Part 52 (2/2)
”Monsieur,” gasped Lorraine, ”France is not conquered! That flag is the flag of dishonour!”
They stared at each other in silence, then the officer stepped to the flag-pole and picked up the ropes.
”Not that!--not that!” cried Lorraine, shuddering.
”It is the Emperor's orders.”
The officer drew the rope tight--the white flag crawled slowly up the staff, fluttered, and stopped.
Lorraine covered her eyes with her hands; the roar of the crowd below was in her ears.
”O G.o.d!--O G.o.d!” she whispered.
”Lorraine!” whispered Jack, both arms around her.
Her head fell forward on her breast.
Overhead the white flag caught the breeze again, and floated out over the ramparts of Sedan.
”By the Emperor's orders,” said the officer, coming close to Jack.
Then for the first time Jack saw that it was Georges Carriere who stood there, ghastly pale, his eyes fixed on Lorraine.
”She has fainted,” muttered Jack, lifting her. ”Georges, is it all over?”
”Yes,” said Georges, and he walked over to the flag-pole, and stood there looking up at the white badge of dishonour.
x.x.x
THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW
Daylight was fading in the room where Lorraine lay in a stupor so deep that at moments the Sister of Mercy and the young military surgeon could scarcely believe her alive there on the pillows.
Jack, his head on his arms, stood by the window, staring out vacantly at the streak of light in the west, against which, on the straight, gray ramparts, the white flag flapped black against the dying sun.
Under the window, in the muddy, black streets, the packed throngs swayed and staggered and trampled through the filth, amid a crush of camp-wagons, artillery, ambulances, and crowding squadrons of cavalry. Riotous line soldiers cried out ”Treason!” and hissed their generals or cursed their Emperor; the tall cuira.s.siers surged by in silence, sombre faces turned towards the west, where the white flag flew on the ramparts. Heavier, denser, more suffocating grew the crush; an ambulance broke down, a caisson smashed into a lamp-post, a cuira.s.sier's horse slipped in the greasy depths of the filth, pitching its steel-clad rider to the pavement. Through the Place d'Alsace-Lorraine, through the Avenue du College and the Place d'Armes, pa.s.sed the turbulent torrent of men and horses and cannon. The Grande Rue was choked from the church to the bronze statue in the Place Turenne; the Porte de Paris was piled with dead, the Porte de Balan tottered a ma.s.s of ruins.
The cannonade still shook the hills to the south in spite of the white flag on the citadel. There were white flags, too, on the ramparts, on the Port des Capucins, and at the Gate of Paris. An officer, followed by a lancer, who carried a white pennon on his lance-point, entered the street from the north. A dozen soldiers and officers hacked it off with their sabres, crying, ”No surrender! no surrender!” Sh.e.l.ls continued to fall into the packed streets, blowing horrible gaps in the ma.s.ses of struggling men. The sun set in a crimson blaze, reflecting on window and roof and the b.l.o.o.d.y waters of the river. When at last it sank behind the smoky hills, the blackness in the city was lighted by lurid flames from burning houses and the swift crimson glare of Prussian sh.e.l.ls, still plunging into the town. Through the crash of crumbling walls, the hiss and explosion of falling sh.e.l.ls, the awful clamour and din in the streets, the town clock struck solemnly six times. As if at a signal the firing died away; a desolate silence fell over the city--a silence full of rumours, of strange movements--a stillness pulsating with the death gasps of a nation.
Out on the heights of La Moncelle, of Daigny, and Givonne lanterns glimmered where the good Sisters of Mercy and the ambulance corps pa.s.sed among the dead and dying--the thirty-five thousand dead and dying! The plateau of Illy, where the cavalry had charged again and again, was twinkling with thousands of lanterns; on the heights of Frenois Prussian torches swung, signalling victory.
But the spectacle in the interior of the town--a town of nineteen thousand people, into which now were crushed seventy thousand frantic soldiers, was dreadful beyond description. Horror multiplied on horror. The two bridges and the streets were so jammed with horses and artillery trains that it seemed impossible for any human being to move another inch. In the glare of the flames from the houses on fire, in the middle of the smoke, horses, cannon, fourgons, charrettes, ambulances, piles of dead and dying, formed a sickening pell-mell. In this chaos starving soldiers, holding lighted lanterns, tore strips of flesh from dead horses lying in the mud, killed by the sh.e.l.ls. Arms, broken and foul with blood and mud--rifles, pistols, sabres, lances, casques, mitrailleuses--covered the pavements.
The gates of the town were closed; the water in the fortification moats reflected the red light from the flames. The glacis of the ramparts was covered by black ma.s.ses of soldiers, watching the placing of a cordon of German sentinels around the walls.
All public buildings, all the churches, were choked with wounded; their blood covered everything. On the steps of the churches poor wretches sat bandaging their torn limbs with strips of b.l.o.o.d.y muslin.
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