Our boxes were all ready packed, and everything prepared for departure, when I had another attack, and this time so violent that I had to be carried to bed. The physician who was sent for said that either a nervous fever or even an inflammation of the brain was commencing, and for the present it was not to be thought of to expose me to the fatigues of travelling.
I lay in bed for long, long weeks. Only a very dreamy recollection of that whole time remains with me. And strangely enough, a pleasant recollection. I was, it is true, very ill, and everything in the place where I resided was unceasingly mournful and terrible; and yet when I look back on it it was a singularly joyful time. Yes, joy, perfectly intense joy, such as children are in the habit of feeling. The cerebral affection which I was suffering, and which brought with it an almost continuous absence, or at least only half-presence of consciousness, caused all thoughts and judgments, all reflections and deliberations, to vanish out of my head, and there remained only a vague enjoyment of existence, just like that which children experience, as I said just now, and especially those children who are tenderly watched over. There was no want of tender watching for me. My husband, thoughtful and loving and untiring, was with me day and night. He brought the children also often to my bedside. How much my Rudolf had to tell me! For the most part I did not understand it, but his beloved voice sounded to me like music, and the babbling of our little Sylvia, our heart’s idol, how sweetly that began to charm me! Then there were a hundred little jokes and intelligences between Frederick and me about the tricks of our little daughter. What these jokes were about I have quite forgotten, but I know that I laughed and enjoyed myself quite unrestrainedly. Each one of the customary jests seemed to me the height of wit, and the oftener repeated the more witty and more precious; and with what delight did I not swallow the draughts given me—for every day at a given hour I took a glass of lemonade. Such nectar I have never tasted during my whole life of health; and how entirely refreshing was a medicine with opium in it, whose softly soothing action, putting me into a conscious slumber, sent a thrill of happy calm through my soul. I knew all the while that my beloved husband was by my side, protecting me and watching over me as his heart’s dearest treasure. Of the war, which was raging at my door, I had now hardly any cognisance; and if, for all that, some remembrance of it flashed on me sometimes, I looked on it as something situated as far away and as completely without any concern for me, as if it was being played out in China or on another planet. My world was here, in this sickroom, or rather in this chamber of recovery; for I felt myself getting better, and all tended to happiness.
To happiness? No. With recovery, understanding came back too, and the perception of the horrors that surrounded us. We were in a beleaguered, famishing, freezing, miserable city. The war was still raging on.
The winter had come in the meantime—icy cold. I now, for the first time, learned all that had taken place during my long unconsciousness. The capital of “the brotherland,” Strasbourg—the “lovely,” the “true German,” the city “German to its core,” had been bombarded, its library destroyed. One hundred and ninety-three thousand seven hundred and twenty-two shots had been poured into the town—four or five a minute.
Strasbourg was taken.
The country fell into wild despair—such a despair as issues in raving madness. People began to hunt in Nostradamus to find prophecies for the present events, and new seers began to put out fresh predictions. Still worse, possessed folks came forward. It was like falling back into a ghost-night of the middle ages, lighted by the fire of hell. “Oh that I could be among the Bedouins!” cried Gustave Flaubert. “Oh that I could be back in the half-conscious dreamland of my illness,” cried I, weeping. I was well again now, and had to hear and comprehend all the terrible things that were going on around us. Then began again the entries in the red books, and I have lit on the following notes:—
December 1. Trochu has established himself on the heights of Champigny.
December 2. Obstinate fight around Brie and Champigny.
December 5. The cold is becoming constantly more powerful. Oh! the trembling, bleeding, wretched wights, who are lying out there in the snow, and dying. Even here in the city, there is terrible suffering from cold. Business has fallen to nothing. There is no firing to be had. What would not many an one give if there were only two little pieces of wood to be had—even the certainty of the throne of Spain!
December 21. Sortie out of Paris.
December 25. A small detachment of Prussian cavalry was saluted with musket shot (that is a patriotic duty) from the houses of the villages of Troo and Sougé. General Kraatz commanded the punishment of the villages (that is a commander’s duty) and had them burnt. “Set them on fire,” was the word of command, and the men, probably gentle, good-natured fellows, obeyed (that is the soldier’s duty), and set fire to them. The flames burst up to heaven, and the poor homesteads fell crashing, on man, wife, and child—on flying, weeping, roaring, burning men and beasts.
What a joyous, happy, holy Christmas night!
Is Paris to be starved out, or bombarded as well?
Against the last supposition the civilised conscience revolts. To bombard this ville-lumière, this point of attraction of all nations, this brilliant home of the arts—bombard it with its irreplaceable riches and treasures, like the first fort
