LIST OF PLATES
| PAGE | |
| “Read that, Mr. Robert, said the good man” | [18] |
| “Seeing me so thoroughly determined, the Keeper pressed my hand” | [35] |
| “Colaquet managed to take us tolerably straight” | [56] |
| “Old Guillard brought out a large jug of sparkling wine” | [68] |
| “They began drinking out of their caps” | [74] |
| “He lay sprawling at full length on the stone bench” | [79] |
| “At that instant a man rushed across the moonlit orchard” | [111] |
| The Watch | [128] |
| “It was a balloon” | [140] |
| “I found a pigeon” | [148] |
| “We crossed a heavy punt” | [160] |
| “I seized hold of the chain with both hands and lowered myself into the river” | [171] |
| “They blew out his brains with a revolver” | [186] |
| “I heard the clinking of glasses, the uncorking of bottles” | [191] |
| “Forgetful of the lost harvest in preparing for that of the future” | [199] |
PREFACE
While spending a day in the country on one of those pretty green islets that are dotted about in clusters on the Seine between Champrosay and Soisy, and wrestling with a friend, my foot slipped on the damp grass, and I broke my leg. My unfortunate love for athletic and violent exercise has already played me so many ugly tricks, that I should probably have forgotten this accident, as I have others, but for its precise and memorable date: the 14th of July 1870! . . . I still see myself at the close of that sad day, lying on the sofa in the former studio of Eugène Delacroix, whose small house on the borders of the forest of Sénart we were then occupying. When my leg was stretched out, I hardly suffered, for already I felt the vague restlessness of increasing fever, exaggerating the sensation and heat of the stormy atmosphere, and enveloping all around me in a misty cloud, as it were, of shimmering gauze. To the accompaniment of the piano they were singing the choruses of Orphée, and no one, not even I, suspected how serious was my condition. Through the wide-open bay window in the studio came the sweet breath of the jasmine and roses, the beat of the night-moths, and the quick flashes of lightning showing up, above the low garden walls, the sloping vineyards, the Seine, and the rising ground opposite. Suddenly the stillness was broken by the sound of a bell; the evening papers are brought in and opened, and voices broken by emotion, anger, or enthusiasm exclaim: “War is declared!”
From this moment nothing remains to me but the feverish recollection of a state of languor lasting six weeks; of six weeks of bed, of splints, of cradle and plaster case, in which my leg seemed imprisoned in company with thousands of tormenting insects. During that hot summer, so exceptionally stormy and scorching, this inaction full of agitation was dreadful, and my anxiety, increased by the accounts of the public disasters which filled the papers that covered my bed, added to my restlessness and sleeplessness. At night the rumble of the distant trains disturbed me like the tread of endless battalions, and by day, pale and sad faces, scraps of conversations overheard in the road or at the neighbour’s, through my open window: “The Prussians are at Châlons, mother Jean,” and the vans at every moment raising clouds of dust in the quiet little village, lent a mundane and sinister echo to my perusal of “the news of the war.” Soon we were the only Parisians left at Champrosay, left alone with the peasants, obstinately attached to the land, and still refusing to admit the idea of an invasion. Directly I could leave my couch and be moved, our departure was decided.
Never shall I forget my first outing in the little old-fashioned garden, filled with the perfume of ripe peaches and fading roses. Around me, poor invalid that I was, seated on the steps of a ladder laid against the fruited wall, they were hurrying on the departure, loading the vans, gathering the fruit and flowers in the unconscious preoccupation of leaving nothing for the enemy; even the child, with its arms full of toys, picking up a little spade forgotten in the grass.