Read Online The Flood by Émile Zola - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Émile Zola
Ads: Link
was set on swimming. As soon as he was old enough, he said, he’d enlist.
‘No!’ Julien flung his arms around Louis’s neck, white as a sheet. ‘No!’
Louis laughed and called him silly.
‘They’ll kill you,’ said Julien. ‘I know they will.’
He poured his heart out to us that day, wound up by our teasing. The soldiers were very ugly. He did not see why we were so interested in them. Everything was their fault: if there were no soldiers, there would be no fighting. He hated war. It terrified him. He’d find a way to stop his brother having anything to do with it. His disgust was overwhelming. It was pathological.
Weeks and months passed. We’d had enough of the troops and had come up with another game: going fishing in the morning, then eating our catch in a run-down tavern. The water was icy; Julien caught pneumonia, and almost died. At school, we didn’t talk about war. Homer and Virgil engrossed us more than ever. Suddenly we heard that France were the victors, which seemed to us only proper. Then the regiments started coming through once more, this time from the other direction. We weren’t interested. Yet we did see two or three; with half the men missing, they seemed less beautiful now.Such was the Crimean War, in France, for children cooped up in a provincial boarding school.
2
In 1859 I was in Paris, completing my studies at the Lycée Saint-Louis . As things turned out my two schoolfriends from Aix, Louis and Julien, were there too. Louis was working towards the entrance exam for the École Polytechnique; Julien had decided to plump for law. Each of us lived out.
We were no longer ignoramuses. Paris had made us streetwise . When war broke out in Italy, we were up to speed with the political goings-on that had brought things to a head. We debated the events as though we were statesmen and tacticians. At school,
the campaign
was all the rage. Boys charted our troops’ progress on maps. In class time we marked the latest positions with pins; we fought and lost battles. To stay in the know, we devoured an enormous supply of newspapers. It was down to us students who lived out to bring them in. We turned up armoured from head to toe with news, our pockets stuffed and our coats bulked out with bundles of papers. They were passed around during class. We paid no attention to the lessons, instead feasting on the latest news, screened by a classmate’s back. We hid the pages by cutting them into four, opening them inside our textbooks. Sometimes the teachers knew exactly what was going on. But they left us to it, with the tolerance of men who had decided to let the idle get what’s coming to them.
When the war began, Julien shrugged. He was going through a phase of worshipping the poets of 1830. He never went anywhere without a Musset or a Hugo in his pocket; he’d bereading them in the lecture hall. 3 If you passed him a newspaper , he’d send it on its way, disdainfully, without even so much as a glance, and then get back to his poem. To him it seemed grotesque to get excited about men fighting. But that changed, after a catastrophe that turned his whole life upside down. Louis failed his exam and, one fine day, he enlisted, just like that. He had been mulling it over a long time. One of his uncles was a general; surely, he reckoned, he’d be able to get on without having his qualifications. Anyway, he could try Saint-Cyr again, when the war was over. 4 Julien was dumbstruck when he heard. He was no longer the kid who got angry about war, protesting like a girl, but his hatred never wavered. He managed not to cry in front of us; he wanted to show that he was a tough guy. As soon as his brother set off, though, he became one of our most avid newspaper-readers. We walked together to and from the Lycée, talking about nothing else but potential battles. Each day, I remember, he’d bring me to the Jardin du Luxembourg. He would put his books down on a bench and trace a map of northern Italy in
‘No!’ Julien flung his arms around Louis’s neck, white as a sheet. ‘No!’
Louis laughed and called him silly.
‘They’ll kill you,’ said Julien. ‘I know they will.’
He poured his heart out to us that day, wound up by our teasing. The soldiers were very ugly. He did not see why we were so interested in them. Everything was their fault: if there were no soldiers, there would be no fighting. He hated war. It terrified him. He’d find a way to stop his brother having anything to do with it. His disgust was overwhelming. It was pathological.
Weeks and months passed. We’d had enough of the troops and had come up with another game: going fishing in the morning, then eating our catch in a run-down tavern. The water was icy; Julien caught pneumonia, and almost died. At school, we didn’t talk about war. Homer and Virgil engrossed us more than ever. Suddenly we heard that France were the victors, which seemed to us only proper. Then the regiments started coming through once more, this time from the other direction. We weren’t interested. Yet we did see two or three; with half the men missing, they seemed less beautiful now.Such was the Crimean War, in France, for children cooped up in a provincial boarding school.
2
In 1859 I was in Paris, completing my studies at the Lycée Saint-Louis . As things turned out my two schoolfriends from Aix, Louis and Julien, were there too. Louis was working towards the entrance exam for the École Polytechnique; Julien had decided to plump for law. Each of us lived out.
We were no longer ignoramuses. Paris had made us streetwise . When war broke out in Italy, we were up to speed with the political goings-on that had brought things to a head. We debated the events as though we were statesmen and tacticians. At school,
the campaign
was all the rage. Boys charted our troops’ progress on maps. In class time we marked the latest positions with pins; we fought and lost battles. To stay in the know, we devoured an enormous supply of newspapers. It was down to us students who lived out to bring them in. We turned up armoured from head to toe with news, our pockets stuffed and our coats bulked out with bundles of papers. They were passed around during class. We paid no attention to the lessons, instead feasting on the latest news, screened by a classmate’s back. We hid the pages by cutting them into four, opening them inside our textbooks. Sometimes the teachers knew exactly what was going on. But they left us to it, with the tolerance of men who had decided to let the idle get what’s coming to them.
When the war began, Julien shrugged. He was going through a phase of worshipping the poets of 1830. He never went anywhere without a Musset or a Hugo in his pocket; he’d bereading them in the lecture hall. 3 If you passed him a newspaper , he’d send it on its way, disdainfully, without even so much as a glance, and then get back to his poem. To him it seemed grotesque to get excited about men fighting. But that changed, after a catastrophe that turned his whole life upside down. Louis failed his exam and, one fine day, he enlisted, just like that. He had been mulling it over a long time. One of his uncles was a general; surely, he reckoned, he’d be able to get on without having his qualifications. Anyway, he could try Saint-Cyr again, when the war was over. 4 Julien was dumbstruck when he heard. He was no longer the kid who got angry about war, protesting like a girl, but his hatred never wavered. He managed not to cry in front of us; he wanted to show that he was a tough guy. As soon as his brother set off, though, he became one of our most avid newspaper-readers. We walked together to and from the Lycée, talking about nothing else but potential battles. Each day, I remember, he’d bring me to the Jardin du Luxembourg. He would put his books down on a bench and trace a map of northern Italy in
Similar Books
