[CHAPTER VI]
THE CONQUEROR'S SWAY—GIDDY GILBERTE
At the Delaherches' house in the Rue Maqua at Sedan, life had started on a new lease after the terrible shocks of the battle and the capitulation, and for nearly four months now the days had been slowly slipping by under the gloomy, oppressive sway of the conquerors.
There was, however, one corner of the vast factory buildings which remained closed as though untenanted; it was the room which Colonel de Vineuil still occupied, a room overlooking the street at one end of the principal apartments. Whilst other windows were often thrown open and gave egress to sounds of coming and going, to all the buzz and stir of life, those of this particular chamber remained condemned, dead as it were, with their shutters invariably closed. The colonel had complained of his eyes paining him, especially when exposed to the daylight. No one knew whether he told the truth or not, but to humour him a lamp was kept burning, day and night, at his bedside. Although Major Bouroche had only found a crack in his ankle, the wound refused to heal, and all sorts of complications having ensued he had been compelled to remain in bed during two long months. He was now able to get up; but his mental prostration remained very great, and he had been attacked by a mysterious ailment which proved so tenacious and invading that he spent his days lying upon a couch in front of a large wood fire. He was wasting away, becoming a mere shadow; yet the doctor who attended him and whom his condition greatly surprised could find no lesion to account for this slow death. Such indeed it was; like the flame of a lamp whose oil is almost exhausted, the colonel was fading away.
Madame Delaherche senior had shut herself up with him on the morrow of the capitulation. Doubtless they had briefly and once for all come to an understanding as to their desire to cloister themselves together in that room, so long as any Prussians should be billeted in the house. Several Germans had spent a few nights there, and a captain, Herr von Gartlauben, was quartered there permanently. However, neither the colonel nor the old lady had ever again spoken of these matters. She rose every morning at daybreak, despite her eight-and-seventy years, and came and seated herself in an armchair in front of her old friend, on the other side of the fireplace; and there, by the steady lamp-light, she would sit knitting stockings for the children of the poor, whilst the colonel, with his eyes fixed on the embers, remained unoccupied, in a state of increasing stupor, seemingly living and dying from one and the same thought. They certainly did not exchange twenty words a day; he silenced her with a wave of the hand whenever she involuntarily alluded to any news from the outside world—news that she picked up when she occasionally went about the house. And thus no further tidings penetrated to that chamber, no news of the siege of Paris, of the defeats on the Loire, the daily renewed afflictions of the invasion. And yet, although the colonel in his voluntary entombment refused to look upon the light of day, although he closed his eyes and stopped his ears, it was all of no avail; some rumour of the frightful disasters, the deadly mourning, must have stolen through chink and crevice into the room, have been wafted to him by the very air he breathed; for hour by hour he was as though poisoned afresh and drew nearer and nearer unto death.
Meantime, in the broad daylight, Delaherche, with his need of life was bestirring himself and endeavouring to reopen his factory. There was so much confusion, however, with regard both to workmen and customers that he had as yet only been able to set a few looms going; and by way of employing his gloomy, enforced leisure it had occurred to him to make a complete inventory of his belongings and to study certain improvements which he had long thought of introducing into his business. To assist him in this work he had at his elbow a young fellow, a customer's son, who had stranded in his house after the battle. Edmond Lagarde, who had grown up at Passy in his father's little drapery shop, and who at three-and-twenty years of age—though he looked hardly more than eighteen—was a sergeant in the 5th of the Line, had fought so valiantly and stubbornly on the day of the battle that he had only come into the town by the Ménil gate at about five o'clock, and then with his left arm broken by one of the last bullets that the enemy had fired. Since the other wounded had been removed from the sheds, Delaherche had good-naturedly kept the young fellow with him, so that Edmond formed one of the family, eating, sleeping, and living in the house, and, now that his wound was healed, acting as secretary to the manufacturer, pending the time when he might get back to Paris. Thanks to Delaherche's protection and his own formal promise that he would not abscond, the Prussian authorities did not interfere with him. He was fair, with blue eyes, as pretty as a girl, and so shy and timid that he was for ever blushing. His mother had brought him up, stinting herself and expending the profits of their little business in paying for his terms at college. He was extremely fond of Paris, which he spoke of with passionate regretfulness, when talking with Gilberte, who had nursed this wounded Chérubin[45] like a comrade.
Finally, the house had yet another new inmate, Herr von Gartlauben, a captain in the Landwehr, whose regiment was now quartered at Sedan in place of the regular troops. Despite his modest rank, the captain was a personage of importance, for he was nephew to the Governor-General of Champagne whom the Germans had set up at Rheims, and who exercised unlimited power over the entire region. Herr von Gartlauben also prided himself upon being fond of Paris, upon having lived there, and upon being acquainted both with its courtesies and its refinements; and indeed he affected the irreproachable bearing of a well-bred man, a polish under which he strove to conceal his natural coarseness. Tall and fat, he was always tightly buttoned up in his uniform, and lied outrageously about his age, being quite in despair that he should have already reached five-and-forty. Had he been more intelligent he might have proved a terrible customer, but his vanity kept him in a state of imperturbable self-satisfaction, and he was quite incapable of imagining that anybody could trifle with him.
Later on, he proved a veritable saviour for Delaherche. But how doleful were the earlier days following upon the capitulation! Overrun, peopled with German soldiers, Sedan trembled with the fear of pillage. Then, however, the victorious troops streamed back to the valley of the Seine again, only a garrison being left behind, and the town sank into the deadly quiet of a necropolis; the houses invariably closed, the shops shut, the streets deserted as soon as the twilight fell, and from that moment re-echoing only the heavy footsteps and hoarse calls of the patrols. Not a newspaper, not a letter arrived. In the ignorance and anguish that prevailed respecting the fresh disasters which were felt to be at hand, the town was like a walled-up dungeon, suddenly shut off from the rest of France. To render their misery complete the townsfolk were threatened with a dearth of provisions; and one morning indeed they awoke with no bread and no meat. It was as though a swarm of locusts had passed that way, the whole district having been stripped bare by the hundreds of thousands of men who for a week past had been pouring through it like a torrent. Having only two days' provisions left, the town had to apply to Belgium for sustenance; and now everything came from the neighbouring country, across the open frontier whence the customs' service had disappeared, carried off in the catastrophe like everything else. Then, too, there were endless vexatious measures, a struggle which began afresh every morning between the Prussian Commandature established at the Sub-Prefecture and the Municipal Council sitting en permanence at the Town Hall. The resistance which the members of the latter offered was heroic, but it was in vain that they argued and contested the ground inch by inch; the inhabitants were fast succumbing beneath the enemy's ever-growing demands, the fancifulness and excessive frequency of the requisitions.
During the earlier days Delaherche suffered a good deal from the soldiers and officers who were billeted on him. Men from all the various German states defiled through his house smoking their big pipes. Not a day passed but two or three thousand soldiers, infantry, cavalry, artillery, fell unexpectedly upon the town, and although they were by right only entitled to shelter and firing, it was often necessary to run about and procure provisions for them. They left the rooms which they occupied in a repulsively filthy state. The officers often came home drunk, and proved more insufferable even than their men. Discipline, however, so restrained the foreigners, that acts of violence and pillage were of rare occurrence. In all Sedan only two women were reported to have been violated. It was not till later on, when Paris supplied proof of its determination to resist, that the Germans made their domination severely felt, exasperated as they were at finding the struggle prolonged, anxious too with regard to the demeanour of the provinces, fearing a rising en masse of the population, and a general, wolfish warfare such as the Francs-tireurs had already declared against them.
Delaherche had just been lodging a major of cuirassiers, who slept in his boots and went away leaving his room one mass of filth, when Captain von Gartlauben presented himself at the factory one evening in the second fortnight of September, when the rain was pouring down like a deluge. The first hour was somewhat unpleasant. The captain began bawling, demanded the best room in the house, and dragged his sabre with a clatter up the stairs. Having caught sight of Gilberte, however, he became decorous in his behaviour, shut himself up in his room, and in passing in and out would depart from his rigid demeanour to bow to her politely. He was treated with great deference, for it was known that a word from him to the colonel commanding Sedan would suffice to secure the abatement of a requisition or the release of a prisoner. His uncle, the Governor-General at Rheims, had recently launched a ferocious proclamation, decreeing not only the state of siege, but also the penalty of death for every person shown to have assisted the 'enemy,' whether as a spy, or by leading the German troops astray when appointed to guide them, or by destroying the bridges and cannons, or by damaging the telegraph wires and the railway lines. The 'enemy' of course was the French; and the hearts of the inhabitants bounded with indignation when, on the gate of the Commandature, they read the large white placard, which converted their anguish and their hopes into crimes. It was already terribly hard to be informed of the fresh German victories by the cheers of the garrison. In this wise every day almost brought its affliction; the soldiers would light large fires, sing, and get drunk throughout the night, whilst the inhabitants, compelled to be within doors by nine o'clock, listened to the revelry from the depths of their dark houses, distracted by the uncertainty in which they were plunged, but divining some fresh misfortune. It was on one of these occasions, about the middle of October, that Herr von Gartlauben for the first time gave proof of some delicacy of feeling. Since the morning Sedan had been awakening to hope again, for there were rumours abroad of a great victory achieved by the army of the Loire on its way to relieve Paris. Ofttime already, however, the best of news had become transformed into tidings of disaster, and in the same way it was learnt that evening that the Bavarian army had secured possession of Orleans. Some soldiers in one of the houses of the Rue Maqua, just in front of the factory, thereupon began brawling so loudly that the captain, seeing Gilberte greatly affected, went and silenced the men, being himself of opinion that such an uproar was uncalled for.