Her brother, O God! Her fondly loved Maurice, adored prior to birth even, her second self, whom she had reared, saved, her sole affection since she had seen her poor Weiss fall riddled with bullets against that wall at Bazeilles! So War was taking her whole heart; she was to remain alone in the world, a widow, brotherless, with none to love her!
'Ah! good Lord!' cried Jean sobbing, 'it's my fault. My dear little fellow, for whom I would have laid down my life, and whom I killed like the brute I am! What will become of us? Can you ever forgive me?'
And at that moment their eyes met and they were overwhelmed by that which they now, at last, could clearly read in them. All the past arose: the secluded little room at Remilly where they had spent such sad and yet such pleasant days. He bethought himself of that dream of his, that dream which had stolen upon him quite unconsciously, which even later had been barely outlined—life together over yonder, marriage, a little house, a field to till, which would suffice for the needs of a couple of modest, simple tastes. And now the dream had become an ardent desire, a penetrating conviction that with such a woman as she was, so loving and so industrious, life would have proved an earthly Paradise. And she who had had no inkling of this dream in the chaste, unconscious bestowal of her heart, could now clearly see and understand everything. That remote marriage, she herself had unknowingly desired it. The germinating seed had covertly sprouted, and now it was love that she felt for that man by the side of whom she had at first merely felt comforted. And their eyes told it to them, and they now loved openly, at the moment when they must part for ever! That frightful sacrifice had yet to be accomplished, the last rending, their happiness—still possible the day before—now crumbling to ashes like everything else, swept away by the stream of blood which had just carried off their brother.
With a long and painful effort of the knees Jean raised himself to his feet again. 'Farewell!' Henriette remained motionless on the tiled floor. 'Farewell!'
However, Jean had drawn near to Maurice, that he might look upon him for the last time. He gazed upon his lofty forehead, which seemed loftier still in death, his long thin face and his sightless eyes, once rather wild but whence all the madness had now departed. Jean longed to embrace his dear little fellow, as he had so often called him, but dared not. He beheld himself covered with his brother's blood, and recoiled before the horror of Destiny. Ah! what a death amid the Downfall of a world! On that last day, when nothing but a few shreds was left of the expiring Commune, this additional victim had been required! Thirsting for Justice, the poor fellow had departed amid the supreme convulsion of his great black dream: that grandiose, monstrous conception of the destruction of the old social system, of Paris burnt, of the soil turned up and purified so that there might spring from it the idyll of another Golden Age!
With his heart full of anguish Jean turned to the window and looked out on Paris. The beautiful day was serenely drawing to its close, and the sun, now on a level with the horizon, was illumining the city with a bright red glow. It looked not unlike a sun of blood poised upon a boundless sea. The panes of thousands of windows were scintillating as though on fire, inflamed by invisible bellows; the roofs glowed like beds of live coals; yellow walls, lofty rust-coloured monuments flared and sparkled in the evening air like brisk faggot fires. And was not this the final pyrotechnical sheaf, the gigantic purple 'bouquet'—all Paris burning like a giant hurdle, like some ancient forest of dead, dry trees, fleeting away into the heavens in soaring flames and sparks. The fires were burning still, volumes of ruddy smoke continued to rise, and a loud confused clamour could be heard, perhaps the last groans of the men shot down at the Lobau barracks, or perhaps the gay chatter of the women and the laughter of the children dining in the open air outside the wine-shops, after their pleasant promenade. From the pillaged houses and public buildings, from the torn-up streets, from the depths of all the havoc and suffering, the buzz and stir of life still sounded amidst the blaze of that regal sunset, whilst Paris was dwindling into embers.
And Jean then experienced an extraordinary sensation. It seemed to him even in the slowly declining light as though another aurora were already rising above the flaming city. And yet this was apparently the end of all, for Destiny had proved implacable, accumulating disaster upon disaster, such as no nation had ever before experienced: the continual defeats; the lost provinces; the milliards to be paid; the most frightful of civil wars drowned in a flood of gore; street after street in ruins and littered with corpses; no money left, no honour left, a whole world to be built afresh. And in it all he, for his own part, was losing his lacerated heart—no Maurice left, no Henriette, all the happy life that might have been swept away in the storm. And yet beyond the furnace, roaring still, in the depths of the great tranquil heavens so supremely limpid, perennial hope was rising once more. 'Twas the certainty of rejuvenescence, the rejuvenescence of eternal nature and of eternal humanity, the renewal promised unto those who hope and toil; the tree which throws out a new and powerful stem when the rotten branch, whose poisonous sap was blighting the leaves, has been lopped away.
'Farewell!' Jean repeated in a sob.
Henriette did not raise her head; her face was hidden by her joined hands: 'Farewell!'
The ravaged field was lying waste, the burnt house was level with the ground; and Jean, the most humble and the most woeful, went off marching towards the future—to the great and laborious task of building up a new France.