Complete Works of Emile Zola (1181 page)

“Oh! dear lady, we are so tired we can scarcely stand; mamma has gone to lie down and rest a while. Just think! all night long people have been coming and going, and we have not been able to get a wink of sleep.”

And burning to tell all the wonderful sights that she had been witness to since the preceding day, she did not wait to be questioned, but ran on volubly with her narrative.

“As for the marshal, he slept very well, but that poor Emperor! you can’t think what suffering he has to endure! Yesterday evening, do you know, I had gone upstairs to help give out the linen, and as I entered the apartment that adjoins his dressing-room I heard groans, oh,
such
groans! just like someone dying. I thought a moment and knew it must be the Emperor, and I was so frightened I couldn’t move; I just stood and trembled. It seems he has some terrible complaint that makes him cry out that way. When there are people around he holds in, but as soon as he is alone it is too much for him, and he groans and shrieks in a way to make your hair stand on end.”

“Do you know where the fighting is this morning?” asked Henriette, desiring to check her loquacity.

Rose dismissed the question with a wave of her little hand and went on with her narrative.

“That made me curious to know more, you see, and I went upstairs four or five times during the night and listened, and every time it was just the same; I don’t believe he was quiet an instant all night long, or got a minute’s sleep. Oh! what a terrible thing it is to suffer like that with all he has to worry him! for everything is upside down; it is all a most dreadful mess. Upon my word, I believe those generals are out of their senses; such ghostly faces and frightened eyes! And people coming all the time, and doors banging and some men scolding and others crying, and the whole place like a sailor’s boarding-house; officers drinking from bottles and going to bed in their boots! The Emperor is the best of the whole lot, and the one who gives least trouble, in the corner where he conceals himself and his suffering!” Then, in reply to Henriette’s reiterated question: “The fighting? there has been fighting at Bazeilles this morning. A mounted officer brought word of it to the marshal, who went immediately to notify the Emperor. The marshal has been gone ten minutes, and I shouldn’t wonder if the Emperor intends to follow him, for they are dressing him upstairs. I just now saw them combing him and plastering his face with all sorts of cosmetics.”

But Henriette, having finally learned what she desired to know, rose to go.

“Thank you, Rose. I am in somewhat of a hurry this morning.”

The young girl went with her to the street door, and took leave of her with a courteous:

“Glad to have been of service to you, Madame Weiss. I know that anything said to you will go no further.”

Henriette hurried back to her house in the Rue des Voyards. She felt quite certain that her husband would have returned, and even reflected that he would be alarmed at not finding her there, and hastened her steps in consequence. As she drew near the house she raised her eyes in the expectation of seeing him at the window watching for her, but the window, wide open as she had left it when she went out, was vacant, and when she had run up the stairs and given a rapid glance through her three rooms, it was with a sinking heart that she saw they were untenanted save for the chill fog and continuous roar of the cannonade. The distant firing was still going on. She went and stood for a moment at the window; although the encircling wall of vapor was not less dense than it had been before, she seemed to have a clearer apprehension, now that she had received oral information, of the details of the conflict raging at Bazeilles, the grinding sound of the mitrailleuses, the crashing volleys of the French batteries answering the German batteries in the distance. The reports seemed to be drawing nearer to the city, the battle to be waxing fiercer and fiercer with every moment.

Why did not Weiss return? He had pledged himself so faithfully not to outstay the first attack! And Henriette began to be seriously alarmed, depicting to herself the various obstacles that might have detained him: perhaps he had not been able to leave the village, perhaps the roads were blocked or rendered impassable by the projectiles. It might even be that something had happened him, but she put the thought aside and would not dwell on it, preferring to view things on their brighter side and finding in hope her safest mainstay and reliance. For an instant she harbored the design of starting out and trying to find her husband, but there were considerations that seemed to render that course inadvisable: supposing him to have started on his return, what would become of her should she miss him on the way? and what would be his anxiety should he come in and find her absent? Her guiding principle in all her thoughts and actions was her gentle, affectionate devotedness, and she saw nothing strange or out of the way in a visit to Bazeilles under such extraordinary circumstances, accustomed as she was, like an affectionate little woman, to perform her duty in silence and do the thing that she deemed best for their common interest. Where her husband was, there was her place; that was all there was about it.

She gave a sudden start and left the window, saying:

“Monsieur Delaherche, how could I forget—”

It had just come to her recollection that the cloth manufacturer had also passed the night at Bazeilles, and if he had returned would be able to give her the intelligence she wanted. She ran swiftly down the stairs again. In place of taking the more roundabout way by the Rue des Voyards, she crossed the little courtyard of her house and entered the passage that conducted to the huge structure that fronted on the Rue Maqua. As she came out into the great central garden, paved with flagstones now and retaining of its pristine glories only a few venerable trees, magnificent century-old elms, she was astonished to see a sentry mounting guard at the door of a carriage-house; then it occurred to her that she had been told the day before that the camp chests of the 7th corps had been deposited there for safe keeping, and it produced a strange impression on her mind that all the gold, millions, it was said to amount to, should be lying in that shed while the men for whom it was destined were being killed not far away. As she was about to ascend the private staircase, however, that conducted to the apartment of Gilberte, young Madame Delaherche, she experienced another surprise in an encounter that startled her so that she retraced her steps a little way, doubtful whether it would not be better to abandon her intention, and go home again. An officer, a captain, had crossed her path, as noiselessly as a phantom and vanishing as swiftly, and yet she had had time to recognize him, having seen him in the past at Gilberte’s house in Charleville, in the days when she was still Madame Maginot. She stepped back a few steps in the courtyard and raised her eyes to the two tall windows of the bedroom, the blinds of which were closed, then dismissed her scruples and entered.

Upon reaching the first floor, availing herself of that privilege of old acquaintanceship by virtue of which one woman often drops in upon another for an unceremonious early morning chat, she was about to knock at the door of the dressing-room, but apparently someone had left the room hastily and failed to secure the door, so that it was standing ajar, and all she had to do was give it a push to find herself in the dressing room, whence she passed into the bedroom. From the lofty ceiling of the latter apartment depended voluminous curtains of red velvet, protecting the large double bed. The warm, moist air was fragrant with a faint perfume of Persian lilac, and there was no sound to break the silence save a gentle, regular respiration, scarcely audible.

“Gilberte!” said Henriette, very softly.

The young woman was sleeping peacefully, and the dim light that entered the room between the red curtains of the high windows displayed her exquisitely rounded head resting upon a naked arm and her profusion of beautiful hair straying in disorder over the pillow. Her lips were parted in a smile.

“Gilberte!”

She slightly moved and stretched her arms, without opening her eyes.

“Yes, yes; good-by. Oh! please—” Then, raising her head and recognizing Henriette: “What, is it you! How late is it?”

When she learned that it had not yet struck six she seemed disconcerted, assuming a sportive air to hide her embarrassment, saying it was unfair to come waking people up at such an hour. Then, to her friend, questioning her about her husband, she made answer:

“Why, he has not returned; I don’t look for him much before nine o’clock. What makes you so eager to see him at this hour of the morning?”

Henriette’s voice had a trace of sternness in it as she answered, seeing the other so smiling, so dull of comprehension in her happy waking.

“I tell you there has been fighting all the morning at Bazeilles, and I am anxious about my husband.”

“Oh, my dear,” exclaimed Gilberte, “I assure you there is not the slightest reason for your feeling so. My husband is so prudent that he would have been home long ago had there been any danger. Until you see him back here you may rest easy, take my word for it.”

Henriette was struck by the justness of the argument; Delaherche, it was true, was distinctly not a man to expose himself uselessly. She was reassured, and went and drew the curtains and threw back the blinds; the tawny light from without, where the sun was beginning to pierce the fog with his golden javelins, streamed in a bright flood into the apartment. One of the windows was part way open, and in the soft air of the spacious bedroom, but now so close and stuffy, the two women could hear the sound of the guns. Gilberte, half recumbent, her elbow resting on the pillow, gazed out upon the sky with her lustrous, vacant eyes.

“So, then, they are fighting,” she murmured. Her chemise had slipped downward, exposing a rosy, rounded shoulder, half hidden beneath the wandering raven tresses, and her person exhaled a subtle, penetrating odor, the odor of love. “They are fighting, so early in the morning,
mon Dieu!
It would be ridiculous if it were not for the horror of it.”

But Henriette, in looking about the room, had caught sight of a pair of gauntlets, the gloves of a man, lying forgotten on a small table, and she started perceptibly. Gilberte blushed deeply, and extending her arms with a conscious, caressing movement, drew her friend to her and rested her head upon her bosom.

“Yes,” she almost whispered, “I saw that you noticed it. Darling, you must not judge me too severely. He is an old friend; I told you all about it at Charleville, long ago, you remember.” Her voice sank lower still; there was something that sounded very like a laugh of satisfaction in her tender tones. “He pleaded so with me yesterday that I would see him just once more. Just think, this morning he is in action; he may be dead by this. How could I refuse him?” It was all so heroic and so charming, the contrast was so delicious between war’s stern reality and tender sentiment; thoughtless as a linnet, she smiled again, notwithstanding her confusion. Never could she have found it in her heart to drive him from her door, when circumstances all were propitious for the interview. “Do you condemn me?”

Henriette had listened to her confidences with a very grave face. Such things surprised her, for she could not understand them; it must be that she was constituted differently from other women. Her heart that morning was with her husband, her brother, down there where the battle was raging. How was it possible that anyone could sleep so peacefully and be so gay and cheerful when the loved ones were in peril?

“But think of your husband, my dear, and of that poor young man as well. Does not your heart yearn to be with them? You do not reflect that their lifeless forms may be brought in and laid before your eyes at any moment.”

Gilberte raised her adorable bare arm before her face to shield her vision from the frightful picture.

“O Heaven! what is that you say? It is cruel of you to destroy all the pleasure of my morning in this way. No, no; I won’t think of such things. They are too mournful.”

Henriette could not refrain from smiling in spite of her anxiety. She was thinking of the days of their girlhood, and how Gilberte’s father, Captain de Vineuil, an old naval officer who had been made collector of customs at Charleville when his wounds had incapacitated him for active service, hearing his daughter cough and fearing for her the fate of his young wife, who had been snatched from his arms by that terrible disease, consumption, had sent her to live at a farm-house near Chene-Populeux. The little maid was not nine years old, and already she was a consummate actress — a perfect type of the village coquette, queening it over her playmates, tricked out in what old finery she could lay hands on, adorning herself with bracelets and tiaras made from the silver paper wrappings of the chocolate. She had not changed a bit when, later, at the age of twenty, she married Maginot, the inspector of woods and forests. Mezieres, a dark, gloomy town, surrounded by ramparts, was not to her taste, and she continued to live at Charleville, where the gay, generous life, enlivened by many festivities, suited her better. Her father was dead, and with a husband whom, by reason of his inferior social position, her friends and acquaintances treated with scant courtesy, she was absolutely mistress of her own actions. She did not escape the censure of the stern moralists who inhabit our provincial cities, and in those days was credited with many lovers; but of the gay throng of officers who, thanks to her father’s old connection and her kinship to Colonel de Vineuil, disported themselves in her drawing-room, Captain Beaudoin was the only one who had really produced an impression. She was light and frivolous — nothing more — adoring pleasure and living entirely in the present, without the least trace of perverse inclination; and if she accepted the captain’s attentions, it is pretty certain that she did it out of good-nature and love of admiration.

“You did very wrong to see him again,” Henriette finally said, in her matter-of-fact way.

“Oh! my dear, since I could not possibly do otherwise, and it was only for just that once. You know very well I would die rather than deceive my new husband.”