What, she, go to him? But it was impossible, it was preposterous! Delaherche had more to say of his hurricane of shot and shell. Gilberte seized her by the wrists to detain her, while Madame Delaherche used all her persuasive powers to convince her of the folly of the mad undertaking. In the same gentle, determined tone she repeated:
“It is useless; I will go to him.”
She would only wait to adjust upon her head the lace scarf that Gilberte had been wearing and which the latter insisted she should accept. In the hope that his offer might cause her to abandon her resolve Delaherche declared that he would go with her at least as far as the Balan gate, but just then he caught sight of the sentry, who, in all the turmoil and confusion of the time, had been pacing uninterruptedly up and down before the building that contained the treasure chests of the 7th corps, and suddenly he remembered, was alarmed, went to give a look and assure himself that the millions were there still. In the meantime Henriette had reached the portico and was about to pass out into the street.
“Wait for me, won’t you? Upon my word, you are as mad as your husband!”
Another ambulance had driven up, moreover, and they had to wait to let it pass in. It was smaller than the other, having but two wheels, and the two men whom it contained, both severely wounded, rested on stretchers placed upon the floor. The first one whom the attendants took out, using the most tender precaution, had one hand broken and his side torn by a splinter of shell; he was a mass of bleeding flesh. The second had his left leg shattered; and Bouroche, giving orders to extend the latter on one of the oil-cloth-covered mattresses, proceeded forthwith to operate on him, surrounded by the staring, pushing crowd of dressers and assistants. Madame Delaherche and Gilberte were seated near the grass-plot, employed in rolling bandages.
In the street outside Delaherche had caught up with Henriette.
“Come, my dear Madame Weiss, abandon this foolhardy undertaking. How can you expect to find Weiss in all that confusion? Most likely he is no longer there by this time; he is probably making his way home through the fields. I assure you that Bazeilles is inaccessible.”
But she did not even listen to him, only increasing her speed, and had now entered the Rue de Menil, her shortest way to the Balan gate. It was nearly nine o’clock, and Sedan no longer wore the forbidding, funereal aspect of the morning, when it awoke to grope and shudder amid the despair and gloom of its black fog. The shadows of the houses were sharply defined upon the pavement in the bright sunlight, the streets were filled with an excited, anxious throng, through which orderlies and staff officers were constantly pushing their way at a gallop. The chief centers of attraction were the straggling soldiers who, even at this early hour of the day, had begun to stream into the city, minus arms and equipments, some of them slightly wounded, others in an extreme condition of nervous excitation, shouting and gesticulating like lunatics. And yet the place would have had very much its every-day aspect, had it not been for the tight-closed shutters of the shops, the lifeless house-fronts, where not a blind was open. Then there was the cannonade, that never-ceasing cannonade, beneath which earth and rocks, walls and foundations, even to the very slates upon the roofs, shook and trembled.
What between the damage that his reputation as a man of bravery and politeness would inevitably suffer should he desert Henriette in her time of trouble, and his disinclination to again face the iron hail on the Bazeilles road, Delaherche was certainly in a very unpleasant predicament. Just as they reached the Balan gate a bevy of mounted officers, returning to the city, suddenly came riding up, and they were parted. There was a dense crowd of people around the gate, waiting for news. It was all in vain that he ran this way and that, looking for the young woman in the throng; she must have been beyond the walls by that time, speeding along the road, and pocketing his gallantry for use on some future occasion, he said to himself aloud:
“Very well, so much the worse for her; it was too idiotic.”