The Horrible
The shadows of a balmy night were slowly falling. The women remained inthe drawing-room of the villa. The men, seated, or astride of gardenchairs, were smoking outside the door of the house, around a table ladenwith cups and liqueur glasses.Their lighted cigars shone like eyes in the darkness, which was graduallybecoming more dense. They had been talking about a frightful accidentwhich had occurred the night before--two men and three women drowned inthe river before the eyes of the guests.General de G---- remarked:"Yes, these things are affecting, but they are not horrible."Horrible, that well-known word, means much more than terrible.A frightful accident like this affects, upsets, terrifies; it does nothorrify. In order that we should experience horror, something more isneeded than emotion, something more than the spectacle of a dreadfuldeath; there must be a shuddering sense of mystery, or a sensation ofabnormal terror, more than natural. A man who dies, even under the mosttragic circumstances, does not excite horror; a field of battle is nothorrible; blood is not horrible; the vilest crimes are rarely horrible."Here are two personal examples which have shown me what is the meaningof horror."It was during the war of 1870. We were retreating toward Pont-Audemer,after having passed through Rouen. The army, consisting of about twentythousand men, twenty thousand routed men, disbanded, demoralized,exhausted, were going to disband at Havre."The earth was covered with snow. The night was falling. They had noteaten anything since the day before. They were fleeing rapidly, thePrussians not being far off."All the Norman country, sombre, dotted with the shadows of the treessurrounding the farms, stretched out beneath a black, heavy, threateningsky."Nothing else could be heard in the wan twilight but the confused sound,undefined though rapid, of a marching throng, an endless tramping,mingled with the vague clink of tin bowls or swords. The men, bent,round-shouldered, dirty, in many cases even in rags, dragged themselvesalong, hurried through the snow, with a long, broken-backed stride."The skin of their hands froze to the butt ends of their muskets, for itwas freezing hard that night. I frequently saw a little soldier take offhis shoes in order to walk barefoot, as his shoes hurt his weary feet;and at every step he left a track of blood. Then, after some time, hewould sit down in a field for a few minutes' rest, and he never got upagain. Every man who sat down was a dead man."Should we have left behind us those poor, exhausted soldiers, who fondlycounted on being able to start afresh as soon as they had somewhatrefreshed their stiffened legs? But scarcely had they ceased to move,and to make their almost frozen blood circulate in their veins, than anunconquerable torpor congealed them, nailed them to the ground, closedtheir eyes, and paralyzed in one second this overworked human mechanism.And they gradually sank down, their foreheads on their knees, without,however, falling over, for their loins and their limbs became as hard andimmovable as wood, impossible to bend or to stand upright.'And the rest of us, more robust, kept straggling on, chilled to themarrow, advancing by a kind of inertia through the night, through thesnow, through that cold and deadly country, crushed by pain, by defeat,by despair, above all overcome by the abominable sensation ofabandonment, of the end, of death, of nothingness."I saw two gendarmes holding by the arm a curious-looking little man,old, beardless, of truly surprising aspect."They were looking for an officer, believing that they had caught a spy.The word 'spy' at once spread through the midst of the stragglers, andthey gathered in a group round the prisoner. A voice exclaimed: 'He mustbe shot!' And all these soldiers who were falling from utterprostration, only holding themselves on their feet by leaning on theirguns, felt all of a sudden that thrill of furious and bestial anger whichurges on a mob to massacre."I wanted to speak. I was at that time in command of a battalion; butthey no longer recognized the authority of their commanding officers;they would even have shot me."One of the gendarmes said: 'He has been following us for the three lastdays. He has been asking information from every one about theartillery.'I took it on myself to question this person."What are you doing? What do you want? Why are you accompanying thearmy?""He stammered out some words in some unintelligible dialect. He was,indeed, a strange being, with narrow shoulders, a sly look, and such anagitated air in my presence that I really no longer doubted that he was aspy. He seemed very aged and feeble. He kept looking at me from underhis eyes with a humble, stupid, crafty air."The men all round us exclaimed."'To the wall! To the wall!'"I said to the gendarmes:"'Will you be responsible for the prisoner?'"I had not ceased speaking when a terrible shove threw me on my back, andin a second I saw the man seized by the furious soldiers, thrown down,struck, dragged along the side of the road, and flung against a tree. Hefell in the snow, nearly dead already."And immediately they shot him. The soldiers fired at him, reloadedtheir guns, fired again with the desperate energy of brutes. They foughtwith each other to have a shot at him, filed off in front of the corpse,and kept on firing at him, as people at a funeral keep sprinkling holywater in front of a coffin."But suddenly a cry arose of 'The Prussians! the Prussians!'"And all along the horizon I heard the great noise of this panic-strickenarmy in full flight."A panic, the result of these shots fired at this vagabond, had filledhis very executioners with terror; and, without realizing that they werethemselves the originators of the scare, they fled and disappeared in thedarkness."I remained alone with the corpse, except for the two gendarmes whoseduty compelled them to stay with me."They lifted up the riddled mass of bruised and bleeding flesh."'He must be searched,' I said. And I handed them a box of taper matcheswhich I had in my pocket. One of the soldiers had another box. I wasstanding between the two."The gendarme who was examining the body announced:"'Clothed in a blue blouse, a white shirt, trousers, and a pair ofshoes.'"The first match went out; we lighted a second. The man continued, as heturned out his pockets:"'A horn-handled pocketknife, check handkerchief, a snuffbox, a bit ofpack thread, a piece of bread.'"The second match went out; we lighted a third. The gendarme, afterhaving felt the corpse for a long time, said:"'That is all.'"I said:"'Strip him. We shall perhaps find something next his skin.""And in order that the two soldiers might help each other in this task, Istood between them to hold the lighted match. By the rapid and speedilyextinguished flame of the match, I saw them take off the garments one byone, and expose to view that bleeding bundle of flesh, still warm, thoughlifeless."And suddenly one of them exclaimed:"'Good God, general, it is a woman!'"I cannot describe to you the strange and poignant sensation of pain thatmoved my heart. I could not believe it, and I knelt down in the snowbefore this shapeless pulp of flesh to see for myself: it was a woman."The two gendarmes, speechless and stunned, waited for me to give myopinion on the matter. But I did not know what to think, what theory toadopt."Then the brigadier slowly drawled out:"'Perhaps she came to look for a son of hers in the artillery, whom shehad not heard from.'"And the other chimed in:"'Perhaps, indeed, that is so.'"And I, who had seen some very terrible things in my time, began to cry.And I felt, in the presence of this corpse, on that icy cold night, inthe midst of that gloomy plain; at the sight of this mystery, at thesight of this murdered stranger, the meaning of that word 'horror.'"I had the same sensation last year, while interrogating one of thesurvivors of the Flatters Mission, an Algerian sharpshooter."You know the details of that atrocious drama. It is possible, however,that you are unacquainted with one of them."The colonel travelled through the desert into the Soudan, and passedthrough the immense territory of the Touaregs, who, in that great oceanof sand which stretches from the Atlantic to Egypt and from the Soudan toAlgeria, are a kind of pirates, resembling those who ravaged the seas informer days."The guides who accompanied the column belonged to the tribe of theChambaa, of Ouargla."Now, one day we encamped in the middle of the desert, and the Arabsdeclared that, as the spring was still some distance away, they would gowith all their camels to look for water."One man alone warned the colonel that he had been betrayed. Flattersdid not believe this, and accompanied the convoy with the engineers, thedoctors, and nearly all his officers."They were massacred round the spring, and all the camels were captured."The captain of the Arab Intelligence Department at Ouargla, who hadremained in the camp, took command of the survivors, spahis andsharpshooters, and they began to retreat, leaving behind them the baggageand provisions, for want of camels to carry them."Then they started on their journey through this solitude without shadeand boundless, beneath the devouring sun, which burned them from morningtill night."One tribe came to tender its submission and brought dates as a tribute.The dates were poisoned. Nearly all the Frenchmen died, and, among them,the last officer."There now only remained a few spahis with their quartermaster, Pobeguin,and some native sharpshooters of the Chambaa tribe. They had still twocamels left. They disappeared one night, along with two, Arabs."Then the survivors understood that they would be obliged to eat eachother, and as soon as they discovered the flight of the two men with thetwo camels, those who remained separated, and proceeded to march, one byone, through the soft sand, under the glare of a scorching sun, at adistance of more than a gunshot from each other."So they went on all day, and when they reached a spring each of themcame to drink at it in turn, as soon as each solitary marcher had movedforward the number of yards arranged upon. And thus they continuedmarching the whole day, raising everywhere they passed, in that level,burntup expanse, those little columns of dust which, from a distance,indicate those who are trudging through the desert."But one morning one of the travellers suddenly turned round andapproached the man behind him. And they all stopped to look."The man toward whom the famished soldier drew near did not flee, but layflat on the ground, and took aim at the one who was coming toward him.When he believed he was within gunshot, he fired. The other was not hit,and he continued then to advance, and levelling his gun, in turn, hekilled his comrade."Then from all directions the others rushed to seek their share. And hewho had killed the fallen man, cutting the corpse into pieces,distributed it."And they once more placed themselves at fixed distances, theseirreconcilable allies, preparing for the next murder which would bringthem together."For two days they lived on this human flesh which they divided betweenthem. Then, becoming famished again, he who had killed the first manbegan killing afresh. And again, like a butcher, he cut up the corpseand offered it to his comrades, keeping only his own portion of it."And so this retreat of cannibals continued."The last Frenchman, Pobeguin, was massacred at the side of a well, thevery night before the supplies arrived."Do you understand now what I mean by the horrible?"This was the story told us a few nights ago by General de G----.
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