Unknown date . . .
It is raining—it is cold. The sky is dark. I go to and fro in the Hermitage, tying up faggots and making bread, while the cannon thunders incessantly, and by a strange phenomenon disturbs the earth even more than the air. With my prison labour, my selfish and silent life in the midst of such a terrible drama, I compare myself to an ant, busily groping about on the surface of the soil, deaf to the sounds of humanity around it, all too great for its insignificance, and which surround without troubling it. From time to time, to divert my thoughts, I take a journey to Champrosay without any fear of meeting the Prussians, who have decidedly abandoned the Corbeil road, and are making their descent on Paris by way of Melun and Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Once or twice, however, a horse’s gallop obliged me to take refuge in some shed, and I saw a rapid and hurried bearer of despatches riding across the country as if merely to unite it to headquarters, to take possession of the road, and mark it with the hoofs of the Prussian horses.
This deserted village, with its wide-open houses, interests and charms me like a sort of Pompeii. I wander through and examine it. I amuse myself by reconstructing the lives of these absent ones . . .
Another day . . .
. . . Something strange is going on around me. I am not alone in the forest. There is evidently some one hiding near here, and some one who kills. To-day, in the washing-pond of Champrosay, I found a second corpse. A Saxon was stretched out there, only his fair head visible above the water, lying on the damp stone ledge. Moreover, he was well hidden away, thrust into oblivion in this small pond surrounded by brushwood, as securely as that other one over there, in the quarry in the wood. I had by chance taken Colaquet to drink there. The sight of that long, motionless body startled me. Were it not for the pool of blood which stained the stones round his head, and mingled with the reflection of the purple sunset in the water, it might have been supposed that he was asleep, so quiet and peaceful were his features. I have often noticed that expression on the face of the dead. For the space of a brief moment there is something about them more beautiful than life: a solemn peace, a breathless slumber, a renewal of youth in the whole being, which seems like a pause between the agitations of life and the surprises of the unknown world opening before them.