What memories I have of those days of retreat and disaster. Days when not only Victory, but Hope, also, hid her face! Chance and destiny and logic were so many forces crushing us. Everything was giving way. We suffered in every kind of way, from hunger, cold, heat, exhaustion, moral anguish, lack of news. Virile busy days, when the plan of salvation germinated in the brain of our leaders, when the work of redemption was accomplished in silence in the heart of each man and the nation at large. Days, I should weep not to have spent where I ought, as I ought!... That afternoon, first of all, which we spent wandering in a forest. Surrounded? We were not far from it. The men were well aware of the sentries posted everywhere, and the patrol parties sent out to investigate in every direction.
One scene stands out particularly clearly in my memory. Those staff-officers we passed as I was going with my section to inspect a certain issue. The[Pg 308] general seated on the edge of a slope with his head between his hands, his subordinates standing motionless a few steps away, respecting his meditation. A little farther on were the orderlies, holding their horses by their halters. An hour later as we were returning, we found them at the same place, and in the same attitudes, the general with his head still sunk in his hands, his aides-de-camp silently fixing their eyes on him.
A petrified tableau. So all these people expected nothing better than to have to give up their swords. I thought we were done for, but forced myself to distract the attention of my companions.
We afterwards learnt that during the twenty-four hours there, we had, in high places, been looked upon as taken, and coldly struck off the lists. We owed our escape solely to a company sergeant-major, a native of that part of the country, who, having made careful inquiries about the limits of the hostile advance, went, that evening, to find the general in charge of the division, and offered himself as guide.
It was our last chance. We followed him. The march lasted for three hours. Only a small number of us discerned the tragic element floating about us. The men complained of the absence of halts. The strictest silence had been imposed upon us, we even had to hold the sheaths of our bayonets in our hands. At the most dangerous point some palavering in undertones, and obstreperous horse-play went on, a practical joke. The Bosches no doubt were tired out; their sentries dead tired! A few shots cracked on our flanks. We reached Cremilly. That apparently meant that we were saved.
For one day!
[Pg 309]
That was only the mild beginning of our trials. After a morning's rest we started again, with a charitable warning that we should have to keep at it until nightfall. We had to keep at it all night too, and the next day.... A forced march of thirty hours, the stiffest in the campaign! I may mention further that we had not slept or had a bite of food since two days before.... A miracle of human endurance.
As long as it was light I vaguely noticed the road we covered. The noise of the firing was growing weaker. We were falling back on the Meuse, as De Valpic had predicted.
Back there already! I lamented so much lost territory. This thought pained me. I looked with the aching heart with which one salutes abandoned patrimony, at these fields and valleys, these woods, which I examined with such a cold and detached gaze a few weeks ago. Lorraine was actually becoming dear to me! I began to realise that each part of the world has its own particular character.... The tender green of these pastures which not even the ardour of a torrid summer had been able to alter! The calm and haughty harmony of this billowing ground.... I was seized with affection for this pensive and laborious race by whose property the whole of the French lineage is enriched. The names recurred to me of authors born in these parts, who wove their noble blossoms for our literary crown, of painters who had grown up and erected their easels here, attracted by the enchantment of the mist. And all that belonged there of our history: Varennes, the flight of Louis XVI., the romantic episode on the threshold of a troubled and magnificent epopee!... Valmy, Sedan close at hand! We were, as I[Pg 310] have said, drawing near to the Meuse. Fifteen or twenty miles up-stream lay Domrémy and Vaucouleurs. Were these hamlets full of sacred memories destined to crumble within a few days beneath the Teuton howitzers?
And if we had to retreat still farther! My gaze took in the hills, and the expanse of pale sky. Fortin's brutal warning recurred to my mind. "What they needed first was what remained to us of Lorraine, Champagne, and the Franche-Comté...."
My heart contracted. I murmured, "No, no!"
Hours and hours passed by. The evening ............