The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola

Author:Emile Zola
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783961891139
Publisher: Re-Image Publishing
Published: 2017-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 5 The high roads stretched far way, white with moonlight.

The insurrectionary army was continuing its heroic march through the cold, clear country. It was like a mighty wave of enthusiasm. The thrill of patriotism, which transported Miette and Silvere, big children that they were, eager for love and liberty, sped, with generous fervour, athwart the sordid intrigues of the Macquarts and the Rougons. At intervals the trumpet-voice of the people rose and drowned the prattle of the yellow drawing-room and the hateful discourses of uncle Antoine. And vulgar, ignoble farce was turned into a great historical drama.

On quitting Plassans, the insurgents had taken the road to Orcheres. They expected to reach that town at about ten o'clock in the morning. The road skirts the course of the Viorne, following at some height the windings of the hillocks, below which the torrent flows. On the left, the plain spreads out like an immense green carpet, dotted here and there with grey villages. On the right, the chain of the Garrigues rears its desolate peaks, its plateaux of stones, its huge rusty boulders that look as though they had been reddened by the sun. The high road, embanked along the riverside, passes on amidst enormous rocks, between which glimpses of the valley are caught at every step. Nothing could be wilder or more strikingly grand than this road out of the hillside. At night time, especially, it inspires one with a feeling of deep awe. The insurgents advanced under the pale light, along what seemed the chief street of some ruined town, bordered on either side with fragments of temples. The moon turned each rock into a broken column, crumbling capital, or stretch of wall pierced with mysterious arches. On high slumbered the mass of the Garrigues, suffused with a milky tinge, and resembling some immense Cyclopean city whose towers, obelisks, houses and high terraces hid one half of the heavens; and in the depths below, on the side of the plain, was a spreading ocean of diffused light, vague and limitless, over which floated masses of luminous haze. The insurrectionary force might well have thought they were following some gigantic causeway, making their rounds along some military road built on the shore of a phosphorescent sea, and circling some unknown Babel.

On the night in question, the Viorne roared hoarsely at the foot of the rocks bordering the route. Amidst the continuous rumbling of the torrent, the insurgents could distinguish the sharp, wailing notes of the tocsin. The villages scattered about the plain, on the other side of the river, were rising, sounding alarm-bells, and lighting signal fires. Till daybreak the marching column, which the persistent tolling of a mournful knell seemed to pursue in the darkness, thus beheld the insurrection spreading along the valley, like a train of powder. The fires showed in the darkness like stains of blood; echoes of distant songs were wafted to them; the whole vague distance, blurred by the whitish vapours of the moon, stirred confusedly, and suddenly broke into a spasm of anger.

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