The Downfall | Page 8

out; he detests everything French. He is a captain
in the 5th Prussian corps. I accompanied him to the railway station that
night, and he said to me in his sharp, peremptory way: 'If France
declares war on us, she will be soundly whipped!' I can hear his words
ringing in my ears yet."
Forthwith, Lieutenant Rochas, who had managed to contain himself
until then, not without some difficulty, stepped forward in a towering
rage. He was a tall, lean individual of about fifty, with a long,
weather-beaten, and wrinkled face; his inordinately long nose, curved
like the beak of a bird of prey, over a strong but well-shaped mouth,
concealed by a thick, bristling mustache that was beginning to be
touched with silver. And he shouted in a voice of thunder:
"See here, you, sir! what yarns are those that you are retailing to
dishearten my men?"
Jean did not interfere with his opinion, but he thought that the last
speaker was right, for he, too, while beginning to be conscious of the
protracted delay, and the general confusion in their affairs, had never
had the slightest doubt about that terrible thrashing they were certain to
give the Prussians. There could be no question about the matter, for
was not that the reason of their being there?
"But I am not trying to dishearten anyone, Lieutenant," Weiss answered
in astonishment. "Quite the reverse; I am desirous that others should
know what I know, because then they will be able to act with their eyes
open. Look here! that Germany of which we were speaking--"
And he went on in his clear, demonstrative way to explain the reason of
his fears: how Prussia had increased her resources since Sadowa; how
the national movement had placed her at the head of the other German
states, a mighty empire in process of formation and rejuvenation, with
the constant hope and desire for unity as the incentive to their
irresistible efforts; the system of compulsory military service, which
made them a nation of trained soldiers, provided with the most
effective arms of modern invention, with generals who were masters in
the art of strategy, proudly mindful still of the crushing defeat they had
administered to Austria; the intelligence, the moral force that resided in
that army, commanded as it was almost exclusively by young generals,
who in turn looked up to a commander-in-chief who seemed destined

to revolutionize the art of war, whose prudence and foresight were
unparalleled, whose correctness of judgment was a thing to wonder at.
And in contrast to that picture of Germany he pointed to France: the
Empire sinking into senile decrepitude, sanctioned by the plebiscite,
but rotten at its foundation, destroying liberty, and therein stifling every
idea of patriotism, ready to give up the ghost as soon as it should cease
to satisfy the unworthy appetites to which it had given birth; then there
was the army, brave, it was true, as was to be expected from men of
their race, and covered with Crimean and Italian laurels, but vitiated by
the system that permitted men to purchase substitutes for a money
consideration, abandoned to the antiquated methods of African routine,
too confident of victory to keep abreast with the more perfect science
of modern times; and, finally, the generals, men for the most part not
above mediocrity, consumed by petty rivalries, some of them of an
ignorance beyond all belief, and at their head the Emperor, an ailing,
vacillating man, deceiving himself and everyone with whom he had
dealings in that desperate venture on which they were embarking, into
which they were all rushing blindfold, with no preparation worthy of
the name, with the panic and confusion of a flock of sheep on its way to
the shambles.
Rochas stood listening, open-mouthed, and with staring eyes; his
terrible nose dilated visibly. Then suddenly his lantern jaws parted to
emit an obstreperous, Homeric peal of laughter.
"What are you giving us there, you? what do you mean by all that silly
lingo? Why, there is not the first word of sense in your whole
harangue--it is too idiotic to deserve an answer. Go and tell those things
to the recruits, but don't tell them to me; no! not to me, who have seen
twenty-seven years of service."
And he gave himself a thump on the breast with his doubled fist. He
was the son of a master mason who had come from Limousin to Paris,
where the son, not taking kindly to the paternal handicraft, had enlisted
at the age of eighteen. He had been a soldier of fortune and had carried
the knapsack, was corporal in Africa, sergeant in the Crimea, and after
Solferino had been made lieutenant, having devoted fifteen years of
laborious toil and heroic bravery