The Doctor, who just then came into the room, made me leave the window.
—Take care, Mr. Robert; do not show yourself. There is at the Commandatur a list of the inhabitants who have remained in the country, and we are all closely watched. After eight o’clock in the evening, nobody except myself is allowed to go outside their house . . . So many Prussians have been murdered in the neighbourhood! Draveil pays the penalty. Their requisitions are three times heavier here than elsewhere. The least word, and they imprison; the slightest show of rebellion, and they shoot. Our unhappy peasants are terrified. They spy and inform about each other; and if one of them perceived that I was hiding some one in my house, he would be capable—to spare himself a requisition—of warning the Commandatur. What would be the fate of both of us, I can easily imagine . . .
He was so afraid of any imprudence on my part, poor dear Doctor, that all the time I stayed in his house he kept the key of my room in his pocket. The latticed shutters and closed windows threw a prison gloom over my room, that only gave me light enough to read by. I had medical works, a few odd volumes translated from the Panckoucke series, and from time to time a copy of a French paper published by the Prussians at Versailles. That also was written in a foreign kind of French, and our real or imaginary defeats were sneeringly described with coarse and stupid jokes.
When I could no longer read, I looked out through the blinds into the street—the real old-fashioned street of a country town. Straight rows of houses with little gardens and a pavement in front, the spaces between them filled with a trellis-work of branches, or the trunk of a great elm, and a background of plain and vineyard scarcely hidden by the low roofs. Then sheds and stables, a fountain spouting out of an old wall, the large gateway of a farm, side by side with the notary’s white and clean little house, ornamented with escutcheons. And over all the cruel blight of the invasion. Knitted jerseys drying on the iron gates and on the shutters. Large pipes protruding from every window, and military boots. Never had I heard the sound of so many boots . . . Opposite my window was the Commandatur. Every day peasants were brought in, urged along by butt-ends of rifles or the scabbards of swords. The women and children followed weeping, and while the man was dragged inside, they remained at the door explaining their case to the soldiers, who, with closed lips, listened disdainfully or else laughed with a stupid brutal laughter. No hope of pity or justice. All depended on the caprice of the conqueror. They were so well aware of it, these unfortunate peasants, that they hardly dared stir out or show themselves, and when they did venture into the street, it was heart-rending to see them creeping under the walls, glancing out of the corner of their eyes, bowed down, obsequious and servile, like Eastern Jews.
It was a cruel sight to see the ambulances stop at our door in the wind, cold, rain, and snow; to hear the groans of the sick and wounded being removed from the carts and borne in helpless. When evening came, to end the long melancholy days, the Prussian bugles sounded the retreat under the leafless elm trees, with its slowly marked time, and its last three notes thrown out like the weird screech of a night-bird at the approach of night. This was the moment when the Doctor, muddy and tired, entered my room. He himself brought my food, and, with his usual good nature, told me all he had done—about his visits, the hearsays from Paris and from the provinces, about the sick people brought to him, and his disputes with the Prussian major, who was his colleague in command of the hospital, and whose German pedantry annoyed and exasperated him. We talked in sad low tones, and then the kind man bade me good-night. Once more alone, I softly opened my window to breathe the fresh air for a few minutes. In spite of the bitter cold, it did me good. In its peaceful slumbers the country seemed to return to its former condition and resumed the aspect of its happier days. But soon the step of a patrol, the groan of a wounded man, the sound of the cannon thundering on the horizon, brought me back to the reality, and I retired into my prison, full of hatred and anger. At the end of a short time this cellular kind of existence in the midst of the army of occupation became intolerable. Having lost all hope of entering Paris, I regretted my Hermitage. There, at least, I had solitude and Nature. I was not tempted there, as I was here, to interfere in the injustices, brutalities, and constant vexations going on in the street, thereby running the risk of compromising my kind host. Therefore I resolved upon leaving.
To my great surprise, the Doctor did not even try to dissuade me from my project.
—You are quite right, he said quietly; you will be safer over there.
Since, on reflection, I have always fancied that some neighbour may have seen me behind the lattice, and that my host, although he would not admit it, feared they would betray me. We therefore decided that I should leave Draveil the next day, in the same manner in which I arrived. When it was quite dark, I went down into the stable. I hid myself in the straw of the cabriolet, the Doctor’s cloak was thrown over me, and we started off. The journey was accomplished without accident. Every hundred and fifty or two hundred yards was a sentry-box erected by the roadside at the expense of the district.
—Wer da? challenged the sentry, cocking his rifle.