CHAPTER XI
Under the bridge of the railway was a high-road. The soldiers directed the crowd towards it. "Get down, get down," they cried, gesticulating all the while. Narrow steps had been cut in the dark slippery ground. The bank was very steep, yet every one ventured down; the young people held the old ones; the nimblest carried luggage and infants; the children tumbled forwards upon all fours. On getting to the road we saw a few carts waiting for bags and bundles. We abandoned ours into the hands of the soldiers. Happen what might to our things, our courage failed us to take charge of them again. Who knew how many miles we were to walk?
"Go on, go on," our guardians cried.
And the sorry band, so much the more lamentable as they were drenched to the skin, bent their bodies, and trudged off again. "What does this unexpected halt mean?" we asked one another with a mixture of curiosity and dismay. The road with hedges on each side, after we had met with a bridge and a crossing, took us to a village. Standing in front of their houses, the people, moved with pity, watched our beggarly crowd go by in the twilight, dabbling in the mud, and not knowing where they were being taken to. We did not even know the place we were in. The name we read on a finger-post did not say anything to us. At the top of the street two gendarmes on horseback divided the herd into two parts, so many heads to the right, so many to the left. We were pushed on to the right, we went to the right. We had left the village, and went down a road bordered with high trees that led into the open country.
"They were right all the same, those who said we would be landed in the fields," moaned a woman. Then we took a short cut between two banks. We were all over mud. At length, on the slope of the hill, we caught sight of a dark mass, a very large farm with vast outhouses. We had reached the goal. The lower windows glimmered; a few guards were seen in a room of the ground floor. We entered the kitchen, where whole beams blazed on the hearth. The soldiers bustled about. It was no light matter to settle in a short time—350 persons crowded in together in the courtyard. And they hurried over the job: so many emigrants in the house, in the barns, in the stables, in the attics.
"Straw is to be had everywhere; do as you can."
The people did as they could. Moving about kept them warm; it was their only means. We were among the privileged; we had been presented with a small room at the angle of the house, on the first story. It was very scantily furnished: a spring mattress in an iron frame, a child's bedstead, two trusses of straw.
"Pierrot, your couch would be fit for a king."
We buried him in the straw with his clothes on, and heaped clothes upon him. He was not cold; he fell asleep.
But we lay, dying with cold, all three on the narrow spring mattress, and the draught chilled us to the bone. In vain we wrapped ourselves in shawls and cloaks; we could get neither warmth nor sleep. We had brought with us a candle, and we let it burn, not without remorse, since we expected many another night of the same kind. A change of weather happened opportunely; the wind suddenly rose and swept away the clouds; we thought there would be a frost. A cold, bleak wind was howling round the house; the weathercocks creaked, the boards in the half-ruined sheds cracked, and the 350 emigrants shuddered with cold in the freezing rooms of the farm and in the draughty barns. A mile and a half away, at the sugar-mill, 360 others were shivering in halls and cellars. In the guard-room downstairs the soldiers gave a straw mattress to a poor old man who had terrible pains in the back, and who did not cease to wail the whole night long. Upstairs, in the attic, there were forty persons, among them fifteen children of charity. There was no rest to their weeping, nor to the patter of their feet. These small refugees, rather than go down the steep, black steps into a colder, blacker place, relieved themselves at the angles of the beams, and we saw with horror a trickle come from between the joists and run down our walls. Twice heavy steps shook the lobby, the door opened, a voice counted us: "One, two, three, four...." The soldiers were going their round. Half-frozen, we ventured downstairs to go and warm ourselves in the kitchen. But it was already crowded with about forty women with their babies, either in front of the fire or squeezed together on the benches. The air was unbreathable, so we went back to our icy chamber. Benumbed with cold, our limbs gathered up together, our chins on our knees, our feet stuck in our muffs, with a sore throat and a giddy head we made up our minds to wait for the morning, to take stock of our situation, and to find out in what place fate and the Germans had deposited us.
In the whole Thiérache, teeming with lovely hamlets, I warrant that there is no other so pretty as Jouville. It is perched half-way up the hill on the high-road to Guise, and its houses, first set in a straight row along the road, soon take a short-cut, and then descend the vale, where they meet with the purling Serre. They dawdle there in small knots, and storm a second hill, topped by a white steeple-crowned church. This building is not in the least handsome, yet it sowed dissension among the inhabitants. Jouville-East-Hill laid claim to the pious edifice; Jouville-West-Hill got it. Jouville-East-Hill forthwith took to free-thinking, flung itself into the socialist party, and swore it would never cross the Serre to gratify the spiritual needs of its souls. On the other hand, Jouville-West-Hill took a most serious turn, swore only by holy-water sprinklers and stoles, and sang nothing but vespers and matins. Jouville, in ordinary times, gives itself wholly up to cultivation of apples, to cattle-breeding, and to wicker-weaving. Each occupation adds a feature to the village. The apple trees fill the well-kept orchards that hem it all around; those meadows that stretch afar off feed the cows, and the willows, which will presently be converted into baskets, form thick hedges and make a draught-board pattern in the fields. The village, indeed, is packed with osiers, cut, tied in bundles, placed upright along the streets, and watered by the brook. So they grow green, and are covered with catkins, just like their brothers that have not been cut. The houses of Jouville are small, red and white, beneath a slate hood; their windows laugh a roguish laugh. On their roofs are fantastic weathercocks, and in front of them small gardens, in which box-trees flourish, cut into shapes. In short, Jouville looks at once simple and smart, modest and satisfied, and its mere aspect should cheer up the way-worn wanderer. Though this rustic Eden pleased us, we had no mind to take up our abode in it. The day after our arrival, we managed to ask an officer:
"What is the matter? What are we doing here?"
"Oh, the departure has been postponed, the organisers of the convoy are not in agreement."
"But how long are we going to stay here?"
"Not longer than a few days; you need not be afraid."
Although we were forewarned, our simple minds would not believe in duplicity. We were reassured.... A few days would soon glide by. When a soldier talked of a whole week, he astonished us. The chief cook in the kitchen, where he was superintending a swarm of busy scullions, dared to murmur three weeks, and he was hooted at by everybody. In the farm and in the sugar-mill the emigrants settled themselves as well as they could. A pitiful place, in which straw was expected to do everything! The straw served as seats and mattresses, it served as blankets, it served as shutters and padding. Nothing but straw to preserve oneself from the cold. And the cold was terrible. I think that we shall never suffer from anything as we suffered from the cold in Jouville. It was the icy chill of the seventh cycle of Hell, the chill that pierces you to the very marrow of the bones; it was the chill of death.... For a whole week we tried vainly to warm ourselves. The weather was clear; the wind blew with fury; the frozen ground was as hard as stone; icicles were dangling from the gutters; and the emigrants' teeth were chattering. They bent their shoulders, thrust their hands in their arm-pits, and wandered up and down. Some had on only rough linen clothes. From the yard they went up to the attic, from the barns to the kitchen, in quest of a bit of warmth, and they looked so cold that the mere sight of them heightened your misery.
In the sugar-mill some people had the luck to lodge in rooms that could be heated. But what of those who dwelt in attics through which the wind was blowing just as it did outside, or in cellars where they sat in a perpetual draught? The manifold misery we were the witnesses of was beyond description. I remember a room in the sugar-mill where about fifty emigrants had been huddled together—men and women, old people and children, in ill health or in good. It was a long, icy-cold room, with a low ceiling, feebly lighted by two deep windows in the shape of loopholes. At the threshold the odour of sick and dirty humanity suffocated you; the children's squalling, the mothers' scolding, the men's rough voices stunned you. In the dimly lighted room you perceived a path opened through the straw, spread out on both sides, on which you saw creatures crouched or lying. You stumbled on baskets, kitchen utensils, and bundles, had to shun wet linen and children's clothes, which the women had stretched out in the fallacious hope of drying them. When your eyes got somewhat used to the sober light of the place, you were able to single out the sick or the old people lying about the straw, the mothers suckling their babies, the men leaning against the wall. You saw their pale worn faces, their hands benumbed with cold, their thin clothes. And if you stopped to talk to them they told you many bitter, heart-rending stories. In a corner a girl of twenty was at the last gasp. She had but one lung left, and spat blood, while small children were playing about her. It was the hopeless horror of a concentration camp. Yet the commandant of the convoy, a lieutenant of the reserve, a good man after all, and the father of a family, did his best with the poor means at his disposal. Once even we saw a tear roll down his cheek at a distressing sight. The weather being inclement, he gave orders to have the greater part of the emigrants lodged in the village. The sick first, then the women and the children would be provided for. There was great excitement. A choice was made, and after three days and a good deal of writing, the farm and the sugar-mill had but a hundred occupants left, all huddled together in the few habitable rooms. The rest encamped in empty houses, slept on straw, a dozen in a room. At any rate they were under cover, and could warm themselves or accept the hospitality of the inhabitants of the village. Such was our case. Charming people gave us shelter, and placed two rooms at our disposal. We had beds. After we had spent three nights on a spring mattress and had shivered all the while, how pleasant it was to go to bed! But our apartment was not heated, had not been lived in for a long time, was impregnated with damp, and, chilled as we were, we recovered warmth only a few days after.
The life of the camp was organised after the military fashion. We were expected to obey at a glance.
In the morning, as early as half-past seven, the emigrants hastened to the sugar-mill or the farm, where each was inscribed in the place where he slept the night before. A grown-up member of each family presented the cards of those with him. In the two courtyards the emigrants filed past from right to left, and answered to their names mangled by the Feldwebel. Then came the daily allowance of coffee. Armed with saucepans, jugs, pots, and cups, women and urchins went to the kitchen to have them filled. They returned home, and at eleven o'clock, with porringers, pails, and coppers, they made again for the farm or the sugar-mill, to bring them back full of soup. Towards evening they wended their way a third time to fetch coffee for their supper.
About twice a week we were told in the morning that bread would be distributed at four o'clock. It was another errand to run. Every one produced his card, and received an allowance for several days. If the Feldwebel announced: "In the afternoon at three the emigrants will be passed in review," the whole village was in a flutter. It was no trifle to drag the old people and the babies out from their heaps of straw, to hold up the lame, to lead the blind, and to persuade the idiots. The ragged army, every day more beggarly, hobbled along to one of the rallying points. In the evening about eight o'clock the drum was beaten by way of curfew-bell. Every one shut himself up and blew out his candle, if he had one. Silence spread over the village; the emigrants, laying aside their cares for a while, fell asleep, and the night beneath its veil hid unnumbered miseries.
We were forbidden to go out of the village, and a pass was necessary if we would visit a farm half a mile from the hamlet. We were real captives, and no communication whatever was allowed with the neighbourhood. What an organisation, how many rules for such a short stay! Some people will think ... a short stay! One day followed another, and they were all alike, and always saw us in Jouville. "Next week the departure," the Germans said with unshaken impudence. Hope put us to the torture. One week followed another; we were still there. For two months, eight long and tedious weeks, we led this life of prisoners, thinking that the next day would set us free. Every morning, about eight, I left our lodging to answer to the roll-call. I was generally behindhand, and ran along the path that led to the farm every day with a hope which sank and withered. Shall we get news to-day? I hardly dared believe it; yet, my feet being frozen, my face cut by the wind, I made haste. In April the weather grew no milder, but the approaching spring was visible. A few flowers ventured to show themselves along the hedges, and the birds sang at the full pitch of their voices. Thus, while I ran along, the blackbirds in rapturous joy whistled each and all: "Fuit, fuit ... she had faith in the Germans!"
The tomtit ruthlessly and unceasingly twittered: "Sol, sol, mi ... sol, sol, mi ... you mustn't trust any one ... sol, sol, mi ... and still less the Germans ... sol, sol, mi...." And the wind jeered at me from the naked branches, and the bryony's small golden stars laughed in my face, spreading its wreaths along the path. I reached the farm, and the women gathered at once round me. If they caught sight of Geneviève or Antoinette, it was the same thing: we were taken by storm.
"Madam, madam, have you heard any news? When are we going?"
"Alas! within four or five days the officer said, but you know if he is to be believed."
A strain of protestations showered down:
"You will see, they will leave us here."
"Ah! we shall never go to free France!"
"They will take us to Germany. And we can't go on living here! Our brats have no more shoes; their clothes are in rags; it is no use to darn them, they fall in pieces."
"But the worst is that we are hungry. We could stand it, but our children, our little ones, are hungry."
And it was only too true, we were hungry, every one was hungry. What! Did the Germans not feed us? Of course they did! And on what! Twice a day each emigrant got a bowl of coffee. A bowlful or a dishful as you liked, this lukewarm beverage was not given out with a niggard hand. Lukewarm it always was, and thin too—stimulants ought not to be misused,—and blackish with a smell of mud. It was without sugar or milk, and there was no danger of feeling heavy after you had swallowed it. If the children fell a-weeping in the night, after having swallowed one cup of this coffee for their dinner, their mothers knew they were not going to have an attack of indigestion. We got bread. It was real, authentic German bread, kneaded and baked by Germans. Coloured outside like gingerbread, it was turtledove grey inside, and would have looked rather tempting but for the unbaked or mouldy parts. We supposed that rye-flour, pea-flour, and potato fecula were largely used in the making of it. Some pretended that they found sawdust in it too. I could not affirm this. I was rather inclined to think that chemicals had induced the heavy dough to rise. When new, this somewhat sour-tasted bread was nice enough, and we ate it without distrust the first days we spent in Jouville, as the bracing air gave us an appetite. Alas! it soon caused us pains in the stomach, sickness, inflammation of the bowels, in short put our digestive organs out of order. The emigrants ate it all the same; indeed they could not get enough of it. The first three weeks the Germans made a show of generosity: every person received a loaf every third day. The weight of one loaf was supposed to be three pounds, in reality it never exceeded thirteen hundred grammes. But the daily ration was sufficient, and nobody complained. Unfortunately the allowance became more and more stingy; during the last month every one received one pound every third or even fourth day. One hundred and twenty-five grammes—our daily pittance—do not represent a large slice, and the people began to clamour for food. We got soup. We were entitled to a ladle of soup by way of lunch. Shall I describe this mixture? Is it not already famous in both continents? Do our prisoners not feast upon it in Germany? It is a grey, thick substance which curdles like flour paste, whose chief ingredient is fecula. Each portion contained five or six tiny bits of meat, coming undoubtedly from over-fat animals, for we never saw a scrap of lean. A few horse- or kidney-beans, a little rice or barley, mixed with bits of straw, bits of wood, and other scraps of vague origin. Antoinette had once a real godsend. She discovered in her soup-plate ... she discovered ... how can I tell? Oh, shade of Abbé Delille, inspire me to paraphrases! She discovered one of those animalcules which ... plague take oratorical precautions! She found a louse on a hair, the whole boiled. This took away what was left of our strength, and we swore we would rather waste away, and slowly dry up, than eat such stew in the future.
"Look at this, madam, look at this hodgepodge," moaned the women. "At home we would not have given this rotten stuff to our pigs, and now we must feed upon it, and give it to our children."
M. Charvet, our host, cast a look of dismay at our porringers.
"As to myself, I should die beside this, but I would never taste it."
And yet the emigrants were obliged to eat it. From the first days of our arrival we set our house in order. Our bedrooms were at Mme. Charvet's, but we spent the whole day long at the rural constable's. The constable—a brave old man, wounded in 1870—gave up his large kitchen to us, and supplied us with wood at very little cost. In a corner of the kitchen stood a large four-post bed which received at night three of our protegées: a lady eighty-five years old, and her two grand-daughters aged seven and twelve years. Mme. Noreau, Mimi, and Miquette were respectively mother and daughters of a retired officer who lives at Coucy. Of course the officer and his two sons had not been allowed to go, and his wife had refused to leave them. But they took the chance of sending into France the grandmother and the little girls, who had greatly suffered from their life of privation. From the first evening, the sight of these helpless figures upholding one another had moved our pity. They gratefully accepted our proffered friendship and assistance. This is then the way we came to rule such a large household at the old constable's. A good oven served at once to heat the room and cook the food. For excellent reasons our stew was of the simplest. A few eggs, milk, sugar, and butter were to be had in the village, but as we had absolutely no other article of food—no meal whatever, no vegetables, no meat,—we were hungry despite custards and omelettes. I said we had tried to swallow the soup. We gave it up on account of the adventure afore mentioned after a fortnight of earnest endeavours. So much the worse, we said; we will live with empty stomachs. Many others were in the same plight. We were privileged beings, for only a few among the emigrants had a little money, enough to get something besides the usual fare supplied us by our jailers. I leave you to imagine the appetite of those who were reduced to bread, coffee, and soup in all. And remember that among them there were two hundred and eighty children under ten years who were not merely starved, but half-naked as well. The charity children were more miserable than the others. In the bitter cold weather they wound rags round their legs by way of stockings; their shoes were shapeless things, held together by string, their trousers were torn, their jackets had lost their sleeves, the girls' frocks were in rags. Their distress melted the people of the village to tears. Jouville has but four hundred inhabitants, and if their religious and political passions are lively, their hearts are none the less warm.
Jouville-East-Hill and Jouville-West-Hill showed themselves equally kind to the emigrants, and not only kind, but forbearing, and the emigrants needed forbearance. They were not the élite, and they were guilty of many a misdeed. M. Charvet well-nigh died of anger the day he discovered that his beloved fish-pond had been secretly rid of its finest inhabitants.
Another farmer was breathless with rage when he saw the potatoes he had planted the day before dug up in the morning.
Ah, you rascally emigrants! Of course some people will feel deeply shocked at such behaviour, and deem it a hanging matter—for instance, well-fed people, secure from danger, who afar off scowl at the Germans, the emigrants, and the typhus-smitten people with the very same feelings.
But I who was once numbered with those emigrants, who like them was a prey to hunger, I could not find the smallest stone to throw at them. And the inhabitants of Jouville, who were the witnesses of our life, threw no stone either. None of them caused our chains to be drawn tighter by complaining to the Germans. For the invaders of the north of France are very severe to the people who transgress the eighth commandment ... "Thou shalt not steal."
The Jouvillians did even better. From all quarters they brought to us and to the school-mistress of the village quantities of clothes fit to wear, if not new, and these were distributed among the raggedest refugees. We ourselves, with two others, did our best to clothe the orphan girls, and the poor things were extremely proud of their new frocks made up of shreds and patches. Some one gave them wooden shoes, and the bruised little feet could patter down the stony high-road without fear. The emigrants soon looked upon us as their private property, and thought us good for everything. An old woman would come to us, for instance, with an imperious air:
"I have been told that you are visitors of the poor, and then ..." some request followed.
The unfortunate visitors of the poor would sometimes have been glad to live on charity themselves. Well, this reminds me that we did once receive alms. We were following a path by the river, bordered with pleasant houses. It was a day of perquisitions, and the soldiers, having turned everything upside down, had left the quarter which we were traversing. A good old woman was coming from the river-side with a loaf in her hand, and the mere sight of the white, light crumb made our mouths water. The woman stopped, and said with a sidelong glance:
"You see, they don't want to know I have a little flour left. I hid my loaf in the hole of a willow tree."
She burst out laughing, and we chimed in.
I suppose she noticed our admiring gaze, for she said all of a sudden:
"Would you like to have some?"
She tripped along quickly, and, with short steps, went to her kitchen, came back with a knife, and cut off two large slices, which she held out to us. We seized the bread with an avidity hardly tempered with shame, and stammered out joyful thanks. This moved the compassion of the good woman:
"Fancy, they are hungry! What a pity! Such lovely girls!"
And so, jumping from one stone to another in the muddy path down the river, we burst into unrestrained laughter, and we devoured our bread which was the real bread, the white bread of France. We had, indeed, not a few windfalls. M. Charvet more than once presented us with one of those pretty round loaves, which he kneaded and baked himself.
We also were hand in glove with a farmer, who sometimes in secrecy let us have a few potatoes or a pound or two of flour, and thus gave us the means of adding something to our meagre fare. A few treats of that kind helped us to hold out! We looked like corpses, and we were, one after another, the victims of strange pains caused by the cold, the bread, and the continual excitement.
Most of the emigrants were ill. Eight of them died. We then had occasion to see and admire the way in which the Germans organise the sanitary service for the use of civilians. From the very first day an empty house had been bedecked with the title of hospital, and adorned with the scutcheon of the Red Cross. A large room directly opening into the street was chosen for consultations; two smaller rooms containing symmetrical heaps of straw served to receive the patients. There was a permanent orderly in the camp, and a doctor came daily from Marle. Emigrants, choose what sickness you like! You will be cared for!
And quickly influenza, diphtheria, bronchitis, inflammation of the lungs burst upon the emigrants. But we soon discovered that it was not easy to be admitted to the sick ward. I had to call four times on the officer before they vouchsafed to take away an old couple who, despite the Siberian cold, lived alone in a barn with big holes in its roof. The poor woman coughed pitifully, and her old companion could only bring her lukewarm coffee and heap upon her mountains of straw. She died two days after she had been transferred to the hospital. An old woman died, her body was carried away, and quickly another old woman took her place on the very same couch of straw. A dying woman, utterly unconscious, was left a week unattended to.
"I assure you the corner she was in was a very sink," said the man who took upon himself to clean it when the corpse had been taken away. "And my wife and children had to live in this infected spot!"
Our medical attendant was a young coxcomb, fair-haired, regular-featured, and harsh-looking. A glass was fixed in his eye. About half-past nine his carriage, drawn by a pretty horse, pulled up; carelessly he threw the reins to his groom; he alighted and penetrated his domain. His Lordship sat down in an easy-chair, crossed his legs, took a haughty survey of the patients who called upon him, and spoke in a curt and supercilious tone. He was soon held to be a villainous fellow.
"He is as wicked as the devil," a woman said, with a look of dismay.
A great many of them wanted their children to be examined by the doctor.
"I would rather die on straw than go to him for myself," a mother said ... "but, my poor little girl!"
But what was worse, the Prussian doctor did not care a fig for sick children! We had been told that every baby was entitled to a litre of milk, which one of the farmers of the village would deliver to the mother on presentation of a note of hand. But a child above two years was allowed to drink milk only if the doctor deemed it expedient for its health. A woman we knew had a little girl not yet three. Six months before the whole family had fled in a shower of bullets and grape-shot, and for nearly a month had lived in the depths of a dark stone quarry with hardly anything to eat. Since then the child had been as white as wax; she had no strength at all, and she was always staring straight before her as if she had beheld horrible things.
As she was penniless, the woman was forced to bring her child to this medicaster.
"Sir, you see my little girl ... I think milk would do her good...."
He had but to write a note, and she would have had it.
"Milk! I haven't any! I keep no cows in my house!" and the doctor burst out laughing, thinking himself very witty.
"Anyhow," the mother said with her teeth ground, "when he stays at home there is a brute beast in his house worse than a cow."
Another beggar woman had twins about two years old. One of them ate soup and bread, and throve like couch-grass. The other, who ever since the family had left their native hamlet had fed on indigestible things, and had nowhere to lay her head, had grown pale and sickly. She had ceased to run alone, took no food, and pined away visibly. Her mother brought her to the doctor.
"That child! What should I prescribe her? She is ailing on account of her being French. French children are all rickety and weakly. How am I to help it? Lay the blame on your race."
Before leaving, the little doctor sometimes gave a glance—a single one—at the rooms of the hospital, then stepped into his carriage, took up the reins, cracked his whip, and as harsh-featured as ever put his horse to a gallop.
However, some attention had to be paid to the sick. The orderly was there for that purpose. He was a big stout man, whose eyes seemed starting from their sockets. He did not like to be called up in the afternoon—he took a nap—and still less in the night. His remedies—the same for every sickness—were most economical: "Keep on low diet, apply cold compresses." Yet he understood his business well enough.
Our hostess, Mme. Charvet, a wealthy landowner, suddenly fell ill of a disquieting haemorrhage. No doctor in the village, not even in the neighbourhood. We ran in haste to fetch "Goggle-eyes."
"Oh, please, please, come!..."
"Goggle-eyes" lost no time in coming, showed assiduous attention to the patient, punctured her, and rode on a bicycle to Marle in order to fetch medicines. A few days after, a poor emigrant, mother of six small children, was attacked by the same disease. He was sent for in vain; and left her forty-eight hours without help. It was indeed a miracle that she did not depart this life.
This proves clearly that to the mind of a German, even though he be a Sozial-Democrat, the skin of a capitalist will ever be superior to the skin of a starveling.
The physician was not our sole caller. A few other ones came when the straw was still clean, and when we received a pound of bread a day. A stout commandant, and three days after, a thin commandant came to visit the camp. Both the stout and the thin looked extremely well satisfied, and seemed to say:
"What splendid organisation! How perfectly everything is getting on! Really, nobody but Germans could settle things like that!"
The thin commandant was escorted by the official interpreter of the camp. He never asked a question of the people, for many reasons, the principal being that he did know the language of Voltaire. The very first day he had given a sample of his talents by asking a youth:
"Hé ... vous ... combien hannées vous havoir?"
And the boy, stretching his legs and hands, stood there gazing, gaping at his interlocutor, and his whole countenance answered:
"I don't understand German!"
Therefore mimicry and loud cries bore a great part in the relations between soldiers and emigrants.
The stout commandant piqued himself on French. In one of the rooms of the farm he asked:
"You are comfortable here, aren't you?"
And the women, pickled in respect, answered all with one voice:
"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"
"You get good soup, don't you?"
"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"
"You get a lot of bread, don't you?"
"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"
"When you reach France you will tell the French you have been leniently dealt with, won't you?"
"Oh, yes, sir, yes!"
The stout commandant went away, proud of himself and proud of being one of those Germans who know how to organise camps for refugees.
"Rely on our saying how we have been dealt with," bantered the old women, the moment the officers' large backs were turned.
Another caller was a clergyman, who was quite different from the others.
The Rev. Herr Freyer was about thirty-five, he was tall, dark-haired, with malicious eyes and a turned-up nose. I must say he did his best to comply with our wishes and serve the cause of the emigrants. From the very beginning he told us that he was very fond of the French—yes, but the Germans are all fond of the French—and that his grandmother was of French descent.
"Why! then she had married a German?"
Well, let us go on to something else.
This man was certainly the cleverest German we had met, or rather the only clever one we ever met. We were all the more amazed to notice once more the abyss that separates the French from the German mind. An utter incomprehension of certain delicacies, a lack of sensitiveness, is peculiar to them. If they had fallen from the very moon, our ways of doing and thinking could not be stranger to them.
And in discussion, they are unable to cast out preconceived notions, which will ever get the better of reasoning and observation.
Herr Freyer certainly wished to show us kindness, and at every turn he told us things which set our teeth on edge. Yet he wondered to see us stand up for causes which he had looked upon as lost since a long time.
"How I pity France," he used to tell us, "poor degenerate France!"
And he looked quite scared when he saw our anger, and heard our vehement protestations. He was still convinced victory would be theirs. On the other hand, he once declared to us:
"There is a blemish in the character of the Germans ... they are kind-hearted to a fault. The German nation is thoroughly kind-hearted."
Owing to the circumstances we dared not say all that we wanted to, and were content to hint at Belgium....
"Oh, so many lies have been told! You ought not to believe such slanderous accusations. As to myself I know that what you are alluding to is false; the Germans are too kind-hearted to be guilty of the deeds they are charged with."
Such is our enemy's mode of reasoning. He denies what they cannot excuse. It is very easy.
"In Alsace-Lorraine we have been to blame in every way," said the clergyman to us.
He is making confession, we thought.
"Yes, we have been too kind-hearted, over-indulgent to the people. If we had had a firmer hand, everything would have got on much better."
This blasphemer had some merit, let us not be too hard on him.
Our leisure was propitious to gossip, and we spent many an hour listening to those who had seen the first tragical events of the invasion. Their simple, unvarnished tales were like so many nightmares. For instance, there were bargemen of Braye whose boat had been split in two by a cannon ball, and who had escaped death only by swimming and clinging to floating planks. There was the woman of Corbeny, driven by the Prussians from a village near Soissons. With several others she walked to Cerny at a stretch, with the Germans ever at her heels. The unhappy wretches had covered forty kilometres in the midst of a battle, spent with weariness, breathless, tumbling down, and trudging off again. Three of them were killed on the way. The woman who gave us an account of this carried her baby, aged eighteen months, throughout this wild race, and on the way the poor little thing was wounded twice in her mother's arms. Of Cerny were the poor creatures who were shut up in a deep stone quarry, and stayed there with scarcely any food for twenty-seven days. When they were taken out and brought to Laon they were pale, hollow-cheeked, and covered with vermin; they could hardly walk by themselves, and their eyes could not look upon the daylight. "The people wept as they saw us go by," the women said. During the first hours of their sojourn in the stone quarry, there had been a tragical incident. The fugitives were crouching in the dark when an officer broke in, accompanied with soldiers:
"Some of you," he said, "have harboured Englishmen. We discovered an English officer lying in such and such barn, in such a place. We have set the building on fire."
"Ah, it was yours! You knew an Englishman was hidden in it? Come on."
The poor man vainly protested against the accusation; he was taken away.
The following day he had not yet returned. His wife was greatly disturbed, and despite the danger made up her mind to go and try to see him. She took some chocolate out of the slender store of the refugees.
"They have thrown him into prison," she said, "and I am sure they will starve him to death."
The woman went. The village was half in ruins, and the ruins smoked. All was deserted. She summoned up her courage, went straight to her house, walked into the yard, and, close to the dunghill, his face fallen in the filth, his hands tied behind his back, saw the corpse of her husband. He had been shot twice in the head, and his side was pierced with a large wound.
The victim's brother and the niece from whom we heard this story, were not allowed to attend his burial.
From the same part were two ladies, a mother and her daughter, with a new-born baby, who were flung out of their house with only a dressing-gown and slippers on, and driven on without stopping at the bayonet's point, until they reached Laon, half distracted.
To Cerny also belonged those seven men who had been confined in the mairie of Chamouille, and who saw an officer come up and yell in a furious tone: "Your dirty French have discovered our presence here. One of you must have made signals. That's why we are getting a shower of shrapnel." The civilians denied the charge, and defended themselves. To no purpose.
"You shall spend the whole night in front of the house, and if you get knocked on the head, it will serve you right."
The men were drawn up in the street, and from evening till morning stood there within reach of their guards' revolvers. As if by miracle, the cannonade ceased, and during the night not a shot was fired upon the village. The next day the prisoners were sent to Laon.
Less tragic but just as remarkable, was the story of our companions Noreau, the grandmother, so small, so weak, that we more than once thought her death near at hand, and her darlings, with their pale faces and their eyes encircled with black. Major Noreau owned a large house in Coucy. It pleased the invaders, in their omnipotence, to take possession of eleven rooms, and to establish their offices in them. The owners had but the use of a single room, reserved for the sick father. Mme. Noreau, her four children and her mother-in-law, slept all the winter in a cold attic. Some of them slept on straw, but the old grandmother had, instead of a bed, ... a kneading-trough!
All the furniture had been carried away, scattered about the village, or over the trenches. To crown all, the family had suffered hunger almost unceasingly. Coucy had been still less favoured with provisions than Morny, and only the farmers had managed to lay by some few articles of food.
"One day," our old friend told us, "little Mimi picked up from the dunghill a lump of sugar an officer's servant had thrown to the dog. She knew her mother had had no food the last two days, and brought her this windfall."
The same little Mimi, after she had slept on straw for months together, forgot, for want of practice, her normal vocabulary, such words, for instance, as sheet, and the first evening she asked Antoinette, who had adopted her:
"What is the name of those things ... you know what I mean ... those white things one stretches upon the beds?..."
A great many emigrants were thrown out of their villages in September, when the Germans had been driven back. They had been pushed forward like cattle, had been penned up in the citadel of Laon, and left there for weeks, for months, sleeping on straw and starving. All these unhappy wanderers were stranded at Jouville. They had met again with their old companion Hunger. They were persecuted by the cold. Many lay groaning in the icy cellars of the sugar-mill, or in the airy attics of the farm.
And then suddenly came the spring. It came in one night. A light breath passed over the vale, which was soon like a nosegay. The meadows grew green, the hedges expanded their buds, the trees put forth tender leaves, the groves were embroidered with periwinkles. Beneath the thorn bushes came up lords-and-ladies; violets in tufts peeped out along the paths, and the meadows were strewn with primroses. Six small lambs in the keeping of a shepherd girl looked like six white specks on the slope of the green hill. The hedges were lively with songs and murmurs. The spring wondered much that it did not see the fresh idylls it was used to. Alas! Love had fled; Venus alone, a lewd and venal Venus, saw her altars besieged with a host of worshippers; but pure chaste Love had no faithful followers left.
Yet the spring bestowed with a full hand its gaiety upon all Nature. I met once with five small emigrants. The eldest was about eight years old; their clothes were all in rags, their feet walked naked on the stones. But they had flowers in their arms, and their pale faces were bright with the joy of the Spring. The joy of the Spring! Could we feel glad at it? "The month of May without France is no longer the month of May." This corner of France was no more France since we bore the yoke of strangers. In vain we lay basking in the sun, with outstretched arms. The sun could not, as once it did, warm and burn us, as if to make us die a voluptuous death. In vain did we listen to the watchful nightingale, whose song overtopped the noise of the water-gate. It expressed all the ecstasy and passion of mankind; it could no longer make us feel the sweetness of life. Our hearts were benumbed with grief, and had no taste for happiness.
Even the humblest of our companions, of our neighbours, understood this contrast between the sentiments of us all, and the joys which filled Nature. And we heard poor women say in a mournful tone:
"What misery! To think that we must live with the Germans in such fine weather!"
We lived with the Germans. In their train came all the ills—captivity, sickness, hunger. We suffered hunger more than ever since the ration of bread had been reduced almost to nothing. The women made loud complaints, and even talked of mutiny. The commandant of the camp—it was no longer he of the first days—replied to my complaints, lifting up his arms in a gesture of impotency and indifference:
"They are hungry! How am I to help it? I have nothing to give them. I had rather see them eat! It wouldn't disturb me in the least! Do you think I should care about it?"
A few women with their children and a cripple ran away, thinking they might reach their village. They were overtaken, some at five, others at ten kilometres from Jouville, were thrown into prisons without any further formality, and sentenced to wait there for the departure in which every one had ceased to believe. Two girls did succeed in getting home, but were likewise caught and brought back. These flights rendered our supervision stricter than ever. We had to answer to numberless roll-calls, and once, when the Feldwebel was in a bad temper, he called us all "a set of pigs!"
Our misery was alleviated at last, when the American-Spanish Relief Commission began its work. Jouville had already received some white flour. The mayor of the village interposed to obtain the same favour for the emigrants. He succeeded, and the last week of their quarantine the poor people got bread—white bread. The first day we went to the baker we saw a stirring sight. The children gazed in wonder at the golden loaves; they squeezed, they smelt their portion with joy, and without waiting broke off pieces which they ate eagerly. I saw women look at their share with staring eyes, and say weeping:
"Bread, real bread!"
This happened the last week of our sojourn in Jouville. Indeed the longed-for event was about to take place. There were endless reviews and verifications of names and civil conditions. The men were examined, and re-examined by the doctor, for all would not be allowed to leave. A card with a number was delivered to every person, and we were all ordered to meet in the yard of the sugar-mill at eight o'clock in the morning on Friday, the 14th of May. Different sentiments prevailed. A few were overjoyed at the news; others showed signs of despairing incredulity.
"God knows where they are going to take us now! What will become of us? You will see they will shut us up in Germany!"
But most of them suspended their judgment. Not daring to hope, they anxiously waited upon events. A still greater misfortune than we had borne lay in store for us, Geneviève had caught a severe cold about a month before, and the day we heard delivery was near she was in bed, shaking with fever. She spent a very bad night, notwithstanding our care. In the morning I ran for the German doctor—as there was no other—despite the patient's protests.
"No, no, I will have no Germans about me. Besides, there is nothing the matter that will prevent me from going."
The fair-haired coxcomb gave a listless ear to my words, looked at me between his eyelids, and asked with his lips:
"Why did not this person come round for medical advice?"
I replied that "this person" was in a high fever, and could not get up. Fortunately another doctor had come to help the former to examine the people before they were allowed to depart. He was a fat, red-faced, jovial fellow, who showed great haste to oblige me, and repeated over and over again as he accompanied me:
"Ah! le kerre! pien ture, pien ture!"
His diagnosis was alarming. A double congestion of the lungs. He prescribed cold water compresses.
"And—and the departure...."
"Oh, it is quite out of the question! The lady could not stand the journey. It is absolutely impossible."
"Then ... we are not going either...."
"That is no business of mine."
And the doctor withdrew with a shrug of his shoulders. Mad with despair we went to the commandant of the camp, Antoinette and I.
"We cannot go. Our sister is ill; we cannot forsake her."
"Why, you must go, you are not ill."
We did not know what saint to pray to; we looked out for help. The mayor of Jouville vainly went to the Kommandantur of Marle to plead our cause:
"All emigrants in good health must go." Such was the answer.
Geneviève tossed about her bed, and protested:
"I want to go; I will go. I will not run aground, as we are reaching the port."
But the doctor, once more consulted, repeated emphatically:
"Impossible, impossible."
"Then allow us to stay too."
"Impossible, impossible."
At length, towards evening—the whole camp with the whole village sympathised with us—some one told me:
"An officer from Marle is at the Red Cross. Go and try again."
We ran to see him. I well-nigh fell at his feet, and besought him. He looked somewhat moved.
"Well, let me see what I can do. You are sure the lady is unable to travel?" he asked the doctor.
"Absolutely. She cannot be moved."
"I cannot be moved either," I cried. "Please examine me. You will see there is something the matter with my heart, and if I am driven to go, it will be the death of me."
"Well," the officer said, "let us see."
His eyes gave consent. He turned to the doctor.
"You might examine her, and see if the journey would not endanger her life."
The doctor tossed his head, and smiled an incredulous smile.
"Hum, hum, it can't be denied there is something wrong with her heart," ... and, taking a pen, he signed the slip which I so much desired. What a relief! Geneviève would not be left, seriously ill, among strangers.
"And I, what am I to do?" Antoinette moaned.
"Ah! you must go."
There was nothing else to do. On the way home I tried to encourage her, miserable as she was at going away alone.
The next day I left Geneviève, burning with fever, in Mme. Charvet's care, and went to see the convoy start, heart-broken.
The sun lit up the scene; everybody was in a flutter of excitement. Villagers had been requisitioned, with carts and horses, to convey the children, the infirm, and the luggage. The crowd set out, under the conduct of the soldiers, amid calls and shouts. Many emigrants were crying:
"Where are we going to? Whither shall we be taken?"
Several families were severed one from another, for about fifteen men had been thought too strong to leave the invaded territory. They might turn soldiers, and fight against the Germans!
The charity children, delighted at the prospect, flocked around me.
"You will come later on, won't you, madam?"
Old Mme. Noreau and her grand-daughters faltered some words of sympathy, Antoinette strove hard to restrain her tears, and Pierrot dared not show his joy. I went with them as far as the end of the village, where two gendarmes were busy counting up the herd. I was not allowed to go any farther, and I stood there gazing at the trampling crowd, and until I saw them disappear at a winding of the road.
A halting-place had been arranged four miles from thence, where a train was waiting to convey the emigrants to Hirson. They spent the night in the waiting-rooms, lying on the floor, sitting on benches, all squeezed together with fluttering hearts and anxious looks, disturbed by the squalling of the children and the groans of the old people. In the morning, the poor wretches were carefully searched, and then crowded into the train. Two days after they reached France. With tears and cries of joy they greeted life, at length recovered after so many trials.