The Downfall

by Émile Zola

“Oh, merciful Father, of what have we been guilty that we should be punished thus?”

Otto raised his arm in an oratorical attitude. He was on the point of speaking, with the stern, cold-blooded vehemence of the military bigot who has ever a quotation from Holy Writ at his tongue’s end, but glancing at the young woman, the look he encountered from her candid, gentle eyes checked him. Besides, his gesture had spoken for him; it told his hatred for the nation, his conviction that he was in France to mete out justice, delegated by the God of Armies, to chastise a perverse and stiff-necked generation. Paris was burning off there on the horizon in expiation of its centuries of dissolute life, of its heaped-up measure of crime and lust. Once again the German race were to be the saviors of the world, were to purge Europe of the remnant of Latin corruption. He let his arm fall to his side and simply said:

“It is the end of all. There is another quartier doomed, for see, a fresh fire has broken out there to the right. In that direction, that line of flame that creeps onward like a stream of lava—”

Neither spoke for a long time; an awed silence rested on them. The great waves of flame continued to ascend, sending up streamers and ribbons of vivid light high into the heavens. Beneath the sea of fire was every moment extending its boundaries, a tossing, stormy, burning ocean, whence now arose dense clouds of smoke that collected over the city in a huge pall of a somber coppery hue, which was wafted slowly athwart the blackness of the night, streaking the vault of heaven with its accursed rain of ashes and of soot.

Henriette started as if awaking from an evil dream, and, the thought of her brother flowing in again upon her mind, once more became a supplicant.

“Can you do nothing for me? won’t you assist me to get to Paris?”

With his former air of unconcern Otto again raised his eyes to the horizon, smiling vaguely.

“What would be the use? since to-morrow morning the city will be a pile of ruins!”

And that was all; she left the bridge, without even bidding him good-by, flying, she knew not whither, with her little satchel, while he remained yet a long time at his post of observation, a motionless figure, rigid and erect, lost in the darkness of the night, feasting his eyes on the spectacle of that Babylon in flames.

Almost the first person that Henriette encountered on emerging from the station was a stout lady who was chaffering with a hackman over his charge for driving her to the Rue Richelieu in Paris, and the young woman pleaded so touchingly, with tears in her eyes, that finally the lady consented to let her occupy a seat in the carriage. The driver, a little swarthy man, whipped up his horse and did not open his lips once during the ride, but the stout lady was extremely loquacious, telling how she had left the city the day but one before after tightly locking and bolting her shop, but had been so imprudent as to leave some valuable papers behind, hidden in a hole in the wall; hence her mind had been occupied by one engrossing thought for the two hours that the city had been burning, how she might return and snatch her property from the flames. The sleepy guards at the barrier allowed the carriage to pass without much difficulty, the worthy lady allaying their scruples with a fib, telling them she was bringing back her niece with her to Paris to assist in nursing her husband, who had been wounded by the Versaillese. It was not until they commenced to make their way along the paved streets that they encountered serious obstacles; they were obliged at every moment to turn out in order to avoid the barricades that were erected across the roadway, and when at last they reached the boulevard Poissonière the driver declared he would go no further. The two women were therefore forced to continue their way on foot, through the Rue du Sentier, the Rue des Jeûneurs, and all the circumscribing region of the Bourse. As they approached the fortifications the blazing sky had made their way as bright before them as if it had been broad day; now they were surprised by the deserted and tranquil condition of the streets, where the only sound that disturbed the stillness was a dull, distant roar. In the vicinity of the Bourse, however, they were alarmed by the sound of musketry; they slipped along with great caution, hugging the walls. On reaching the Rue Richelieu and finding her shop had not been disturbed, the stout lady was so overjoyed that she insisted on seeing her traveling companion safely housed; they struck through the Rue du Hazard, the Rue Saint-Anne, and finally reached the Rue des Orties. Some federates, whose battalion was still holding the Rue Saint-Anne, attempted to prevent them from passing. It was four o’clock and already quite light when Henriette, exhausted by the fatigue of her long day and the stress of her emotions, reached the old house in the Rue des Orties and found the door standing open. Climbing the dark, narrow staircase, she turned to the left and discovered behind a door a ladder that led upward toward the roof.