you?'

But Delaherche, who was just then replying to the fond questions of his wife and mother, was in no haste to answer.

'Wait, wait a moment.' And resuming his narrative: 'Twenty times between Bazeilles and Balan I just missed being killed. It was a storm, a regular hurricane, of shot and shell! And I saw the Emperor, too. Oh! but he is a brave man!-And after leaving Balan I ran-'

Henriette shook him by the arm.

'My husband?'

'Weiss? why, he stayed behind there, Weiss did.'

'What do you mean, behind there?'

'Why, yes; he picked up the musket of a dead soldier, and is fighting away with the best of them.'

'He is fighting, you say?-and why?'

'He must be out of his head, I think. He would not come with me, and of course I had to leave him.'

Henriette gazed at him fixedly, with wide-dilated eyes. For a moment no one spoke; then in a calm voice she declared her resolution.

'It is well; I will go to him.'

What, she, go to him? But it was impossible, it was preposterous! Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of shot and shell. Gilberte seized her by the wrists to detain her, while Madame Delaherche used all her persuasive powers to convince her of the folly of the mad undertaking. In the same gentle, determined tone she repeated:

'It is useless; I will go to him.'

She would only wait to adjust upon her head the lace scarf that Gilberte had been wearing and which the latter insisted she should accept. In the hope that his offer might cause her to abandon her resolve Delaherche declared that he would go with her at least as far as the Balan gate, but just then he caught sight of the sentry, who, in all the turmoil and confusion of the time, had been pacing uninterruptedly up and down before the building that contained the treasure chests of the 7th corps, and suddenly he remembered, was alarmed, went to give a look and assure himself that the millions were there still. In the meantime Henriette had reached the portico and was about to pass out into the street.

'Wait for me, won't you? Upon my word, you are as mad as your husband!'

Another ambulance had driven up, moreover, and they had to wait to let it pass in. It was smaller than the other, having but two wheels, and the two men whom it contained, both severely wounded, rested on stretchers placed upon the floor. The first one whom the attendants took out, using the most tender precaution, had one hand broken and his side torn by a splinter of shell; he was a mass of bleeding flesh. The second had his left leg shattered; and Bouroche, giving orders to extend the latter on one of the oil-cloth-covered mattresses, proceeded forthwith to operate on him, surrounded by the staring, pushing crowd of dressers and assistants. Madame Delaherche and Gilberte were seated near the grass-plot, employed in rolling bandages.

In the street outside Delaherche had caught up with Henriette.

'Come, my dear Madame Weiss, abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home through the fields. I assure you that Bazeilles is inaccessible.'

But she did not even listen to him, only increasing her speed, and had now entered the Rue de Menil, her shortest way to the Balan gate. It was nearly nine o'clock, and Sedan no longer wore the forbidding, funereal aspect of the morning, when it awoke to grope and shudder amid the despair and gloom of its black fog. The shadows of the houses were sharply defined upon the pavement in the bright sunlight, the streets were filled with an excited, anxious throng, through which orderlies and staff officers were constantly pushing their way at a gallop. The chief centers of attraction were the straggling soldiers who, even at this early hour of the day, had begun to stream into the city, minus arms and equipments, some of them slightly wounded, others in an extreme condition of nervous excitation, shouting and gesticulating like lunatics. And yet the place would have had very much its every-day aspect, had it not been for the tight-closed shutters of the shops, the lifeless house-fronts, where not a blind was open. Then there was the cannonade, that never-ceasing cannonade, beneath which earth and rocks, walls and foundations, even to the very slates upon the roofs, shook and trembled.