They both had been growing more and more anxious each morning on finding that the young man still gave no sign of life; and now that for a whole week rumours had been circulating that Paris was completely invested they were quite in despair at receiving no tidings, wondering in their anxiety what could have become of him after his departure from Rouen. His silence was now explained to them, however; the letter which Henriette brought home with her, written to Dr. Dalichamp from Paris, on September 18, the very day when the last trains left for Havre, had made a tremendous round, only reaching its destination by a miracle, after going astray a score of times.
'Ah! the dear fellow!' exclaimed Jean in delight. 'Make haste and read it to me.'
The wind was increasing in violence, and the window was rattling as though it were being battered with a ram. Henriette placed the lamp on the table near the bed, and, seated so close to Jean that her wavy hair brushed against his, she began to read Maurice's letter. It was very snug and pleasant in that quiet room whilst the tempest was raging out of doors.
In the letter, which was a long one, covering eight pages, Maurice began by explaining that immediately on his arrival in Paris, on September 16, he had been fortunate enough to get enrolled in a Line regiment. Then he reverted to the past, and in extremely feverish language detailed all that he had learnt of the events of that terrible month: Paris growing calmer after the woeful stupor of Weissenburg and Frœschweiler, then swiftly indulging in the hope of revenge, falling into fresh illusions, believing in Bazaine as a commander, in the levée en masse, the imaginary victories, the wholesale slaughtering of Prussian troops which even ministers themselves announced in the Chamber of Deputies. And, all at once, he explained how, on September 3, the thunderbolt of Sedan had fallen upon Paris: every hope shattered, the ignorant, confiding city overwhelmed by the crushing blow of destiny; the shouts of 'Dethronement! Dethronement!' bursting forth on the Boulevards that same evening; the short, lugubrious night sitting of the Corps Législatif at which Jules Favre had read out his proposal for the deposition which the people demanded; then, on the morrow, September 4, the Downfall of a world, the Second Empire carried away amid the smash-up of its vices and its faults; the entire population in the streets, a torrent of half a million of men filling the Place de la Concorde, in the broad sunshine, and flowing at last across the bridge to the gates of the Corps Législatif, which were protected merely by a handful of soldiers who raised the butts of their guns in the air. Then the crowd bursting the doors open and invading the Chamber, whence Jules Favre, Gambetta, and other deputies of the Left soon started to proclaim the Republic at the Hôtel-de-Ville, whilst a little door of the Louvre, facing the Place Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, was being set ajar to give egress to the Empress-Regent, who came forth clad in black, accompanied by a single female friend, both of them trembling, fleeing, cowering in a cab which jolted them away, afar from those Tuileries through which the crowd was now streaming. And on that same day Napoleon III. had quitted the inn at Bouillon, where he had spent his first night of exile, on the way to Wilhelmshohe.
With a thoughtful expression on his face Jean interrupted Henriette: 'So we now have a Republic, then. So much the better if it helps us to lick the Prussians.' However, he shook his head doubtfully, for during his peasant life he had always been told bad things of the Republic. Besides, it seemed to him that they all ought to agree together, and unite in presence of the enemy. Yet it was certainly necessary that there should be a new government of some kind, since the Empire was shown to be rotten, and nobody would tolerate it any longer.
Then Henriette read the end of the letter, which mentioned the approach of the German armies. On September 13, the day when a delegation of the Government of National Defence had established its quarters at Tours, they had advanced as near as Lagny, on the east of Paris. On the 14th and 15th they were almost at the city gates, at Créteil and Joinville-le-Pont. Yet on the 18th, on the morning when he had written, Maurice still refused to believe in the possibility of completely investing Paris, swayed as he once more was by superb confidence, regarding the projected siege as an insolent, hazardous attempt, which would break down before three weeks were over; relying, too, on the armies of succour which the provinces would undoubtedly send, without mentioning the army of Metz, which he imagined to be already on the march by way of Verdun and Rheims. Nevertheless, the links of the iron chain had met, and encompassed Paris; and now, separated from the whole world, the city had become but the great prison of two millions of living beings, whence came no sound, nothing but a death-like silence.
'Ah! my God!' murmured Henriette with anguish at her heart. 'How long will it all last, and shall we ever see him again?'
A squall was bending the trees afar off, and drawing groan after groan from the old timbers of the farmhouse. If the winter should prove a severe one, how the poor soldiers would suffer, starving and tireless, and fighting in the snow!
'All the same,' concluded Jean, 'it's a very nice letter, and it's pleasant to have heard from him! One must never despair.'
Then, day by day, the month of October went by, with the sky ever grey and mournful, and the wind merely abating, to come back before long with darker and darker flights of clouds. Jean's wound was cicatrising very, very slowly; the drainage-tube did not yet discharge the healthy pus which would have enabled the doctor to remove it, and the wounded man had become greatly enfeebled, but still obstinately refused to undergo any operation, for fear lest he should remain a cripple. And the long hours of resigned waiting which sudden fits of anxiety occasionally disturbed now seemed to lull that little room to sleep; that little, lonely room which the news of the world reached but at long intervals and even then distantly, vaguely, like the visions one tries to recall on awaking from a nightmare. The abominable war was continuing somewhere yonder, with its massacres and disasters, but the exact truth they never learned; they heard nothing but the loud, hollow clamour of slaughtered France. And now the wind was carrying the leaves away under the livid sky, and there were long deep spells of silence over the country-side, athwart which only sped the cawing of the crows, presaging a bitter winter.