He huddled himself up on the chair and in a feeble voice muttered:
“I ain’t got … nothing … Nothing! …”
“Don’t act the rogue, you old rascal. … Ah, you are hiding your wood to warm the Prussians. … Well I am going to knock those Prussians out of your head.”
The old man shook his head:
“But if I ain’t got no wood. …”
With angry gestures the sergeant commanded the soldiers to search the house. They examined everything, looked everywhere from cellar to garret. They found nothing, nothing but evidence of plunder and some broken furniture. In the cellar, damp with spilled cider, the casks were broken open and over the whole there spread a hideously offensive stench. That exasperated the sergeant who struck the flat end of the butt of his musket.
“Come on,” he shouted, “come on, you old sloven, tell us where your wood is,” and he rudely shook the old man who tottered and almost struck his head against the andiron of the fireplace.
“I ain’t got no wood,” the poor man simply repeated.
“Ah! you are getting stubborn! … You have no wood you say! Well, look here, you have chairs, a buffet, a table, a bed … if you don’t tell me where your wood is I’ll burn it all up.”
The old man did not protest. Shaking his aged white head he again repeated:
“I ain’t got no wood.”
I wanted to intercede and muttered a few words; but the sergeant did not let me finish. He took me in from head to foot with a look of contempt.
“What are you doing around here, you errand simp you? Who gave you permission to leave the ranks, you dirty, snotty-nosed trash? Come on, face about double step, march! … Ta ra ta ta ra, ta ta ra! …”
Then he gave the command. In a few minutes the chairs, the tables, the buffet, the bed were dashed to pieces. The kindly man raised himself with some effort, went into the farthest corner of the room; and while the fire was being made, while the sergeant, whose cloak and trousers were steaming, was warming himself laughingly in front of the crackling fire, the old man was watching the burning of his last piece of furniture with eyes of a stoic, and never stopped repeating obstinately:
“I ain’t got no wood.”
I went back to the station. The general had come out of the telegraph office more excited and flushed and angry than ever. He jabbered out something and presently brought about a great commotion. The clang of sabres was heard, voices called out and answered one another, officers were running in all directions. The bugle sounded. Without the least understanding of this counter order, we had to put our knapsacks on our backs and the guns on our shoulders.
Forward! March! …
With bodies rendered rigid by immobility and with dizzy heads, we pushed and jostled one another and resumed our breathless journey in the rain, in the mud, through the night! … To the right and the left of us there were long stretches of fields swallowed up in the shadows from which rose the crowns of apple trees which appeared to be twisted in the skies. From time to time the barking of a dog was heard from afar. … There were deep forests, sombre thickets which rose like walls on each side of the road. Then came villages asleep, where our steps resounded even more mournfully, or where at a window quickly opened and quickly closed again, there appeared the vague outline of a human white form … terrified. … Then again fields and woods and villages. … Not a single song, not a single word, only an immense silence, accentuated by the rhythm of the tramping feet. The leather straps of the knapsack cut into my flesh, the rifle felt like a red hot iron bar placed upon my shoulder. For a moment I thought myself harnessed to a huge wagon, loaded with broad stone and stuck in the mud and felt that the carters were breaking my legs with the lashes of whips. With my feet planted in the ground, my spine bent in two, with outstretched neck, strangled by the bit, my lungs emitting a rattling sound, I was pulling and pulling. … Pretty soon I reached a state where I was no longer conscious of anything. I was marching in a state of torpor, like an automaton, as if in a trance. … Strange hallucinations flitted before my eyes. I saw a glowing road receding into space, lined with palatial mansions and brilliant lights. … Strange scarlet flowers swayed their corollae in the air on the top of flexible stems, and a crowd of gay people were singing at tables laden with refreshments and delicious fruit. … Women with fluttering gauze skirts were dancing on illumined lawns, to the music of numerous orchestras hidden in the grove strewn with falling leaves, adorned with jasmines, sprinkled with water.
“Halt!” commanded the sergeant.
I stopped, and in order not to sink down to the ground I had to hold on to the arm of a comrade. I awoke from my trance. … Darkness was all around me. We had come to the entrance of a forest, near a small town where the general and most of the officers went to find quarters. Having pitched my tent, I occupied myself with rubbing my feet, the skin of which was peeling off, with a candle which I had hidden in my knapsack, and like an emaciated dog, stretched myself out on the wet ground and immediately fell asleep. During the night, fellow-soldiers who, exhausted with fatigue, had dropped out of the ranks on the road, kept on coming into camp. Of these, five men were never heard from. It was ever so at each difficult march. Some of the men, weak or sick, fell into the ditches and died there; others deserted. …
The next morning reveille was sounded at dawn. The night had been extremely cold, it never stopped raining and we could not get any straw litter or hay to
