The line of infantry was lying close to the ground. The men had huddled themselves together near the loopholes through which they aimed their guns, trying to make themselves less visible. Many had placed their knapsacks over their heads or at their backs to defend themselves from the flying bits of shell. If they moved at all, it was only to worm their way further into the earth, trying to hollow it out with their stomachs. Many of them had changed position with mysterious rapidity, now lying stretched on their backs as though asleep. One had his uniform torn open across the abdomen, showing between the rents of the cloth, slabs of flesh, blue and red that protruded and swelled up with a bubbling expansion. Another had his legs shot away, and was looking around with surprised eyes and a black mouth rounded into an effort to howl, but from which no sound ever came.
Desnoyers had lost all notion of time. He could not tell whether he had been rooted to that spot for many hours or for a single moment.
The only thing that caused him anxiety was the persistent trembling of his legs which were refusing to sustain him. . . .
Something fell behind him. It was raining ruin. Turning his head, he saw his castle completely transformed. Half of the tower had just been carried off. The pieces of slate were scattered everywhere in tiny chips; the walls were crumbling; loose window frames were balancing on edge like fragments of stage scenery, and the old wood of the tower hood was beginning to burn like a torch.
The spectacle of this instantaneous change in his property impressed him more than the ravages of death, making him realize the Cyclopean power of the blind, avenging forces raging around him. The vital force that had been concentrated in his eyes, now spread to his feet . . . and he started to run without knowing whither, feeling the same necessity to hide himself as had those men enchained by discipline who were trying to flatten themselves into the earth in imitation of the reptile's pliant invisibility.
His instinct was pushing him toward the lodge, but half way up the avenue, he was stopped by another lot of astounding transformations.
An unseen hand had just snatched away half of the cottage roof. The entire side wall doubled over, forming a cascade of bricks and dust.
The interior rooms were now exposed to view like a theatrical setting--the kitchen where he had eaten, the upper floor with the room in which he descried his still unmade bed. The poor women! . . .
He turned around, running now toward the castle, trying to make the sub-cellar in which he had been fastened for the night; and when he finally found himself under those dusty cobwebs, he felt as though he were in the most luxurious salon, and he devoutly blessed the good workmanship of the castle builders.
The subterranean silence began gradually to bring back his sense of hearing. The cannonading of the Germans and the bursting of the French shells sounded from his retreat like a distant tempest.
There came into his mind the eulogies which he had been accustomed to lavish upon the cannon of '75 without knowing anything about it except by hearsay. Now he had witnessed its effects. "It shoots TOO well!" he muttered. In a short time it would finish destroying his castle--he was finding such perfection excessive.
But he soon repented of these selfish lamentations. An idea, tenacious as remorse, had fastened itself in his brain. It now seemed to him that all he was passing through was an expiation for the great mistake of his youth. He had evaded the service of his country, and now he was enveloped in all the horrors of war, with the humiliation of a passive and defenseless being, without any of the soldier's satisfaction of being able to return the blows. He was going to die--he was sure of that--but a shameful death, unknown and inglorious. The ruins of his mansion were going to become his sepulchre. . . . And the certainty of dying there in the darkness, like a rat that sees the openings of his hole being closed up, made this refuge intolerable.
Above him the tornado was still raging. A peal like thunder boomed above his head, and then came the crash of a landslide. Another projectile must have fallen upon the building. He heard shrieks of agony, yells and precipitous steps on the floor above him. Perhaps the shell, in its blind fury, had blown to pieces many of the dying in the salons.
Fearing to remain buried in his retreat, he bounded up the cellar stairs two steps at a time. As he scudded across the first floor, he saw the sky through the shattered roofs. Along the edges were hanging sections of wood, fragments of swinging tile and furniture stopped halfway in its flight. Crossing the hall, he had to clamber over much rubbish. He stumbled over broken and twisted iron, parts of beds rained from the upper rooms into the mountain of debris in which he saw convulsed limbs and heard anguished voices that he could not understand.
He leaped as he ran, feeling the same longing for light and free air as those who rush from the hold to the deck of a shipwreck. While sheltered in the darkness more time had elapsed than he had supposed. The sun was now very high. He saw in the garden more corpses in tragic and grotesque postures. The wounded were doubled over with pain or lying on the ground or propping themselves against the trees in painful silence. Some had opened their knapsacks and drawn out their sanitary kits and were trying to care for their cuts. The infantry was now firing incessantly. The number of riflemen had increased. New bands of soldiers were entering the park--some with a sergeant at their head, others followed by an officer carrying a revolver at his breast as though guiding his men with it. This must be the infantry expelled from their position near the river which had come to reinforce the second line of defense. The mitrailleuses were adding their tac-tac to the cracks of the fusileers.
