October . . .
What day, what date can it be? I have completely lost count. My brain is all confused. Yet it seems to me that it must be October. The monotonous days get shorter and shorter, the wind colder, and the foliage of the large trees around me becomes thinner at each gust of wind. The sound of incessant cannonading in the direction of Paris, makes a lugubrious accompaniment to my everyday life, a deep, low bass, always mingling in my thoughts. I think the Prussians must have their hands full over there, for my marauders have not reappeared. I no longer even hear the long, slow rumbling of the ammunition waggons, nor the rolling of drums, which used to resound on the roads outside the forest. So I have again lighted the fire in the large room, and I walk openly about in the orchard.
From day to day the difficulties of life increase. I have nothing left, neither bread, wine, nor lamp-oil. A month ago, with the sunshine, the house well aired, and the comfort of warmth, these privations were bearable, but now they seem very hard. In the poultry-yard there are only two hens left; always hiding under the rafters to escape the continual driving rain. I make faggots with the branches of the fruit-trees, which, brittle and no longer protected by their leaves, snap off and fall to the ground. The apple-trees have golden moss, the plum-trees long streaks of light-coloured gum under their resinous bark, and they make large, bright fires, throwing a sunshine into their warmth. I have also gathered the last apples, all reddened by the breath of the first frost, and I have made a poor kind of cider, which I drink instead of wine. With my bread I have been less successful. I tried, with the unfortunate Goudeloup’s flour, to knead some dough in the bottom of a cupboard drawer which I used as a trough; and then, under the ashes on the bricks, I made as well as I could, thick cakes, of which the outsides were burnt, and the insides hardly done enough. They reminded me of those little round bits of dough that, as a child, I held in the tongs, and made into rolls about the size of a lozenge.
From time to time I get a windfall. For instance, the other day, as I was rummaging in the keeper’s house, I found on a damp and mouldy cupboard shelf a few bottles of walnut-spirit that had been overlooked by the plunderers; and another time I found a large sack, which I opened with a beating heart, thinking it contained potatoes. I was quite startled on pulling out from it magpies’ beaks, vipers’ heads, dry and dust-coloured, squirrels’ tails, with their bushy red fur, and field-mice’s tails, as delicate as silken twist. These are the keeper’s perquisites, as they are given so much for the head and tail of destructive animals. They therefore keep these trophies of the chase very carefully, as they are paid for them by Government once a month.
—It always buys tobacco, as good old Guillard used to say.
I read a little, and have even tried to paint. It was a few mornings ago, in the light of a beautiful red sun, shining through the air thick with mist; under the shed was a heap of apples, tempting me by their lovely colouring of all shades, from the tender green of young leaves to the ardent glow of autumnal foliage. But I was not able to work for long. In a few minutes the sky became overcast. It was raining in torrents. And large flocks of wild geese, with outstretched necks and beating against the wind, passed over the house, announcing a hard winter and the approach of snow by the white down shaken from their wings.
