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Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
He went off to rejoin them, and I was able to look into the enclosure
through the attic window.
They had just broken open the door of the keeper’s house. Poor
mother Guillard! it was indeed lost trouble to have given me her
key. Soon after, shouts of joy told me that they had discovered the
cellar. They brought out a barrel of wine into the orchard, so as to
drink it more at their ease, and hoisted it on to a wide stone bench.
Having staved in the barrel, they began drinking out of their caps
and hands, shouting and jostling each other. The bent heads
disappeared in the cask, and came out smeared with dregs, while
others greedily took their place. The thin new wine, made of small,
sour black grapes, soon intoxicated all these beer-drinkers. Some of
them sang and danced round the barrel, while the others re-entered
the keeper’s house, and as they found nothing tempting there to
satisfy their craving for pillage, they threw the furniture out of the
window, and set fire to a walnut cupboard, whose dry and time-worn
shelves blazed up like a bundle of straw. At last they went off,
reeling through the driving rain. In front of the gateway there was a
quarrel. I saw the flash of bayonets, a man fall heavily into the mud
and rise up again covered with blood, his uniform all stained with
the yellow-coloured soil of the quarries. And to think that France is
at the mercy of these brutes! . . .
The next day the same party returned. I understood by that, they
had not mentioned their windfall, and I was a little reassured.
However, I am a complete prisoner. I dare not stir from the principal
room. Near at hand, in a little wood-shed, I have fastened up
Colaquet, whose galloping might have betrayed me. The poor
animal patiently bears his captivity, sleeps part of the day, and at
times gives himself a good shake, surprised at the loss of his
freedom . . . At dusk the Prussians depart, more intoxicated than on
the evening before.
To-day I have seen no one. But the cask is not yet empty, and I
expect them again.
 September 24th.
. . . This morning a furious cannonading is taking place. They are
fighting before Paris. The siege is begun. It has given me a feeling
of pain and anger impossible to describe. They are firing on Paris,
the wretches! It is the intellect of the whole world that they attack.
Oh, why am I not there with the others? . . .
Instantaneously all yesterday’s apprehensions have vanished. I
became ashamed of my mole-like existence. For the last week I
have drunk nothing but the water from the cistern, but now, I hardly
know wherefore, I went out on purpose to fill my jug at the cloister
well, and it seemed to do me good to run some kind of risk. I
looked into the Guillards’ house as I passed by, and my anger
increased at the sight of this humble home ruthlessly pillaged, the
furniture destroyed and burnt, the window-panes broken. I could
not help thinking of the fate of Paris if they enter it . . .
I had just closed my door when I heard footsteps in the enclosure.
It was one of those rascals who came the other day, the identical
one who had so long rummaged at my lock. He looked if there was
any wine left in the cask, and then, having filled his flask, began
drinking, sprawling at full length on the stone bench, his head
resting on his hands. He sang while drinking; his young fresh voice
rang through the cloister with a song about the month of May, in
which the words—Mein lieb, lieb Mai—were constantly repeated. He
was just opposite my attic window, within easy reach of my
revolver. I looked at him for a long
time, asking myself if I should kill
him. In the direction of Paris the
cannon still thundered, filling my
heart with terrible anguish . . . After
all, perhaps by killing this fellow I
should be saving some of my own
people now fighting on the ramparts
...
I do not know whether my unseen glance and the intense hatred I
was feeling towards him, did not at last disturb him and put him on
his guard; but all of a sudden he raised his head, a head covered
with thick bristling hair, the eyes of an albino, and red moustaches,
showing a grinning set of cruel-looking teeth. For one moment he
threw a suspicious glance around him, and having rebuckled his belt
and refilled his flask, he went off. As he passed in front of my
window, I had my finger on the trigger. Well, no; I could not do it.
To kill for the sake of killing, with such certainty, and so little
personal danger, was beyond me. It is not such an easy thing as
one fancies, to take a fellow-creature’s life in cold blood.
Once outside the precincts of the Hermitage, and having shaken off
his undefined sensation of fear, the rascal again took up his song,
and I heard him getting farther and farther away, giving forth to the
forest his “Mein lieb, lieb Mai . . .”
Sing away, sing away, my lad! you have had a narrow escape of
never seeing again your sweet month of May . . .
 October . . .
What day, what date can it be? I have completely lost count. My
brain is all confused. Yet it seems to me that it must be October.
The monotonous days get shorter and shorter, the wind colder, and
the foliage of the large trees around me becomes thinner at each
gust of wind. The sound of incessant cannonading in the direction
of Paris, makes a lugubrious accompaniment to my everyday life, a
deep, low bass, always mingling in my thoughts. I think the
Prussians must have their hands full over there, for my marauders
have not reappeared. I no longer even hear the long, slow rumbling
of the ammunition waggons, nor the rolling of drums, which used to
resound on the roads outside the forest. So I have again lighted the
fire in the large room, and I walk openly about in the orchard.
From day to day the difficulties of life increase. I have nothing left,
neither bread, wine, nor lamp-oil. A month ago, with the sunshine,
the house well aired, and the comfort of warmth, these privations
were bearable, but now they seem very hard. In the poultry-yard
there are only two hens left; always hiding under the rafters to
escape the continual driving rain. I make faggots with the branches
of the fruit-trees, which, brittle and no longer protected by their
leaves, snap off and fall to the ground. The apple-trees have golden
moss, the plum-trees long streaks of light-coloured gum under their
resinous bark, and they make large, bright fires, throwing a sunshine
into their warmth. I have also gathered the last apples, all reddened
by the breath of the first frost, and I have made a poor kind of cider,
which I drink instead of wine. With my bread I have been less
successful. I tried, with the unfortunate Goudeloup’s flour, to knead
some dough in the bottom of a cupboard drawer which I used as a
trough; and then, under the ashes on the bricks, I made as well as I
could, thick cakes, of which the outsides were burnt, and the insides
hardly done enough. They reminded me of those little round bits of
dough that, as a child, I held in the tongs, and made into rolls about
the size of a lozenge.
From time to time I get a windfall. For instance, the other day, as I
was rummaging in the keeper’s house, I found on a damp and
mouldy cupboard shelf a few bottles of walnut-spirit that had been
overlooked by the plunderers; and another time I found a large sack,
which I opened with a beating heart, thinking it contained potatoes.
I was quite startled on pulling out from it magpies’ beaks, vipers’
heads, dry and dust-coloured, squirrels’ tails, with their bushy red
fur, and field-mice’s tails, as delicate as silken twist. These are the
keeper’s perquisites, as they are given so much for the head and tail
of destructive animals. They therefore keep these trophies of the
chase very carefully, as they are paid for them by Government once
a month.
—It always buys tobacco, as good old Guillard used to say.
I must confess that at this moment I would willingly have given up
all these old bones in exchange for a few rolls of tobacco. I have
only enough to last me two or three days, and that is really the only
privation I dread. To me the forest is an inexhaustible larder. When
my poultry-yard is empty, I shall be able to snare some of those fine
cock-pheasants that come round the Hermitage to pick up the grains
of buckwheat hidden in the wet soil. But tobacco! tobacco! . . .
I read a little, and have even tried to paint.
It was a few mornings ago, in the light of a
beautiful red sun, shining through the air
thick with mist; under the shed was a heap
of apples, tempting me by their lovely
colouring of all shades, from the tender
green of young leaves to the ardent glow of
autumnal foliage. But I was not able to
work for long. In a few minutes the sky
became overcast. It was raining in
torrents. And large flocks of wild geese,
with outstretched necks and beating against
the wind, passed over the house,
announcing a hard winter and the approach
of snow by the white down shaken from
their wings.
 The same month . . .
To-day I made a long expedition to Champrosay. Reassured by the
stillness around me, I harnessed Colaquet in good time, and we
started. Failing the sight of a human face, I longed to gaze on roads
and houses.
I found the country as deserted and silent, and far more dreary than
before. The Prussians have only passed through, but they have left
their mark everywhere. It seemed the very picture of an Algerian
village after a swarm of locusts, a bare, devastated, devoured, and
riddled scene; the houses with doors and windows all wide open,
even to the little iron gates of the kennels and the latticed shutters
of the rabbit-hutches. I went into some of the houses . . . Our
peasants are rather like the Arabs. They are seen in the fields, in
the courtyards, on their thresholds, but they do not often admit a
Parisian inside their doors. Now I could
thoroughly search into these unknown
lives, these forsaken homes. Their
habits still clung to them, and could be
traced in the mantelpieces dark with
soot, the hanging ropes in the
courtyards where the washing is dried,
the now empty nails driven into the
walls, and on the walnut table, by the
marks idly cut with a knife, and the
notches made between each mouthful.
All those village households were alike—
I came upon one, however, that
possessed one luxury more than the
others—a parlour, or at least what was
intended for a parlour. In a small brick-
floored room behind the kitchen, a green
paper had been put up, coloured glass had been let into the window,
and a pair of gilt fire-dogs, a round tea-table, and a large arm-chair
covered with worn chintz, had been placed in it. The ambition of a
peasant’s lifetime could be felt there. Certainly that man had said to
himself, “When I shall be old, when I shall have slaved and laboured
hard, I will become a bourgeois. I will have a parlour like the mayor,
and a comfortable arm-chair to sit in.” Poor devil! They have made
a fine mess of his parlour!
I left Champrosay sad at heart. The desolation of those abandoned
houses had struck and chilled me like the cold damp falling from the
walls of a cellar. Instead of going straight hack to the Hermitage, I
went a long way round by the woods. I felt a craving for air and
Nature.
Unluckily all this side of the forest bears an aspect of wildness and
neglect, which is not very inspiriting. Old and now unused quarries
have left there piles of rocks, and a scattering of pebbles, which
make the soil both dry and barren. Not a single blade of grass is to
be seen on the paths. Wild stocks, brambles, and ivy alone spring
up from out of these large gaping holes, clinging by all their roots to
the uneven edges of the stones, and through the bare and
interwoven branches, the quarries appear still deeper. For a short
time we had been winding our way among the rocks. Suddenly
Colaquet stopped short, and his ears began to tremble with fear.
What is the matter with him? I lean forward and look . . . It is the
body of a Prussian soldier that has been pitched down head-
foremost into the quarry. I must confess it gave me a shudder. Had
it been on the highway or in the plain, this corpse would not have
horrified me so much. Where there are so many soldiers and so
many guns, the probability of death seems ever present; but here in
this hollow, in this out-of-the-way part of the wood, it bore an
appearance of murder and mystery . . . Looking more attentively, I
thought I recognised my robber of the other day, he who was
singing so lustily about the month of May. Has he been killed by a
peasant? But where could the peasant have come from? There is
nobody left at Champrosay, Minville, or the Meillottes. More
probably it is the result of some drunken quarrel between comrades,
like the one I saw from the windows of the Hermitage . . .
I went home very quickly; and all through the evening I was
haunted by the idea that my only guest, my only companion in the
whole of the dreary forest, was that dead body stretched out on the
red sand of the quarries . . .
 Unknown date . . .
It is raining—it is cold. The sky is dark. I go to and fro in the
Hermitage, tying up faggots and making bread, while the cannon
thunders incessantly, and by a strange phenomenon disturbs the
earth even more than the air. With my prison labour, my selfish and
silent life in the midst of such a terrible drama, I compare myself to
an ant, busily groping about on the surface of the soil, deaf to the
sounds of humanity around it, all too great for its insignificance, and
which surround without troubling it. From time to time, to divert my
thoughts, I take a journey to Champrosay without any fear of
meeting the Prussians, who have decidedly abandoned the Corbeil
road, and are making their descent on Paris by way of Melun and
Villeneuve-Saint-Georges. Once or twice, however, a horse’s gallop
obliged me to take refuge in some shed, and I saw a rapid and
hurried bearer of despatches riding across the country as if merely
to unite it to headquarters, to take possession of the road, and mark
it with the hoofs of the Prussian horses.
This deserted village, with its wide-open houses, interests and
charms me like a sort of Pompeii. I wander through and examine it.
I amuse myself by reconstructing the lives of these absent ones . . .
 Another day . . .
. . . Something strange is going on around me. I am not alone in
the forest. There is evidently some one hiding near here, and some
one who kills. To-day, in the washing-pond of Champrosay, I found
a second corpse. A Saxon was stretched out there, only his fair
head visible above the water, lying on the damp stone ledge.
Moreover, he was well hidden away, thrust into oblivion in this small
pond surrounded by brushwood, as securely as that other one over
there, in the quarry in the wood. I had by chance taken Colaquet to
drink there. The sight of that long, motionless body startled me.
Were it not for the pool of blood which stained the stones round his
head, and mingled with the reflection of the purple sunset in the
water, it might have been supposed that he was asleep, so quiet and
peaceful were his features. I have often noticed that expression on
the face of the dead. For the space of a brief moment there is
something about them more beautiful than life: a solemn peace, a
breathless slumber, a renewal of youth in the whole being, which
seems like a pause between the agitations of life and the surprises
of the unknown world opening before them.
While I was
contemplating the
unfortunate
creature, night
began to close
in. In the clear
and mellow
twilight a great
softness reigned
over everything.
The roads,
already lighter
than the sky,
stretched out
straight and
regular. The
forest spread out
in dark masses,
and beneath me a small vineyard path was faintly lighted up by a
ray of moonlight. Over all Nature, reposing after the day’s labour—
on the silent fields, the hushed river, the peaceful landscape gently
fading into night—there was the same calm, the same grand peace
that rested on the face of the dead soldier.
 Another day.
. . . Between Champrosay and the Meillottes, in the middle of a park
which skirts the Seine, there stands a mansion built in the style of
Louis XV. of the period of the Marquis d’Etiolles and Madame de
Pompadour. Two thick straight rows of trees slope down to the river,
showing, in summer-time, at the end of the arch of green foliage, a
mirror of blue water blended with a blue sky. All the darkness of the
old avenues seems to escape through these two vistas of light. At
the entrance near the gates, a wide moat surrounding the lawns, a
circle of moss-covered lime-trees and curbstones grazed by carriage-
wheels, all combine to show the antiquity of this quiet old place. A
fancy took me, and the other day I went in there.
By a winding path I reached the front of the steps. The doors were
open, the shutters broken. On the ground-floor, in the large
drawing-rooms, where the walls were all covered with white carved
panels, not a single piece of furniture was left. Nothing but straw,
and on the façade, between the stone carving of the balconies, were
fresh marks and scratches, showing how the furniture had been
thrown out through the windows. The billiard-room only was
untouched. The Prussian officers are like our own, they are very
fond of playing billiards. Only these gentlemen had amused
themselves by making a target of a large mirror, and with its
scratches, its chipped fragments, its small round holes looking black
in the light, the mirror seemed like a frozen lake cut and furrowed by
sharp skates. Inside, the wind rushed through the large windows
battered down by bayonets and butt-ends of rifles, scattering and
sweeping in the dead leaves on to the floors. Outside, it dashed
under the green-leafed aisle, rocking a forgotten boat on the pond,
full of broken twigs and golden-coloured willow-leaves.
I walked to the end of the avenues. There, at the end of the
terrace, is a summer-house of red bricks overlooking the river; it is
buried in the trees, and the Prussians have probably not seen it.
The door, however, is ajar. I found a little sitting-room inside, hung
with a flowery chintz, which seemed the continuation of the
Virginian jasmine climbing through the latticed shutters; a piano,
some scattered music, a book forgotten on a bamboo stool in front
of the view over the Seine, and in the mysterious light of the closed
shutters, the elegant and refined portrait of a woman looked out of a
golden frame. Wife or maiden, who can tell? Dark, tall, with an
ingenuous look, an enigmatic smile, and eyes the colour of thought
—those Parisian eyes that change with each passing emotion. It is
the first face I have seen for two months, and is so living, so proud,
so youthful in its seriousness! The impression this picture has
caused me is singular . . . I dreamt of the summer afternoons that
she had spent there, seeking the solitude and freshness of this
corner of the park. The book, the music, spoke of a refined nature;
and there lingered in the twilight of this little nook a perfume of the
past summer, of the vanished woman, and of a tender grace left only
in the smile of the portrait.

Who is she? Where is she? I have never seen her. I shall in all
probability never meet her. And yet, without knowing wherefore, I
feel less lonely as I gaze at her. I read the book which she was
reading, made happy by its being marked. And since then, not a
day passes without my thinking of her. It seems to me that if I had
this portrait here, the Hermitage would be less desolate, but to
complete the charm of the face, one ought also to have the climbing
jasmine of the summer-house, the rushes at the water’s edge, and
the little wild plants of
the moat, whose bitter
aroma comes back to
me as I write these
lines.
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