Luc was whittling a stick. Jean carried the empty
bottle. He left it at the wine merchant’s
in Bezons. Then they stopped on the bridge, as
they did every Sunday, and watched the water flowing
by.
Jean leaned over the railing, farther and farther,
as though he had seen something in the stream which
hypnotized him. Luc said to him:
“What’s the matter? Do you want a
drink?”
He had hardly said the last word when Jean’s
head carried away the rest of his body, and the little
blue and red soldier fell like a shot and disappeared
in the water.
Luc, paralyzed with horror, tried vainly to shout
for help. In the distance he saw something move;
then his friend’s head bobbed up out of the
water only to disappear again.
Farther down he again noticed a hand, just one hand,
which appeared and again went out of sight. That
was all.
The boatmen who had rushed to the scene found the
body that day.
Luc ran back to the barracks, crazed, and with eyes
and voice full of tears, he related the accident:
“He leaned—he—he was leaning
—so far over—that his head carried
him away—and—he—fell
—he fell——”
Emotion choked him so that he could say no more.
If he had only known.
For a month the hot sun has been parching the fields.
Nature is expanding beneath its rays; the fields are
green as far as the eye can see. The big azure
dome of the sky is unclouded. The farms of Normandy,
scattered over the plains and surrounded by a belt
of tall beeches, look, from a distance, like little
woods. On closer view, after lowering the worm-eaten
wooden bars, you imagine yourself in an immense garden,
for all the ancient apple-trees, as gnarled as the
peasants themselves, are in bloom. The sweet
scent of their blossoms mingles with the heavy smell
of the earth and the penetrating odor of the stables.
It is noon. The family is eating under the shade
of a pear tree planted in front of the door; father,
mother, the four children, and the help—two
women and three men are all there. All are silent.
The soup is eaten and then a dish of potatoes fried
with bacon is brought on.
From time to time one of the women gets up and takes
a pitcher down to the cellar to fetch more cider.
The man, a big fellow about forty years old, is watching
a grape vine, still bare, which is winding and twisting
like a snake along the side of the house.
At last he says: “Father’s vine is
budding early this year. Perhaps we may get something
from it.”
The woman then turns round and looks, without saying
a word.
This vine is planted on the spot where their father
had been shot.
It was during the war of 1870. The Prussians
were occupying the whole country. General Faidherbe,
with the Northern Division of the army, was opposing
them.
The Prussians had established their headquarters at
this farm. The old farmer to whom it belonged,
Father Pierre Milon, had received and quartered them
to the best of his ability.
