The Downfall (La Débâcle): A Story of the Horrors of War

by Émile Zola

When Maurice, however, wished to slip twenty francs into her hand, she hastily withdrew it, and ran off, leaving them the basket. Still, before she disappeared, they saw her turn round and dart on them the tender, sympathetic laugh of her lovely eyes.

Although they had the basket they were still as perplexed as ever. They had strayed from their tent, and were so bewildered that they could not find it again. Where should they stow themselves away? How could they change their clothes? It seemed to them that everyone was prying into that basket, which Jean was carrying in such an awkward manner, and could plainly detect what it contained. At last, however, they made up their minds, and entered the first empty tent they came upon, where in desperate haste each of them divested himself of his regimentals and slipped on a pair of trousers and a blouse. They placed their uniforms under the loaves in the basket and left the latter in the tent. However, they had only found one cap among the garments provided, and this Jean had compelled Maurice to put on. For his own part, he was bareheaded, and, exaggerating the danger, he fancied himself lost. So he was still lingering there, wondering how he could obtain any headgear, when the idea suddenly came to him to buy the hat of a dirty old man whom he saw selling cigars. 'Three sous apiece, Brussels cigars, five sous a couple, Brussels cigars!'

There had been no customs' service on the frontier, since the battle of Sedan, so that Belgian articles were flooding the country-side without let or hindrance. The ragged old fellow had already realised a handsome profit, but he nevertheless manifested exorbitant pretensions when he understood why Jean wished to buy his hat, a greasy bit of felt with a hole in the crown. A couple of five-franc pieces had to be handed him before he would part with it, and even then he whimpered that he should certainly catch cold.

Another idea, however, had just occurred to Jean, that of purchasing the remainder of the old fellow's stock in trade, the three dozen cigars or so which he was still hawking through the camp. And having accomplished this, the corporal in his turn began walking about, with the old hat drawn over his eyes, whilst in a drawling voice he called: 'Three sous a couple, three sous a couple, Brussels cigars!'

This meant salvation, and he signed to Maurice to walk on before him. The young fellow, by great good fortune, had just picked up an umbrella dropped or forgotten by one of the hawkers, and as a few drops of rain were falling, he quietly opened it so that it might screen him whilst passing the line of sentinels.

'Three sous a couple, three sous a couple, Brussels cigars!' cried Jean, who in a few minutes had rid himself of his stock. The other prisoners laughed and pressed around him; here at all events, said they, was a reasonable dealer who didn't rob poor folks! Attracted too by the cheapness of the cigars some of the Prussians even approached, and Jean had to supply them. He manœuvred so as to pass the guarded camp-line, and eventually sold his two last cigars to a big-bearded Prussian sergeant, who did not speak a word of French.

'Don't walk so quick, dash it all!' he repeated as he walked on behind Maurice; 'you'll get us caught if you do.'

Their legs were almost running away with them, and only a great effort induced them to pause for a moment on reaching a crossway, where some clusters of people were standing outside an inn. Some French gentlemen were there, peaceably chatting with several German soldiers; and Jean and Maurice pretended to listen and even ventured to say a few words about the rain, which it seemed likely would fall heavily during the night. Meantime, a fat gentleman, who was among the persons present, looked at them so persistently that they trembled. As he ended, however, by smiling in a good-natured way, they ventured to ask him in an undertone: 'Is the road to Belgium guarded, sir?'

'Yes, but go through that wood and then bear to the left, across the fields.'

When they found themselves in the wood, amid the deep, dark silence of the motionless trees, when they could no longer hear a sound, when nothing more stirred and they believed that they were really saved, a feeling of extraordinary emotion threw them into one another's arms. Maurice wept, sobbing violently, whilst tears slowly gathered in Jean's eyes and trickled down his cheeks. Their nerves were relaxing after their prolonged torments, they hopefully thought that perhaps suffering would now take some compassion on them and torture them no longer. And meantime they clasped each other closely in a distracted embrace, fraught with the fraternity born of all that they had suffered together; and the kiss that they exchanged seemed to them the most loving, the most ardent of their life, a kiss such as they would never receive from a woman, the kiss of immortal friendship exchanged in the absolute certainty that their two hearts no longer formed but one, for ever and ever more.