Julius by Daphne du Maurier

luxury, the incredible pleasure of self-indulgence. Even Père drank wine that first evening, wine supplied by the bereaved son, and Julius wondered to see the colour rise in his pale cheeks, Père, thin as a corpse himself, in his uniform that hung on his bones. He played upon his flute, his eyes closed, his black hair falling over his face, and as the sound of his music fled and was lost in the air he smiled to himself.
    Mère also closed her eyes, she was drowsy from the wine. She breathed heavily, her sensual mouth half open, and she leant against the shoulder of Jacques Tripet. They were friends now. People could not be enemies for long living in one room. Jacques Tripet listened to her breathing, his green eyes hot and silly, and he ran his hand up her leg under her petticoats. Julius thought him a fool, ugly with his red hair.
    Julius yawned, stretching his arms above his head. He went close to Mère, and curled himself up against her, glad of her warm body, pillowing his head on her lap. She smiled in her sleep and sighed. Jacques Tripet stroked her gently, secretly, watching Paul Lévy out of the tail of his eye, and Père slept with his face in his hands, never moving, scarcely breathing, lost in his secret city.
    The days dragged by, endless and wretched, the January mornings were bitter cold, and to stand in a queue for rationed meat became physical torture.
    Still the guns rumbled and the shells fell on defenceless citizens, still the pathetic efforts of the imprisoned troops to pass the Prussian batteries continued, always in vain - back they came wounded, bleeding, faith and courage gone from them. The strictly rationed food was practically uneatable, nor would the tough horse flesh, the black bread, nor even the rats last much longer.
    It was the beginning of the end. The surrender of Paris, inevitable, fatal, loomed into the minds of the people. On the fortifications of Auteuil Paul Lévy stood on sentry duty, his hands clasping his bayonet, his head bent low. He had not slept for twenty-four hours. He had no other thought in his brain, no other desire in his body, but to lie down, anywhere, in a ditch and sleep. His feet were like two solid lumps of ice, frozen in his leaking boots, he had lost the feel of them and the feel of his fingers, blue knobbly bones sticking out from his hands. Paul Lévy was no longer a magician who breathed music, who dreamed dreams, he was a senseless thing of no will, who could not even raise his head to watch shells whistle through the air from the Prussian batteries. He wanted to sleep, he wanted the warm body of his wife next to him, her arms to cradle him, her breast to pillow him. He wanted to lose himself, he wanted to sleep.
    In the room in the Rue des Petits Champs, Louise Blançard was preparing supper. She had stood for four hours outside the butcher’s and when her turn had come the doors were shut in her face and a soldier, his face a wooden mask, told her the rations were finished for the day.
    ‘But we have nothing in the house?’ she pleaded, clutching his arm, ‘what are we going to eat? My little boy is hungry.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ said the soldier, pushing her away,‘it’s not my fault, is it?’
    She climbed the seven flights to the cold room, her shawl over her head. There was no fire now, and a trickle of water ran down the wall by the window. One flickering candle was stuck in a bottle.
    Jacques Tripet knelt by the fireplace. He had three sticks of green wood which he was trying to light.
    ‘I took them off a peasant who had been scavenging outside the gates,’ he said, ‘they are damp, they will not give much warmth. Have you any food?’
    ‘The butcher’s was shut,’ she told him, ‘we shall have to make wine soup. We must have something inside us.’
    Julius looked up from his corner. His skin was drawn tight over his bones. ‘I don’t like wine soup,’ he said fretfully, ‘it gives me a pain. I always have a pain now.’
    ‘There is