by Stendhal
On that day the army, which had just won the battle of Ligny, was marching straight for Brussels; it was the eve of the battle of Waterloo. Around noon, the downpour still continuing, Fabrizio heard the sound of cannon-fire; such happiness immediately erased all memory of the dreadful moments of despair which his recent unjust imprisonment had forced upon him. He rode late into the night, and since he was beginning to gain a little good sense, he sought lodgings in a farmhouse quite far from the road. The farmer wept and claimed that everything had been taken from him; Fabrizio gave him an écu, and he found some oats. “My horse isn’t much good,” Fabrizio decided, “but even so, he might find favor with some adjutant,” and he lay down in the stable beside the poor beast. An hour before daylight, Fabrizio was on the road again, and by lavishing caresses on his horse, he managed to persuade it to trot. By about five in the morning, he heard the cannonade: Waterloo had begun.
*The impassioned speaker translates into prose some lines by the famous poet Monti. [Stendhal’s note.]
CHAPTER THREE
Fabrizio soon encountered some canteen-women, and his extreme gratitude to the jailer’s wife in B——moved him to speak to them; he inquired as to the whereabouts of the Fourth Regiment of Hussars, to which he belonged.
“Better not be in such a hurry, soldier-boy,” one woman said, touched by Fabrizio’s pale face and fine eyes. “Your wrist isn’t strong enough yet for the saber-cuts being given today. Still, if you had a musket, you might fire a bullet as well as the next man.”
Such advice did not please Fabrizio, but however much he urged on his horse, he could not pass the canteen-woman’s cart. Now and then the sound of cannon-fire seemed to come closer and kept them from hearing each other, for Fabrizio was so beside himself with enthusiasm that he had begun talking once again. Each of the canteen-woman’s remarks doubled his pleasure by making him understand it. Except for his real name and his escape from prison, he ended by confiding everything to this obviously kind woman. She was greatly astonished and understood nothing the handsome young soldier was telling her.
“Now I see what it is!” she finally exclaimed in triumph. “You’re a civilian in love with the wife of some captain in the Fourth. Your mistress has given you that uniform, and you’re running after her. Sure as the Lord is God, you’ve never been a soldier in your life, but you’re a brave boy, and now that your regiment’s under fire, you want to be there and not let them think you’re some pantywaist!”
Fabrizio agreed with all she said: it was his only way of obtaining good advice. “I haven’t a clue how these French people behave,” he said to himself, “and unless someone helps me, I’ll get myself thrown into prison all over again, and my horse stolen into the bargain.”
“First of all, my boy,” said the canteen-woman, who was becoming an ever more intimate friend, “admit you’re not yet twenty-one; at the very most you might be seventeen.”
This was the truth, and Fabrizio confessed it freely.
“So you’re not even a conscript; it’s all because of Madame’s pretty face that you’re going to get your bones broken for you. Damn but she’s none too particular! If you still have some of those gold pieces she gave you, first thing you do is buy a different horse. Look how your nag pricks up her ears when the cannons snore a little too close; that’s a farm horse, and she’ll be the death of you as soon as you reach the line. See that white smoke above the hedge over there? That’s infantry fire, my boy! So get ready for a big scare when you hear the bullets whistling. You’d better get something into your stomach while there’s still time.”
Fabrizio followed this advice, and offering the canteen-woman a napoleon, asked her to accept what he owed her.
“It’s pitiful!” she exclaimed. “The poor boy doesn’t even know how to spend his money! Serve you right if I took your napoleon and then made Cocotte here trot right along. I’ll be damned if your nag could follow us. What would you do, silly fool, when you saw me clearing out? Learn this much, at least: when the Big One grumbles, never show your cash. Here,” she said, “take your eighteen francs fifty centimes, and your meal will cost you thirty sous. Now, we’ll soon be having some horses for sale. If there’s a small one, you offer ten francs, in any case never more than twenty, even if it’s Lancelot’s own!”
The meal over, the canteen-woman, who was still haranguing him, was interrupted by a woman crossing the fields and passing them on the road. “Hey there!” she shouted. “Margot! Your Sixth Light is over on the right.”
“I must leave you, my boy,” the canteen-woman remarked to our hero; “but I pity you, I really do; we’re friends, after all, Lord knows! You really are an ignoramus, aren’t you? And you’re going to get yourself mowed down as sure as the Lord is God! You better come with me to the Sixth Light.”
“I know I’m ignorant,” Fabrizio replied, “but I want to fight, and I’ve made up my mind to go where that white smoke is.”
“Look how your nag is pricking up her ears! Once she’s over there, weak as she is, she’ll take the bit between her teeth and start galloping and God knows where you’ll end up. Listen to me! As soon as you’re with the soldier-boys, pick up a musket and a cartridge-pouch, get yourself down beside the men, and do exactly what they do. But my God, I bet you don’t even know how to tear open a cartridge!”
Fabrizio, stung to the quick, nonetheless admitted to his new friend that she had guessed correctly.
“The poor boy’ll get himself killed right off. As God is my witness it won’t take long. You better come with me,” the canteen-woman continued imperatively.
“But I want to fight …”
“And fight you will. Come on, the Sixth Light is famous for fighting, and today there’ll be enough for everyone.”
“But will we find your regiment soon?”
“In a quarter of an hour at most.”
“With this good woman’s help,” Fabrizio told himself, “I won’t be taken for a spy, despite my ignorance, and I’ll be able to do some fighting.” At this moment the cannon-fire redoubled, each explosion coming immediately after the last. “It’s like a rosary,” Fabrizio thought.
“You can hear the infantry shots now,” said the canteen-woman, whipping her little horse, which seemed quite excited by the gunfire.
The canteen-woman turned right and followed a road through the fields; the mud was a foot deep here, and the little cart was about to get stuck; Fabrizio gave the wheel a push; his own horse fell twice; soon the road, though less muddy, was no more than a path through high grass. Fabrizio had not ridden five hundred paces when his mare stopped short: a body was lying across the path, frightening both horse and rider.
Fabrizio’s face, naturally pale, turned distinctly green; the canteen-woman, after glancing at the corpse, observed as if to herself: “Not from our division.” Then, glancing up at our hero, she burst out laughing. “Here, my boy!” she exclaimed. “Here’s something nice for you!”
Fabrizio was petrified. What struck him most was the dead man’s filthy feet, already stripped of his shoes; the corpse was left with nothing but a blood-stained pair of ragged trousers.
“Come here,” the canteen-woman ordered, “get off your horse. You’ve got to get used to this. Look!” she exclaimed. “He got it in the head.” A bullet, entering one side of the nose, had come out through the opposite temple and hideously disfigured the corpse; one eyes was still open. “So get off your horse, boy,” the canteen-woman said, “shake his hand for him, and see if he’ll shake yours.”
Without hesitation, though ready to expire with disgust, Fabrizio flung himself off his horse and took the corpse’s hand, shaking it hard; then he remained standing where he was, as if paralyzed; he felt he had no strength to remount. What horrified him most was that open eye.
“She’ll think I’m a coward,” he realized bitterly, but he felt it was quite impossible to move: he would have fallen down. This was a terrible moment; Fabrizio was about to be sick. The canteen-woman rea
lized this, jumped down from her cart and without a word offered him a shot of brandy, which he swallowed in one gulp; after that he could remount, and they continued along the path without speaking. The canteen-woman glanced at him from time to time out of the corner of her eye.
“You’ll fight tomorrow, my boy,” she said at last, “today you’re staying with me. You see now, you’ve still got something to learn about soldiering.”
“No, I want to fight right away,” exclaimed our hero grimly, which the canteen-woman took for a good sign.
The cannon-fire redoubled and seemed to come closer. The explosions now formed a kind of basso continuo, there was no interval separating the explosions, and against this basso continuo, which suggested the sound of a distant stream, they could now make out the regimental gunfire.
Just then the road sloped down into a grove of trees: the canteen-woman caught sight of three or four French soldiers running toward her as fast as they could; she quickly jumped down from her cart and managed to hide fifteen or twenty feet off the road, crouching in a hole where a huge tree had been uprooted. “Now,” Fabrizio decided, “now I’ll find out if I’m a coward!” He stood beside the little cart the canteen-woman had abandoned and drew his saber. The soldiers paid no attention to him and ran past him through the grove to the left of the path.
“Those are our men,” the canteen-woman said calmly, returning quite winded to her wagon. “If your horse could gallop, I’d send you to the edge of the woods to see what’s out there on the field.”
Fabrizio did not need to be told twice; he tore off a poplar branch, stripped its leaves, and began whipping his horse with all his might; the mare broke into a gallop for a moment, then returned to her customary trot. The canteen-woman had whipped her horse to a gallop as well.
“Now stop there, whoa!” she shouted to Fabrizio.
Soon both of them were out of the woods; at the edge of the field they heard a dreadful racket, cannon-fire and muskets rattling on all sides, to the right, to the left, and behind them. And since the grove they had just left covered a hill some eight or ten feet above the field, they saw a corner of the battle quite clearly; but there was no one to be seen in the field beyond the woods. This field was bordered, about a thousand paces from where they were, by a long row of bushy willows; above these appeared some white smoke circling upward into the sky.
“If only I knew where the regiment was!” said the canteen-woman, at a loss. “We can’t cross this big open space. And by the way, you,” she said to Fabrizio, “if you see an enemy soldier, run him through, don’t bother trying to cut him down …”
At this moment the canteen-woman caught sight of the four soldiers just mentioned, coming out of the woods onto the field to the left of the path. One of them was mounted.
“There’s what you want,” she said to Fabrizio. “Hey, you there!” she shouted to the man on the horse. “Come over here and have some brandy.”
The soldiers approached.
“Where’s the Sixth Light?” she shouted.
“Over there, five minutes from here, on the other side of that ditch, behind the willows. And Colonel Macon’s just been killed.”
“How much do you want for your horse—will you take five francs?”
“Five francs! You’re joking, Mother—this here’s an officer’s horse I can sell for five napoleons any time I want.”
“Give me one of your napoleons,” the canteen-woman murmured to Fabrizio. Then, approaching the mounted soldier: “Get off quick,” she said, “here’s your napoleon.”
The soldier dismounted, Fabrizio leaped gaily into the saddle, and the canteen-woman unfastened the little portmanteau strapped to his mare. “All right, you men, help me!” she scolded the other soldiers. “Is this the way you let a lady do your work?”
But no sooner had the newly purchased horse felt the weight of the portmanteau than it began to rear, and Fabrizio, though an excellent rider, needed all his strength to control it.
“A good sign!” the canteen-woman said. “This fellow’s not used to being tickled by a portmaneau!”
“A general’s horse!” exclaimed the soldier who had just sold it. “A horse worth ten napoleons if it’s worth a sou!”
“Here’s twenty francs,” Fabrizio said to him, beside himself with joy at feeling a spirited horse under him.
At this moment a cannonball sliced along the row of willows, affording Fabrizio the odd spectacle of all those twigs flying to either side as though sheared off by a scythe-stroke. “That’s cannon-fire coming toward us,” the soldier told him, taking his twenty francs.
It might have been two o’clock in the afternoon.
Fabrizio was still under the spell of this strange spectacle, when a group of generals, followed by some twenty hussars, galloped past a corner of the vast field, on the edge of which he was still standing; his horse whinnied, reared two or three times, then pulled violently at the bit. “So be it, go!” Fabrizio decided.
Left to himself, the horse galloped off to join the escort following the generals. Fabrizio counted four gold-braided hats. Fifteen minutes later, Fabrizio understood from a few words spoken by a hussar near him that one of these generals was the famous Marshal Ney. His happiness was complete; yet he could not tell which of the four was the Marshal. He would have given anything in the world to know, but remembered that he must not speak. The escort halted before crossing a broad ditch filled with rainwater from the night before; the ditch was lined with huge trees, forming the boundary of the field on the left, where Fabrizio had bought his horse. Almost all the hussars had dismounted; the side of the ditch was steep and slippery, and the water level was a good three or four feet below the brink. Fabrizio, wild with joy, was thinking more about Marshal Ney and glory than of his horse, which in its excitement leaped into the ditch; this raised the water level considerably. One of the generals was completely soaked by the sheet of water and swore aloud: “Damn the brute!”
Fabrizio was deeply wounded by this insult. “Can I demand an apology?” he wondered. Meanwhile, to prove he was not so clumsy, he tried to urge his horse up the opposite side of the ditch; but the slope was steep, and five or six feet high. He had to give it up, and rode upstream, the water up to his horse’s head, and finally reached a sort of ford where the cattle came to drink; up this shallow slope he easily reached the field on the other side of the ditch. He was the first man of the troop to appear there; he began trotting proudly along the edge: the hussars were still floundering at the bottom of the ditch, struggling for a foothold, for in many places the water was five feet deep. Two or three horses took fright and tried to swim, which created a dreadful confusion. One sergeant noticed the maneuver just made by this youngster who seemed so unsoldierly.
“Back on your horses! There’s a ford to the left!” he shouted, and gradually all the men clambered out of the ditch.
Upon reaching the other side, Fabrizio had found the generals there by themselves; the cannonade seemed twice as loud to him; he could scarcely hear the general he had just splashed shouting in his ear: “Where did you get that horse?”
Fabrizio was so distracted that he answered in Italian: “L’ho comprato poco fa.” (I bought it just now.)
“What did you say?” the general shouted.
But the racket now grew so loud that Fabrizio could not answer. We must confess that at this moment our hero was anything but a hero. Still, fear was only his second reaction; he was chiefly outraged by this noise that was hurting his ears. The escort broke into a gallop, crossing a broad stretch of ploughed field on the far side of the ditch, strewn with corpses.
“Redcoats! Redcoats!” the hussars shouted with joy.
At first Fabrizio failed to understand; then he noticed that indeed almost all the corpses were wearing red. One circumstance made him shudder with horror: many of these wretched redcoats were still alive; they were obviously calling for help, and no one was stopping to give it to them. Our hero, a profoundly humane characte
r, took all the pains in the world to keep his horse from planting its hooves on any redcoat. The escort halted; Fabrizio, who was not paying sufficient attention to his duty as a soldier, galloped on, glancing down at a pathetic wounded soldier.
“Halt right there, you fool” the sergeant shouted at him.
Fabrizio realized he was twenty paces to the right, out in front of the generals, and precisely at the spot on which they were focusing their spyglasses. Returning to line up with the other hussars who had remained a few paces behind, he saw the fattest of these generals speaking to his neighbor with an authoritative, almost scolding expression; he was swearing. Fabrizio could not contain his curiosity, and in spite of the advice not to speak, which his friend the jailer’s wife had given him, he worked out a very correct little French sentence and said to the man next to him: “Who is that general chewing out the one next to him?”
“Damn, that’s the Marshal!”
“Which Marshal?”
“Marshal Ney, you idiot! Damn, where’ve you been fighting till now?”
Fabrizio, though extremely sensitive, had no thought of taking offense; he stared, lost in childish admiration of this famous Prince of the Moskova, “bravest of the brave.”
Suddenly everyone galloped off. A few moments later Fabrizio saw, twenty paces ahead, a ploughed field that seemed to be strange in motion; the furrows were filled with water, and the wet ground that formed their crests was exploding into tiny black fragments flung three or four feet into the air. Fabrizio noticed this odd effect as he passed; then his mind returned to daydreams of the Marshal’s glory. He heard a sharp cry beside him: two hussars had fallen, riddled by bullets; and when he turned to look at them, they were already twenty paces behind the escort. What seemed horrible to him was a blood-covered horse struggling in the furrows and trying to follow the others: blood was flowing into the mire.
