The Guy De Maupassant Megapack: 144 Novels and Short Stories Page 12

  Since the beginning of the campaign Lieutenant Lare had taken two cannon from the Prussians. His general had said: “Thank you, lieutenant,” and had given him the cross of honor.

  As he was as cautious as he was brave, wary, inventive, wily and resourceful, he was entrusted with a hundred soldiers and he organized a company of scouts who saved the army on several occasions during a retreat.

  But the invading army entered by every frontier like a surging sea. Great waves of men arrived one after the other, scattering all around them a scum of freebooters. General Carrel’s brigade, separated from its division, retreated continually, fighting each day, but remaining almost intact, thanks to the vigilance and agility of Lieutenant Lare, who seemed to be everywhere at the same moment, baffling all the enemy’s cunning, frustrating their plans, misleading their Uhlans and killing their vanguards.

  One morning the general sent for him.

  “Lieutenant,” said he, “here is a dispatch from General de Lacere, who will be destroyed if we do not go to his aid by sunrise tomorrow. He is at Blainville, eight leagues from here. You will start at nightfall with three hundred men, whom you will echelon along the road. I will follow you two hours later. Study the road carefully; I fear we may meet a division of the enemy.”

  It had been freezing hard for a week. At two o’clock it began to snow, and by night the ground was covered and heavy white swirls concealed objects hard by.

  At six o’clock the detachment set out.

  Two men walked alone as scouts about three yards ahead. Then came a platoon of ten men commanded by the lieutenant himself. The rest followed them in two long columns. To the right and left of the little band, at a distance of about three hundred feet on either side, some soldiers marched in pairs.

  The snow, which was still falling, covered them with a white powder in the darkness, and as it did not melt on their uniforms, they were hardly distinguishable in the night amid the dead whiteness of the landscape.

  From time to time they halted. One heard nothing but that indescribable, nameless flutter of falling snow—a sensation rather than a sound, a vague, ominous murmur. A command was given in a low tone and when the troop resumed its march it left in its wake a sort of white phantom standing in the snow. It gradually grew fainter and finally disappeared. It was the echelons who were to lead the army.

  The scouts slackened their pace. Something was ahead of them.

  “Turn to the right,” said the lieutenant; “it is the Ronfi wood; the chateau is more to the left.”

  Presently the command “Halt” was passed along. The detachment stopped and waited for the lieutenant, who, accompanied by only ten men, had undertaken a reconnoitering expedition to the chateau.

  They advanced, creeping under the trees. Suddenly they all remained motionless. Around them was a dead silence. Then, quite near them, a little clear, musical young voice was heard amid the stillness of the wood.

  “Father, we shall get lost in the snow. We shall never reach Blainville.”

  A deeper voice replied:

  “Never fear, little daughter; I know the country as well as I know my pocket.”

  The lieutenant said a few words and four men moved away silently, like shadows.

  All at once a woman’s shrill cry was heard through the darkness. Two prisoners were brought back, an old man and a young girl. The lieutenant questioned them, still in a low tone:

  “Your name?”

  “Pierre Bernard.”

  “Your profession?”

  “Butler to Comte de Ronfi.”

  “Is this your daughter?”

  ‘Yes!’

  “What does she do?”

  “She is laundress at the chateau.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “We are making our escape.”

  “Why?”

  “Twelve Uhlans passed by this evening. They shot three keepers and hanged the gardener. I was alarmed on account of the little one.”

  “Whither are you bound?”

  “To Blainville.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there is a French army there.”

  “Do you know the way?”

  “Perfectly.”

  “Well then, follow us.”

  They rejoined the column and resumed their march across country. The old man walked in silence beside the lieutenant, his daughter walking at his side. All at once she stopped.

  “Father,” she said, “I am so tired I cannot go any farther.”

  And she sat down. She was shaking with cold and seemed about to lose consciousness. Her father wanted to carry her, but he was too old and too weak.

  “Lieutenant,” said he, sobbing, “we shall only impede your march. France before all. Leave us here.”

  The officer had given a command. Some men had started off. They came back with branches they had cut, and in a minute a litter was ready. The whole detachment had joined them by this time.

  “Here is a woman dying of cold,” said the lieutenant. “Who will give his cape to cover her?”

  Two hundred capes were taken off. The young girl was wrapped up in these warm soldiers’ capes, gently laid in the litter, and then four’ hardy shoulders lifted her up, and like an Eastern queen borne by her slaves she was placed in the center of the detachment of soldiers, who resumed their march with more energy, more courage, more cheerfulness, animated by the presence of a woman, that sovereign inspiration that has stirred the old French blood to so many deeds of valor.

  At the end of an hour they halted again and every one lay down in the snow. Over yonder on the level country a big, dark shadow was moving. It looked like some weird monster stretching itself out like a serpent, then suddenly coiling itself into a mass, darting forth again, then back, and then forward again without ceasing. Some whispered orders were passed around among the soldiers, and an occasional little, dry, metallic click was heard. The moving object suddenly came nearer, and twelve Uhlans were seen approaching at a gallop, one behind the other, having lost their way in the darkness. A brilliant flash suddenly revealed to them two hundred mete lying on the ground before them. A rapid fire was heard, which died away in the snowy silence, and all the twelve fell to the ground, their horses with them.

  After a long rest the march was resumed. The old man whom they had captured acted as guide.

  Presently a voice far off in the distance cried out: “Who goes there?”

  Another voice nearer by gave the countersign.

  They made another halt; some conferences took place. It had stopped snowing. A cold wind was driving the clouds, and innumerable stars were sparkling in the sky behind them, gradually paling in the rosy light of dawn.

  A staff officer came forward to receive the detachment. But when he asked who was being carried in the litter, the form stirred; two little hands moved aside the big blue army capes and, rosy as the dawn, with two eyes that were brighter than the stars that had just faded from sight, and a smile as radiant as the morn, a dainty face appeared.

  “It is I, monsieur.”

  The soldiers, wild with delight, clapped their hands and bore the young girl in triumph into the midst of the camp, that was just getting to arms. Presently General Carrel arrived on the scene. At nine o’clock the Prussians made an attack. They beat a retreat at noon.

  That evening, as Lieutenant Lare, overcome by fatigue, was sleeping on a bundle of straw, he was sent for by the general. He found the commanding officer in his tent, chatting with the old man whom they had come across during the night. As soon as he entered the tent the general took his hand, and addressing the stranger, said:

  “My dear comte, this is the young man of whom you were telling me just now; he is one of my best officers.”

  He smiled, lowered his tone, and added:

  “The best.”

  Then, turning to the astonished lieutenant, he presented “Comte de Ronfi-Quedissac.”

  The old man took both his hands, saying:

  “My dea
r lieutenant, you have saved my daughter’s life. I have only one way of thanking you. You may come in a few months to tell me—if you like her.”

  One year later, on the very same day, Captain Lare and Miss Louise-Hortense-Genevieve de Ronfi-Quedissac were married in the church of St. Thomas Aquinas.

  She brought a dowry of six thousand francs, and was said to be the prettiest bride that had been seen that year.

  THE HORRIBLE

  The shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained in the drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated, or astride of garden chairs, were smoking outside the door of the house, around a table laden with cups and liqueur glasses.

  Their lighted cigars shone like eyes in the darkness, which was gradually becoming more dense. They had been talking about a frightful accident which had occurred the night before—two men and three women drowned in the river before the eyes of the guests.

  General de G—— remarked:

  “Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible.

  “Horrible, that well-known word, means much more than terrible. A frightful accident like this affects, upsets, terrifies; it does not horrify. In order that we should experience horror, something more is needed than emotion, something more than the spectacle of a dreadful death; there must be a shuddering sense of mystery, or a sensation of abnormal terror, more than natural. A man who dies, even under the most tragic circumstances, does not excite horror; a field of battle is not horrible; blood is not horrible; the vilest crimes are rarely horrible.

  “Here are two personal examples which have shown me what is the meaning of horror.

  “It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating toward Pont-Audemer, after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting of about twenty thousand men, twenty thousand routed men, disbanded, demoralized, exhausted, were going to disband at Havre.

  “The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had not eaten anything since the day before. They were fleeing rapidly, the Prussians not being far off.

  “All the Norman country, sombre, dotted with the shadows of the trees surrounding the farms, stretched out beneath a black, heavy, threatening sky.

  “Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight but the confused sound, undefined though rapid, of a marching throng, an endless tramping, mingled with the vague clink of tin bowls or swords. The men, bent, round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged themselves along, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed stride.

  “The skin of their hands froze to the butt ends of their muskets, for it was freezing hard that night. I frequently saw a little soldier take off his shoes in order to walk barefoot, as his shoes hurt his weary feet; and at every step he left a track of blood. Then, after some time, he would sit down in a field for a few minutes’ rest, and he never got up again. Every man who sat down was a dead man.

  “Should we have left behind us those poor, exhausted soldiers, who fondly counted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had somewhat refreshed their stiffened legs? But scarcely had they ceased to move, and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their veins, than an unconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to the ground, closed their eyes, and paralyzed in one second this overworked human mechanism. And they gradually sank down, their foreheads on their knees, without, however, falling over, for their loins and their limbs became as hard and immovable as wood, impossible to bend or to stand upright.

  “And the rest of us, more robust, kept straggling on, chilled to the marrow, advancing by a kind of inertia through the night, through the snow, through that cold and deadly country, crushed by pain, by defeat, by despair, above all overcome by the abominable sensation of abandonment, of the end, of death, of nothingness.

  “I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man, old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect.

  “They were looking for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy. The word ‘spy’ at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, and they gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice exclaimed: ‘He must be shot!’ And all these soldiers who were falling from utter prostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on their guns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger which urges on a mob to massacre.

  “I wanted to speak. I was at that time in command of a battalion; but they no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers; they would even have shot me.

  “One of the gendarmes said: ‘He has been following us for the three last days. He has been asking information from every one about the artillery.’”

  I took it on myself to question this person.

  “What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying the army?”

  “He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was, indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such an agitated air in my presence that I really no longer doubted that he was a spy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept looking at me from under his eyes with a humble, stupid, crafty air.

  “The men all round us exclaimed.

  “‘To the wall! To the wall!’

  “I said to the gendarmes:

  “‘Will you be responsible for the prisoner?’

  “I had not ceased speaking when a terrible shove threw me on my back, and in a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown down, struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a tree. He fell in the snow, nearly dead already.

  “And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, reloaded their guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They fought with each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse, and kept on firing at him, as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holy water in front of a coffin.

  “But suddenly a cry arose of ‘The Prussians! the Prussians!’

  “And all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this panic-stricken army in full flight.

  “A panic, the result of these shots fired at this vagabond, had filled his very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that they were themselves the originators of the scare, they fled and disappeared in the darkness.

  “I remained alone with the corpse, except for the two gendarmes whose duty compelled them to stay with me.

  “They lifted up the riddled mass of bruised and bleeding flesh.

  “‘He must be searched,’ I said. And I handed them a box of taper matches which I had in my pocket. One of the soldiers had another box. I was standing between the two.

  “The gendarme who was examining the body announced:

  “‘Clothed in a blue blouse, a white shirt, trousers, and a pair of shoes.’

  “The first match went out; we lighted a second. The man continued, as he turned out his pockets:

  “‘A horn-handled pocketknife, check handkerchief, a snuffbox, a bit of pack thread, a piece of bread.’

  “The second match went out; we lighted a third. The gendarme, after having felt the corpse for a long time, said:

  “‘That is all.’

  “I said:

  “‘Strip him. We shall perhaps find something next his skin.”

  “And in order that the two soldiers might help each other in this task, I stood between them to hold the lighted match. By the rapid and speedily extinguished flame of the match, I saw them take off the garments one by one, and expose to view that bleeding bundle of flesh, still warm, though lifeless.

  “And suddenly one of them exclaimed:

  “‘Good God, general, it is a woman!’

  “I cannot describe to you the strange and poignant sensation of pain that moved my heart. I could not believe it, and I knelt down in the snow before this shapeless pulp of flesh to see for myself: it was a woman.

  “The two gendarmes, speechless and stunned, waited for me to give my opinion on the matter. But I did not know what to think, what theo
ry to adopt.

  “Then the brigadier slowly drawled out:

  “‘Perhaps she came to look for a son of hers in the artillery, whom she had not heard from.’

  “And the other chimed in:

  “‘Perhaps, indeed, that is so.’

  “And I, who had seen some very terrible things in my time, began to cry. And I felt, in the presence of this corpse, on that icy cold night, in the midst of that gloomy plain; at the sight of this mystery, at the sight of this murdered stranger, the meaning of that word ‘horror.’

  “I had the same sensation last year, while interrogating one of the survivors of the Flatters Mission, an Algerian sharpshooter.

  “You know the details of that atrocious drama. It is possible, however, that you are unacquainted with one of them.

  “The colonel travelled through the desert into the Soudan, and passed through the immense territory of the Touaregs, who, in that great ocean of sand which stretches from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the Soudan to Algeria, are a kind of pirates, resembling those who ravaged the seas in former days.

  “The guides who accompanied the column belonged to the tribe of the Chambaa, of Ouargla.

  “Now, one day we encamped in the middle of the desert, and the Arabs declared that, as the spring was still some distance away, they would go with all their camels to look for water.

  “One man alone warned the colonel that he had been betrayed. Flatters did not believe this, and accompanied the convoy with the engineers, the doctors, and nearly all his officers.

  “They were massacred round the spring, and all the camels were captured.

  “The captain of the Arab Intelligence Department at Ouargla, who had remained in the camp, took command of the survivors, spahis and sharpshooters, and they began to retreat, leaving behind them the baggage and provisions, for want of camels to carry them.

  “Then they started on their journey through this solitude without shade and boundless, beneath the devouring sun, which burned them from morning till night.

  “One tribe came to tender its submission and brought dates as a tribute. The dates were poisoned. Nearly all the Frenchmen died, and, among them, the last officer.