'Yes, he has delivered up Metz and the army. It's the blow of Sedan all over again, and this time it's the rest of our flesh and our blood that has gone!' Then taking up the newspaper again he read: 'One hundred and fifty thousand prisoners, one hundred and fifty-three eagles and colours, five hundred and forty-one field guns, seventy-six mitrailleuses, eight hundred fortress guns, three hundred thousand rifles, two thousand army service vans, the matériel of eighty-five batteries——'
And he continued giving particulars: Marshal Bazaine, shut up with his army in Metz, reduced to a powerless state, making no effort to break through the iron circle that encompassed him; his systematic intercourse with Prince Frederick Charles, his ambiguous, hesitating political combinations, his ambition to play a decisive part which he did not appear, however, to have well determined; then all the complicated negotiations, the despatch of equivocal, lying emissaries to Count von Bismarck, King William, and the Empress-Regent, who ultimately refused to treat with the enemy on the basis of a cession of territory; and then the inevitable catastrophe, destiny completing its work, famine breaking out in Metz, compulsory capitulation, commanders and soldiers reduced to accept the harsh terms of the victors. France no longer had an army![42]
'Curse it!' swore Jean in a hollow voice. He did not yet understand everything, but until that moment he had continued in the belief that Bazaine was the great captain, the one possible saviour of France. 'And what's to be done now?' he gasped. 'What is becoming of them in Paris?'
The doctor, as it happened, was just coming to the news from Paris, which was disastrous. He called attention to the fact that his newspaper bore the date of November 5. Metz had surrendered on October 27, and the news had only been known in Paris on the 30th. After the repulses at Chevilly, Bagneux, and La Malmaison, after the fight and loss of Le Bourget, these tidings from Metz had fallen like a thunderbolt on the despairing population, which was already irritated by the weakness and impotence of the Government of National Defence. And thus, on the morrow, October 31, quite an insurrection had broken out, an immense crowd assembling on the Place de l'Hôtel-de-Ville, invading the building, and detaining as prisoners the members of the Government whom the National Guard did not deliver till late at night and then only because they feared the triumph of the revolutionaries who demanded the Commune.[43] And to this account of the affair the Belgian newspaper appended some extremely insulting remarks concerning the great city of Paris, which civil war was rending when the enemy was at its gates. Was not this the final decomposition, the puddle of blood and mire into which this falling world must ultimately sink?
'It's quite true,' muttered Jean, who was extremely pale, 'they oughtn't to fight among themselves when the Prussians are there.'
Henriette, who had so far said nothing, not wishing to meddle in these political matters, was now, however, unable to restrain the cry of her heart. She was thinking of her brother! 'Good heavens! I hope that Maurice, who is so excitable, won't mix himself up in all those things.'
There was a pause, and then that ardent patriot, the doctor, resumed: 'No matter, other soldiers will spring up if there be none left. Metz has surrendered, Paris itself may surrender, but even that won't be the end of France. The chest's all right, as our peasants say, and we shall still survive.'
It could be seen, however, that he was forcing himself to be hopeful. He spoke of the new army now being formed on the Loire, whose first operations in the direction of Artenay had not proved very fortunate: however, it would soon become inured to warfare and march to the help of Paris. The doctor was particularly excited by the proclamations in which Gambetta, who had left Paris on October 7, and two days later had established himself at Tours, called all citizens under arms, in language at once so virile and so sensible that the entire country was surrendering itself to his dictatorship. And was it not also proposed to form another army in the North, and yet another one in the East—to make soldiers spring from the ground by the mere power of faith? It was the awakening of the provinces, the unconquerable determination to create and provide everything that was lacking, and to fight on to the last copper and the last drop of blood.
'Hum!' the doctor added, as he rose to go away, 'I myself have often condemned patients who were on their legs again a week afterwards.'