The Downfall

VIII.

At half-past five o'clock, after the closing of the gates, Delaherche, in his eager thirst for news, now that he knew the battle lost, had again returned to the Sous-Prefecture. He hung persistently about the approaches of the janitor's lodge, tramping up and down the paved courtyard with feverish impatience, for more than three hours, watching for every officer who came up and interviewing him, and thus it was that he had become acquainted, piecemeal, with the rapid series of events; how General de Wimpffen had tendered his resignation and then withdrawn it upon the peremptory refusal of Generals Ducrot and Douay to append their names to the articles of capitulation, how the Emperor had thereupon invested the General with full authority to proceed to the Prussian headquarters and treat for the surrender of the vanquished army on the most advantageous terms obtainable; how, finally, a council of war had been convened with the object of deciding what possibilities there were of further protracting the struggle successfully by the defense of the fortress. During the deliberations of this council, which consisted of some twenty officers of the highest rank and seemed to him as if it would never end, the cloth manufacturer climbed the steps of the huge public building at least twenty times, and at last his curiosity was gratified by beholding General de Wimpffen emerge, very red in the face and his eyelids puffed and swollen with tears, behind whom came two other generals and a colonel. They leaped into the saddle and rode away over the Pont de Meuse. The bells had struck eight some time before; the inevitable capitulation was now to be accomplished, from which there was no escape.

Delaherche, somewhat relieved in mind by what he had heard and seen, remembered that it was a long time since he had tasted food and resolved to turn his steps homeward, but the terrific crowd that had collected since he first came made him pause in dismay. It is no exaggeration to say that the streets and squares were so congested, so thronged, so densely packed with horses, men, and guns, that one would have declared the closely compacted mass could only have been squeezed and wedged in there thus by the effort of some gigantic mechanism. While the ramparts were occupied by the bivouacs of such regiments as had fallen back in good order, the city had been invaded and submerged by an angry, surging, desperate flood, the broken remnants of the various corps, stragglers and fugitives from all arms of the service, and the dammed-up tide made it impossible for one to stir foot or hand. The wheels of the guns, of the caissons, and the innumerable vehicles of every description, had interlocked and were tangled in confusion worse confounded, while the poor horses, flogged unmercifully by their drivers and pulled, now in this direction, now in that, could only dance in their bewilderment, unable to move a step either forward or back. And the men, deaf to reproaches and threats alike, forced their way into the houses, devoured whatever they could lay hands on, flung themselves down to sleep wherever they could find a vacant space, it might be in the best bedroom or in the cellar. Many of them had fallen in doorways, where they blocked the vestibule; others, without strength to go farther, lay extended on the sidewalks and slept the sleep of death, not even rising when some by- passer trod on them and bruised an arm or leg, preferring the risk of death to the fatigue of changing their location.

These things all helped to make Delaherche still more keenly conscious of the necessity of immediate capitulation. There were some quarters in which numerous caissons were packed so close together that they were in contact, and a single Prussian shell alighting on one of them must inevitably have exploded them all, entailing the immediate destruction of the city by conflagration. Then, too, what could be accomplished with such an assemblage of miserable wretches, deprived of all their powers, mental and physical, by reason of their long-endured privations, and destitute of either ammunition or subsistence? Merely to clear the streets and reduce them to a condition of something like order would require a whole day. The place was entirely incapable of defense, having neither guns nor provisions.

These were the considerations that had prevailed at the council among those more reasonable officers who, in the midst of their grief and sorrow for their country and the army, had retained a clear and undistorted view of the situation as it was; and the more hot-headed among them, those who cried with emotion that it was impossible for an army to surrender thus, had been compelled to bow their head upon their breast in silence and admit that they had no practicable scheme to offer whereby the conflict might be recommenced on the morrow.

In the Place Turenne and Place du Rivage, Delaherche succeeded with the greatest difficulty in working his way through the press. As he passed the Hotel of the Golden Cross a sorrowful vision greeted his eyes, that of the generals seated in the dining room, gloomily silent, around the empty board; there was nothing left to eat in the house, not even bread. General Bourgain-Desfeuilles, however, who had been storming and vociferating in the kitchen, appeared to have found something, for he suddenly held his peace and ran away swiftly up the stairs, holding in his hands a large paper parcel of a greasy aspect. Such was the crowd assembled there, to stare through the lighted windows upon the guests assembled around that famine-stricken table d'hote, that the manufacturer was obliged to make vigorous play with his elbows, and was frequently driven back by some wild rush of the mob and lost all the distance, and more, that he had just gained. In the Grande Rue, however, the obstacles became actually impassable, and there was a moment when he was inclined to give up in despair; a complete battery seemed to have been driven in there and the guns and materiel piled, pell-mell, on top of one another. Deciding finally to take the bull by the horns, he leaped to the axle of a piece and so pursued his way, jumping from wheel to wheel, straddling the guns, at the imminent risk of breaking his legs, if not his neck. Afterward it was some horses that blocked his way, and he made himself lowly and stooped, creeping among the feet and underneath the bellies of the sorry jades, who were ready to die of inanition, like their masters. Then, when after a quarter of an hour's laborious effort he reached the junction of the Rue Saint-Michel, he was terrified at the prospect of the dangers and obstacles that he had still to face, and which, instead of diminishing, seemed to be increasing, and made up his mind to turn down the street above mentioned, which would take him into the Rue des Laboureurs; he hoped that by taking these usually quiet and deserted passages he should escape the crowd and reach his home in safety. As luck would have it he almost directly came upon a house of ill-fame to which a band of drunken soldiers were in process of laying siege, and considering that a stray shot, should one reach him in the fracas, would be equally as unpleasant as one intended for him, he made haste to retrace his steps. Resolving to have done with it he pushed on to the end of the Grande Rue, now gaining a few feet by balancing himself, rope-walker fashion, along the pole of some vehicle, now climbing over an army wagon that barred his way. At the Place du College he was carried along-bodily on the shoulders of the throng for a space of thirty paces; he fell to the ground, narrowly escaped a set of fractured ribs, and saved himself only by the proximity of a friendly iron railing, by the bars of which he pulled himself to his feet. And when at last he reached the Rue Maqua, inundated with perspiration, his clothing almost torn from his back, he found that he had been more than an hour in coming from the Sous-Prefecture, a distance which in ordinary times he was accustomed to accomplish in less than five minutes.

Major Bouroche, with the intention of keeping the ambulance and garden from being overrun with intruders, had caused two sentries to be mounted at the door. This measure was a source of great comfort to Delaherche, who had begun to contemplate the possibilities of his house being subjected to pillage. The sight of the ambulance in the garden, dimly lighted by a few candles and exhaling its fetid, feverish emanations, caused him a fresh constriction of the heart; then, stumbling over the body of a soldier who was stretched in slumber on the stone pavement of the walk, he supposed him to be one of the fugitives who had managed to find his way in there from outside, until, calling to mind the 7th corps treasure that had been deposited there and the sentry who had been set over it, he saw how matters stood: the poor fellow, stationed there since early morning, had been overlooked by his superiors and had succumbed to his fatigue. Besides, the house seemed quite deserted; the ground floor was black as Egypt, and the doors stood wide open. The servants were doubtless all at the ambulance, for there was no one in the kitchen, which was faintly illuminated by the light of a wretched little smoky lamp. He lit a candle and ascended the main staircase very softly, in order not to awaken his wife and mother, whom he had begged to go to bed early after a day where the stress, both mental and physical, had been so intense.

On entering his study, however, he beheld a sight that caused his eyes to dilate with astonishment. Upon the sofa on which Captain Beaudoin had snatched a few hours' repose the day before a soldier lay outstretched; and he could not understand the reason of it until he had looked and recognized young Maurice Levasseur, Henriette's brother. He was still more surprised when, on turning his head, he perceived, stretched on the floor and wrapped in a bed quilt, another soldier, that Jean, whom he had seen for a moment just before the battle. It was plain that the poor fellows, in their distress and fatigue after the conflict, not knowing where else to bestow themselves, had sought refuge there; they were crushed, annihilated, like dead men. He did not linger there, but pushed on to his