Ch. Morel, illustration from La Mere Sauvage, 1900
Fifteen years had passed since I was at Virelogne. I returned there inthe autumn to shoot with my friend Serval, who had at last rebuilt hischateau, which the Prussians had destroyed.I loved that district. It is one of those delightful spots which have asensuous charm for the eyes. You love it with a physical love. We, whomthe country enchants, keep tender memories of certain springs, certainwoods, certain pools, certain hills seen very often which have stirred uslike joyful events. Sometimes our thoughts turn back to a corner in aforest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard filled with flowers, seen buta single time on some bright day, yet remaining in our hearts like theimage of certain women met in the street on a spring morning in theirlight, gauzy dresses, leaving in soul and body an unsatisfied desirewhich is not to be forgotten, a feeling that you have just passed byhappiness.At Virelogne I loved the whole countryside, dotted with little woods andcrossed by brooks which sparkled in the sun and looked like veinscarrying blood to the earth. You fished in them for crawfish, trout andeels. Divine happiness! You could bathe in places and you often foundsnipe among the high grass which grew along the borders of these smallwater courses.I was stepping along light as a goat, watching my two dogs running aheadof me, Serval, a hundred metres to my right, was beating a field oflucerne. I turned round by the thicket which forms the boundary of thewood of Sandres and I saw a cottage in ruins.Suddenly I remembered it as I had seen it the last time, in 1869, neat,covered with vines, with chickens before the door. What is sadder than adead house, with its skeleton standing bare and sinister?I also recalled that inside its doors, after a very tiring day, the goodwoman had given me a glass of wine to drink and that Serval had told methe history of its people. The father, an old poacher, had been killedby the gendarmes. The son, whom I had once seen, was a tall, dry fellowwho also passed for a fierce slayer of game. People called them "LesSauvage."Was that a name or a nickname?I called to Serval. He came up with his long strides like a crane.I asked him:"What's become of those people?"This was his story:When war was declared the son Sauvage, who was then thirty-three yearsold, enlisted, leaving his mother alone in the house. People did notpity the old woman very much because she had money; they knew it.She remained entirely alone in that isolated dwelling, so far from thevillage, on the edge of the wood. She was not afraid, however, being ofthe same strain as the men folk--a hardy old woman, tall and thin, whoseldom laughed and with whom one never jested. The women of the fieldslaugh but little in any case, that is men's business. But theythemselves have sad and narrowed hearts, leading a melancholy, gloomylife. The peasants imbibe a little noisy merriment at the tavern, buttheir helpmates always have grave, stern countenances. The muscles oftheir faces have never learned the motions of laughter.Mother Sauvage continued her ordinary existence in her cottage, which wassoon covered by the snows. She came to the village once a week to getbread and a little meat. Then she returned to her house. As there wastalk of wolves, she went out with a gun upon her shoulder--her son's gun,rusty and with the butt worn by the rubbing of the hand--and she was astrange sight, the tall "Sauvage," a little bent, going with slow stridesover the snow, the muzzle of the piece extending beyond the blackheaddress, which confined her head and imprisoned her white hair, whichno one had ever seen.One day a Prussian force arrived. It was billeted upon the inhabitants,according to the property and resources of each. Four were allotted tothe old woman, who was known to be rich.They were four great fellows with fair complexion, blond beards and blueeyes, who had not grown thin in spite of the fatigue which they hadendured already and who also, though in a conquered country, had remainedkind and gentle. Alone with this aged woman, they showed themselves fullof consideration, sparing her, as much as they could, all expense andfatigue. They could be seen, all four of them, making their toilet atthe well in their shirt-sleeves in the gray dawn, splashing with greatswishes of water their pink-white northern skin, while La Mere Sauvagewent and came, preparing their soup. They would be seen cleaning thekitchen, rubbing the tiles, splitting wood, peeling potatoes, doing upall the housework like four good sons around their mother.But the old woman thought always of her own son, so tall and thin, withhis hooked nose and his brown eyes and his heavy mustache which made aroll of black hair upon his lip. She asked every day of each of thesoldiers who were installed beside her hearth: "Do you know where theFrench marching regiment, No. 23, was sent? My boy is in it."They invariably answered, "No, we don't know, don't know a thing at all."And, understanding her pain and her uneasiness--they who had mothers,too, there at home--they rendered her a thousand little services. Sheloved them well, moreover, her four enemies, since the peasantry have nopatriotic hatred; that belongs to the upper class alone. The humble,those who pay the most because they are poor and because every new burdencrushes them down; those who are killed in masses, who make the truecannon's prey because they are so many; those, in fine, who suffer mostcruelly the atrocious miseries of war because they are the feeblest andoffer least resistance--they hardly understand at all those bellicoseardors, that excitable sense of honor or those pretended politicalcombinations which in six months exhaust two nations, the conqueror withthe conquered.They said in the district, in speaking of the Germans of La Mere Sauvage:"There are four who have found a soft place."Now, one morning, when the old woman was alone in the house, sheobserved, far off on the plain, a man coming toward her dwelling.Soon she recognized him; it was the postman to distribute the letters.He gave her a folded paper and she drew out of her case the spectacleswhich she used for sewing. Then she read:MADAME SAUVAGE: This letter is to tell you sad news. Your boyVictor was killed yesterday by a shell which almost cut him in two.I was near by, as we stood next each other in the company, and hetold me about you and asked me to let you know on the same day ifanything happened to him.I took his watch, which was in his pocket, to bring it back to youwhen the war is done.CESAIRE RIVOT,Soldier of the 2d class, March. Reg. No. 23.The letter was dated three weeks back.She did not cry at all. She remained motionless, so overcome andstupefied that she did not even suffer as yet. She thought: "There'sVictor killed now." Then little by little the tears came to her eyes andthe sorrow filled her heart. Her thoughts came, one by one, dreadful,torturing. She would never kiss him again, her child, her big boy, neveragain! The gendarmes had killed the father, the Prussians had killed theson. He had been cut in two by a cannon-ball. She seemed to see thething, the horrible thing: the head falling, the eyes open, while hechewed the corner of his big mustache as he always did in moments ofanger.What had they done with his body afterward? If they had only let herhave her boy back as they had brought back her husband--with the bulletin the middle of the forehead!But she heard a noise of voices. It was the Prussians returning from thevillage. She hid her letter very quickly in her pocket, and she receivedthem quietly, with her ordinary face, having had time to wipe her eyes.They were laughing, all four, delighted, for they brought with them afine rabbit--stolen, doubtless--and they made signs to the old woman thatthere was to be something good to east.She set herself to work at once to prepare breakfast, but when it came tokilling the rabbit, her heart failed her. And yet it was not the first.One of the soldiers struck it down with a blow of his fist behind theears.The beast once dead, she skinned the red body, but the sight of the bloodwhich she was touching, and which covered her hands, and which she feltcooling and coagulating, made her tremble from head to foot, and she keptseeing her big boy cut in two, bloody, like this still palpitatinganimal.She sat down at table with the Prussians, but she could not eat, not evena mouthful. They devoured the rabbit without bothering themselves abouther. She looked at them sideways, without speaking, her face soimpassive that they perceived nothing.All of a sudden she said: "I don't even know your names, and here's awhole month that we've been together." They understood, not withoutdifficulty, what she wanted, and told their names.That was not sufficient; she had them written for her on a paper, withthe addresses of their families, and, resting her spectacles on her greatnose, she contemplated that strange handwriting, then folded the sheetand put it in her pocket, on top of the letter which told her of thedeath of her son.When the meal was ended she said to the men:"I am going to work for you."And she began to carry up hay into the loft where they slept.They were astonished at her taking all this trouble; she explained tothem that thus they would not be so cold; and they helped her. Theyheaped the stacks of hay as high as the straw roof, and in that mannerthey made a sort of great chamber with four walls of fodder, warm andperfumed, where they should sleep splendidly.At dinner one of them was worried to see that La Mere Sauvage still atenothing. She told him that she had pains in her stomach. Then shekindled a good fire to warm herself, and the four Germans ascended totheir lodging-place by the ladder which served them every night for thispurpose.As soon as they closed the trapdoor the old woman removed the ladder,then opened the outside door noiselessly and went back to look for morebundles of straw, with which she filled her kitchen. She went barefootin the snow, so softly that no sound was heard. From time to time shelistened to the sonorous and unequal snoring of the four soldiers whowere fast asleep.When she judged her preparations to be sufficient, she threw one of thebundles into the fireplace, and when it was alight she scattered it overall the others. Then she went outside again and looked.In a few seconds the whole interior of the cottage was illumined with abrilliant light and became a frightful brasier, a gigantic fiery furnace,whose glare streamed out of the narrow window and threw a glittering beamupon the snow.Then a great cry issued from the top of the house; it was a clamor of menshouting heartrending calls of anguish and of terror. Finally thetrapdoor having given way, a whirlwind of fire shot up into the loft,pierced the straw roof, rose to the sky like the immense flame of atorch, and all the cottage flared.Nothing more was heard therein but the crackling of the fire, thecracking of the walls, the falling of the rafters. Suddenly the rooffell in and the burning carcass of the dwelling hurled a great plume ofsparks into the air, amid a cloud of smoke.The country, all white, lit up by the fire, shone like a cloth of silvertinted with red.A bell, far off, began to toll.The old "Sauvage" stood before her ruined dwelling, armed with her gun,her son's gun, for fear one of those men might escape.When she saw that it was ended, she threw her weapon into the brasier.A loud report followed.People were coming, the peasants, the Prussians.They found the woman seated on the trunk of a tree, calm and satisfied.A German officer, but speaking French like a son of France, demanded:"Where are your soldiers?"She reached her bony arm toward the red heap of fire which was almost outand answered with a strong voice:"There!"They crowded round her. The Prussian asked:"How did it take fire?""It was I who set it on fire."They did not believe her, they thought that the sudden disaster had madeher crazy. While all pressed round and listened, she told the story frombeginning to end, from the arrival of the letter to the last shriek ofthe men who were burned with her house, and never omitted a detail.When she had finished, she drew two pieces of paper from her pocket, and,in order to distinguish them by the last gleams of the fire, she againadjusted her spectacles. Then she said, showing one:"That, that is the death of Victor." Showing the other, she added,indicating the red ruins with a bend of the head: "Here are their names,so that you can write home." She quietly held a sheet of paper out tothe officer, who held her by the shoulders, and she continued:"You must write how it happened, and you must say to their mothers thatit was I who did that, Victoire Simon, la Sauvage! Do not forget."The officer shouted some orders in German. They seized her, they threwher against the walls of her house, still hot. Then twelve men drewquickly up before her, at twenty paces. She did not move. She hadunderstood; she waited.An order rang out, followed instantly by a long report. A belated shotwent off by itself, after the others.The old woman did not fall. She sank as though they had cut off herlegs.The Prussian officer approached. She was almost cut in two, and in herwithered hand she held her letter bathed with blood.My friend Serval added:"It was by way of reprisal that the Germans destroyed the chateau of thedistrict, which belonged to me."I thought of the mothers of those four fine fellows burned in that houseand of the horrible heroism of that other mother shot against the wall.And I picked up a little stone, still blackened by the flames.
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