Ball of Fat 羊脂球 Chapter 1

For many days now the fag-end of the army had been straggling through the town. They were not troops, but a disbanded horde¹. The beards of the men were long and filthy², their uniforms in tatters, and they advanced at an easy pace without flag or regiment³. All seemed worn-out and back-broken, incapable⁴ of a thought or a resolution, marching by habit solely⁵,  and falling from fatigue⁶ as soon as they stopped. In short, they were a mobilized, pacific people, bending under the weight of the gun; some little squads⁷ on the alert, easy to take alarm and prompt in enthusiasm, ready to attack or to flee;and in the midst of them, some red breeches, the remains⁸ of a division broken up in a great battle; some somber⁹ artillery¹⁰ men in line with these varied¹¹ kinds of foot soldiers; and, sometimes the brilliant helmet of a dragoon on foot who followed with difficulty the shortest march of the lines. 

 

Some legions of free-shooters, under the heroic names of "Avengers of the Defeat," "Citizens of the Tomb," "Partakers of Death," passed in their turn with the air of bandits. 

 

Their leaders were former cloth or grain merchants, exmerchants in tallow or soap, warriors¹² of circumstance, elected officers on account of their escutcheons and the length of their mustaches, covered with arms and with braid, speaking in constrained¹³ voices, discussing plans of campaign, and pretending to carry agonized¹⁴ France alone on their swaggering shoulders, but sometimes fearing their own soldiers, prison-birds, that were often brave at first and later proved to be plunderers and debauchees. 

 

It was said that the Prussians were going to enter Rouen. 

 

The National Guard who for two months had been carefully reconnoitering in the neighboring woods, shooting sometimes their own sentinels, and ready for a combat whenever a little wolf stirred in the thicket¹⁵, had now returned to their firesides. Their arms, their uniforms, all the murderous accoutrements with which they had lately struck fear into the national heart for three leagues in every direction, had suddenly disappeared. 

 

The last French soldiers finally came across the Seine to reach the Audemer bridge through Saint-Sever and Bourg-Achard; and, marching behind, on foot, between two officers of ordnance¹⁶, the General, in despair, unable to do anything with these incongruous tatters, himself lost in the breaking-up of a people accustomed to conquer and disastrously¹⁷ beaten, in spite of his legendary¹⁸ bravery. 

 

A profound calm, a frightful¹⁹, silent expectancy²⁰ had spread over the city. Many of the heavy citizens, emasculated by commerce, anxiously awaited the conquerors²¹, trembling lest their roasting spits or kitchen knives be considered arms. 

 

All life seemed stopped; shops were closed,  the streets dumb. Sometimes an inhabitant, intimidated²² by this silence, moved rapidly along next the walls. The agony of waiting made them wish the enemy would come. 

 

In the afternoon of the day which followed the departure of the French troops, some uhlans, coming from one knows not where, crossed the town with celerity. Then, a little later, a black mass descended²³ the side of St. Catharine, while two other invading bands appeared by the way of Darnetal and Boisguillaume. The advance guard of the three bodies joined one another at the same moment in Hotel de Ville square and, by all the neigh－boring streets, the German army continued to arrive, spreading out its battalions²⁴, making the pavement re-sound under their hard, rhythmic²⁵ step. 

 

Some orders of the commander, in a foreign guttural voice, reached the houses which seemed dead and deserted²⁶, while behind closed shutters²⁷, eyes were watching these victorious²⁸ men, masters of the city, of fortunes, of lives, through the "rights of war." The in－habitants, shut up in their rooms, were visited with the kind of excitement that a cataclysm²⁹, or some fatal upheaval³⁰ of the earth. brings to us, against which all force is useless. For the same sensation is produced each time that the established order of things is overturned, when security no longer exists, and all that protect the laws of man and of nature find themselves at the mercy of unreasoning, ferocious³¹ brutality³². The trembling of the earth crushing the houses and burying an entire people;a river overflowing³³ its banks and carrying in its course the drowned peasants, carcasses of beeves, and girders snatched from roofs, or a glorious army massacring those trying to defend themselves, leading others prisoners, pillaging³⁴ in the name of the sword and thanking God to the sound of the cannon³⁵, all are alike frightful scourges³⁶ which disconnect all belief in eternal justice, all the confidence that we have in the protection of Heaven and the reason of man. 

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