Chapter V

It was three o’clock. The heavens were piled high with great black clouds, the tail-end of a storm that had been raging somewhere in the vicinity. Beneath the coppery sky and ragged scud the valley of Rocreuse, so bright and smiling in the sunlight, became a grim chasm, full of sinister shadows. The Prussian officer had done nothing with Dominique beyond placing him in confinement, giving no indication of his ultimate purpose in regard to him. Françoise, since noon, had been suffering unendurable agony; notwithstanding her father’s entreaties, she would not leave the courtyard. She was waiting for the French troops to appear, but the hours slipped by, night was approaching, and she suffered all the more since it appeared as if the time thus gained would have no effect on the final result.

About three o’clock, however, the Prussians began to make their preparations for departure. The officer had gone to Dominique’s room and remained closeted with him for some minutes, as he had done the day before. Françoise knew that the young man’s life was hanging in the balance; she clasped her hands and put up fervent prayers. Beside her sat Father Merlier, rigid and silent, declining, like the true peasant he was, to attempt any interference with accomplished facts.

“Oh! my God! my God!” Françoise exclaimed, “they are going to kill him!”

The miller drew her to him, and took her on his lap as if she had been a little child. At this juncture the officer came from the room, followed by two men conducting Dominique between them.

“Never, never!” the latter exclaimed. “I am ready to die.”

“You had better think the matter over,” the officer replied. “I shall have no trouble in finding some one else to render us the service which you refuse. I am generous with you; I offer you your life. It is simply a matter of guiding us across the forest to Montredon; there must be paths.”

Dominique made no answer.

“Then you persist in your obstinacy?”

“Shoot me, and let’s have done with it,” he replied.

Françoise, in the distance, entreated her lover with clasped hands; she was forgetful of all considerations save one--she would have had him commit a treason. But Father Merlier seized her hands, that the Prussians might not see the wild gestures of a woman whose mind was disordered by her distress.

“He is right,” he murmured, “it is best for him to die.”

The firing-party was in readiness. The officer still had hopes of bringing Dominique over, and was waiting to see him exhibit some signs of weakness. Deep silence prevailed. Heavy peals of thunder were heard in the distance, the fields and woods lay lifeless beneath the sweltering heat. And it was in the midst of this oppressive silence that suddenly the cry arose:

“The French! the French!”

It was a fact; they were coming. The line of red trousers could be seen advancing along the Sauval road, at the edge of the forest. In the mill the confusion was extreme; the Prussian soldiers ran to and fro, giving vent to guttural cries. Not a shot had been fired as yet.

“The French! the French!” cried Françoise, clapping her hands for joy. She was like a woman possessed. She had escaped from her father’s embrace and was laughing boisterously, her arms raised high in the air. They had come at last, then, and had come in time, since Dominique was still there, alive!

A crash of musketry that rang in her ears like a thunderclap caused her to suddenly turn her head. The officer had muttered, “We will finish this business first,” and with his own hands pushing Dominique up against the wall of a shed, had given the command to the squad to fire. When Françoise turned, Dominique was lying on the ground, pierced by a dozen bullets.

She did not shed a tear; she stood there like one suddenly rendered senseless. Her eyes were fixed and staring, and she went and seated herself beneath the shed, a few steps from the lifeless body. She looked at it wistfully; now and then she would make a movement with her hand in an aimless, childish way. The Prussians had seized Father Merlier as a hostage.

It was a pretty fight. The officer, perceiving that he could not retreat without being cut to pieces, rapidly made the best disposition possible of his men; it was as well to sell their lives dearly. The Prussians were now the defenders of the mill and the French were the attacking party. The musketry fire began with unparalleled fury; for half an hour there was no lull in the storm. Then a deep report was heard, and a ball carried away a main branch of the old elm. The French had artillery; a battery, in position just beyond the ditch where Dominique had concealed himself, commanded the main street of Rocreuse. The conflict could not last long after that.

Ah! the poor old mill! The cannon-balls raked it from wall to wall. Half the roof was carried away; two of the walls fell in. But it was on the side toward the Morelle that the damage was most lamentable. The ivy, torn from the tottering walls, hung in tatters, débris of every description floated away upon the bosom of the stream, and through a great breach Françoise’s chamber was visible, with its little bed, the snow-white curtains of which were carefully drawn. Two balls struck the old wheel in quick succession, and it gave one parting groan; the buckets were carried away down stream, the frame was crushed into a shapeless mass. It was the soul of the stout old mill parting from the body.

Then the French came forward to carry the place by storm. There was a mad hand-to-hand conflict with the bayonet. Under the dull sky the pretty valley became a huge slaughter-pen; the broad meadows looked on in horror, with their great isolated trees and their rows of poplars, dotting them with shade, while to right and left the forest was like the walls of a tilting-ground enclosing the combatants, and in Nature’s universal panic the gentle murmur of the springs and watercourses sounded like sobs and wails.

Françoise had not stirred from the shed where she remained hanging over Dominique’s body. Father Merlier had met his death from a stray bullet. Then the French captain, the Prussians being exterminated and the mill on fire, entered the courtyard at the head of his men. It was the first success that he had gained since the breaking out of the war, so, all inflamed with enthusiasm, drawing himself up to the full height of his lofty stature, he laughed pleasantly, as a handsome cavalier like him might laugh. Then, perceiving poor idiotic Françoise where she crouched between the corpses of her father and her intended, among the smoking ruins of the mill, he saluted her gallantly with his sword, and shouted:

“Victory! Victory!”

THREE WARS

War! In France, to men of my generation, men who have passed their fiftieth year, this terrible word awakens three special memories, the memory of the Crimean expedition, of the campaign in Italy, and of our disasters in 1870. What victories, what defeats, and what a lesson!

Assuredly, war is accursed. It is a horrible thing that nations should cut each other’s throats. According to our progressive humanitarian ideas, war must disappear on the day when nations come to exchange a kiss of peace. There are exalted minds which, beyond their native country, behold humanity, and prophesy universal concord. But how these theories fall to pieces on the day when the country is threatened! The philosophers themselves snatch a gun and shoot. All declarations of fraternity are over; and only a cry for extermination rises from the breast of the whole nation. For war is a dark necessity, like death. It may be that we must have something of a dungheap to keep civilisation in flower. It is necessary that death should affirm life; and war is like those cataclysms of the antediluvian world which prepared the world of man.

We have grown tender; we make moan over every existence that passes away. And yet, do we know how many existences, more or less, are needed to balance the life of the earth? We yield to the idea that an existence is sacred. Perhaps the fatalism of the ancients, which could behold the massacres of old without leaping to a Utopia of universal brotherhood, had a truer greatness. To keep ourselves manly, to accept the dark work wrought by death in that night wherein none of us can read, to tell ourselves that, after all, people die, and that there are merely hours in which they die more--this, when all is said, is the wise man’s attitude. Those who are angry with war should be angry with all human infirmities. The soft-hearted philosophers who have been loudest in their curses of war, have been obliged to perceive that war will be the weapon of progress until the day when, ideal civilisation being attained, all nations join in the festival of universal peace. But that ideal civilisation lies so remote in the blue future, that there will assuredly be fighting for centuries yet. It is the fashionable thing, just now, to consider war as an old remnant of barbarism, from which the Republic will one day set us free. To declaim against war is one way of setting up as a progressive person. But let a single cry of alarm arise upon the frontier, let a trumpet sound in the street, and we shall all be shouting for arms. War is in the blood of man.

Victor Hugo wrote that only kings desired war, that nations desired only to exchange marks of affection. Alas! that was but a poetic aspiration. The poet has been the high-priest of that dream-peace of which I spoke; he celebrated the _United States_ of Europe, he put forward the brotherhood of nations, and prophesied the new golden age. Nothing could be sweeter or larger. But to be brothers is a trifle; the first thing is to love one another, and the nations do not love one another at all. A falsehood is bad, merely in that it is a falsehood. Undoubtedly, a sovereign, when he sees himself in danger, may try the fortune of war against a neighbour, in the hope of consolidating his throne by victory. But after the first victory, or the first defeat, the nation makes the war its own, and fights for itself. If it were not fighting for itself, it would not go on fighting. And what shall we say of really national wars? Let us suppose that France and Germany some day again find themselves face to face. Republic, empire, or kingdom, the Government will count for nothing; it will be the whole nation which will rise. A great thrill will run from end to end of the land. The bugles will sound of themselves to call the people together. There has been war germinating in our midst, in spite of ourselves, these twenty years, and if ever the hour strikes, it will rise, an overflowing harvest, in every furrow.

Three times in my life, I repeat, have I felt the passage of war over France; and never shall I forget the particular sound made by her wings. First of all comes a far-off murmur, heralding the approach of a great wind. The murmur grows, the tumult bursts, every heart beats: a dizzy enthusiasm, a need of killing and conquering takes hold of the nation. Then, when the men are gone and the noise has sunk, an anxious silence reigns, and every ear is on the stretch for the first cry from the army. Will it be a cry of triumph or of defeat? It is a terrible moment. Contradictory news comes; every tiniest indication is seized, every word is pondered and discussed until the hour when the truth is known. And what an hour that is, of delirious joy or horrible despair!