The Downfall

In the dim, white light of morning, at that hour of awakening, the sight of the ambulance sent a chill of horror through them. Three more patients had died during the night, without anyone being aware of it, and the attendants were hurriedly bearing away the corpses in order to make room for others. Those who had been operated on the day before opened wide their eyes in their somnolent, semi-conscious state, and looked with dazed astonishment on that vast dormitory of suffering, where the victims of the knife, only half-slaughtered, rested on their straw. It was in vain that some attempts had been made the night before to clean up the room after the bloody work of the operations; there were great splotches of blood on the ill-swept floor; in a bucket of water a great sponge was floating, stained with red, for all the world like a human brain; a hand, its fingers crushed and broken, had been overlooked and lay on the floor of the shed. It was the parings and trimmings of the human butcher shop, the horrible waste and refuse that ensues upon a day of slaughter, viewed in the cold, raw light of dawn.

Bouroche, who, after a few hours of repose, had already resumed his duties, stopped in front of the wounded drummer-boy, Bastian, then passed on with an imperceptible shrug of his shoulders. A hopeless case; nothing to be done. The lad had opened his eyes, however, and emerging from the comatose state in which he had been lying, was eagerly watching a sergeant who, his kepi filled with gold in his hand, had come into the room to see if there were any of his men among those poor wretches. He found two, and to each of them gave twenty francs. Other sergeants came in, and the gold began to fall in showers upon the straw, among the dying men. Bastian, who had managed to raise himself, stretched out his two hands, even then shaking in the final agony.

'Don't forget me! don't forget me!'

The sergeant would have passed on and gone his way, as Bouroche had done. What good could money do there? Then yielding to a kindly impulse, he threw some coins, never stopping to count them, into the poor hands that were already cold.

'Don't forget me! don't forget me!'

Bastian fell backward on his straw. For a long time he groped with stiffening fingers for the elusive gold, which seemed to avoid him. And thus he died.

'The gentleman has blown his candle out; good-night!' said a little, black, wizened zouave, who occupied the next bed. 'It's vexatious, when one has the wherewithal to pay for wetting his whistle!'

He had his left foot done up in splints. Nevertheless he managed to raise himself on his knees and elbows and in this posture crawl over to the dead man, whom he relieved of all his money, forcing open his hands, rummaging among his clothing and the folds of his capote. When he got back to his place, noticing that he was observed, he simply said:

'There's no use letting the stuff be wasted, is there?'

Maurice, sick at heart in that atmosphere of human distress and suffering, had long since dragged Jean away. As they passed out through the shed where the operations were performed they saw Bouroche preparing to amputate the leg of a poor little man of twenty, without chloroform, he having been unable to obtain a further supply of the anaesthetic. And they fled, running, so as not to hear the poor boy's shrieks.

Delaherche, who came in from the street just then, beckoned to them and shouted:

'Come upstairs, come, quick! we are going to have breakfast. The cook has succeeded in procuring some milk, and it is well she did, for we are all in great need of something to warm our stomachs.' And notwithstanding his efforts to do so, he could not entirely repress his delight and exultation. With a radiant countenance he added, lowering his voice: 'It is all right this time. General de Wimpffen has set out again for the German headquarters to sign the capitulation.'

Ah, how much those words meant to him, what comfort there was in them, what relief! his horrid nightmare dispelled, his property saved from destruction, his daily life to be resumed, under changed conditions, it is true, but still it was to go on, it was not to cease! It was little Rose who had told him of the occurrences of the morning at the Sous-Prefecture; the girl had come hastening through the streets, now somewhat less choked than they had been, to obtain a supply of bread from an aunt of hers who kept a baker's shop in the quarter; it was striking nine o'clock. As early as eight General de Wimpffen had convened another council of war, consisting of more than thirty generals, to whom he related the results that had been reached so far, the hard conditions imposed by the victorious foe, and his own fruitless efforts to secure a mitigation of them. His emotion was such that his hands shook like a leaf, his eyes were suffused with tears. He was still addressing the assemblage when a colonel of the German staff presented himself, on behalf of General von Moltke, to remind them that, unless a decision were arrived at by ten o'clock, their guns would open fire on the city of Sedan. With this horrible alternative before them the council could do nothing save authorize the general to proceed once more to the Chateau of Bellevue and accept the terms of the victors. He must have accomplished his mission by that time, and the entire French army were prisoners of war.

When she had concluded her narrative Rose launched out into a detailed account of the tremendous excitement the tidings had produced in the city. At the Sous-Prefecture she had seen officers tear the epaulettes from their shoulders, weeping meanwhile like children. Cavalrymen had thrown their sabers from the Pont de Meuse into the river; an entire regiment of cuirassiers had passed, each man tossing his blade over the parapet and sorrowfully watching the water close over it. In the streets many soldiers grasped their muskets by the barrel and smashed them against a wall, while there were artillerymen who removed the mechanism from the mitrailleuses and flung it into the sewer. Some there were who buried or burned the regimental standards. In the Place Turenne an old sergeant climbed upon a gate-post and harangued the throng as if he had suddenly taken leave of his senses, reviling the leaders, stigmatizing them as poltroons and cowards. Others seemed as if dazed, shedding big tears in silence, and others also, it must be confessed (and it is probable that they were in the majority), betrayed by their laughing eyes and pleased expression the satisfaction they felt at the change in affairs. There was an end to their suffering at last; they were prisoners of war, they could not be obliged to fight any more! For so many days they had been distressed by those long, weary marches, with never food enough to satisfy their appetite! And then, too, they were the weaker; what use was there in fighting? If their chiefs had betrayed them, had sold them to the enemy, so much the better; it would be the sooner ended! It was such a delicious thing to think of, that they were to have white bread to eat, were to sleep between sheets!

As Delaherche was about to enter the dining room in company with Maurice and Jean, his mother called to him from above.

'Come up here, please; I am anxious about the colonel.'

M. de Vineuil, with wide-open eyes, was talking rapidly and excitedly of the subject that filled his bewildered brain.

'The Prussians have cut us off from Mezieres, but what matters it! See, they have outmarched us and got possession of the plain of Donchery; soon they will be up with the wood of la Falizette and flank us there, while more of them are coming up along the valley of the Givonne. The frontier is behind us; let us kill as many of them as we can and cross it at a bound. Yesterday, yes, that is what I would have advised-'

At that moment his burning eyes lighted on Delaherche. He recognized him; the sight seemed to sober him and dispel the hallucination under which he was laboring, and coming back to the terrible reality, he asked for the third time:

'It is all over, is it not?'

The manufacturer explosively blurted out the expression of his satisfaction; he could not restrain it.

'Ah, yes, God be praised! it is all over, completely over. The capitulation must be signed by this time.'

The colonel raised himself at a bound to a sitting posture, notwithstanding his bandaged foot; he took his sword from the chair by the bedside where it lay and made an attempt to break it, but his hands trembled too violently, and the blade slipped from his fingers.

'Look out! he will cut himself!' Delaherche cried in alarm. 'Take that thing away from him; it is dangerous!'

Mme. Delaherche took possession of the sword. With a feeling of compassionate respect for the poor colonel's grief and despair she did not conceal it, as her son bade her do, but with a single vigorous effort snapped it across her knee, with a strength of which she herself would never have supposed her poor old hands capable. The colonel laid himself down again, casting a look of extreme gentleness upon his old friend, who went back to her chair and seated herself in her usual rigid attitude.

In the dining room the cook had meantime served bowls of hot coffee and milk for the entire party. Henriette and Gilberte had awakened, the latter, completely restored by her long and refreshing slumber, with bright eyes and