Fall of Giants

The sound from the audience changed. The murmur became louder. No words could be made out, but all the same the voices took on a note of disapproval, like the change in the buzz of a fly when it encounters a closed window. Maud was taken aback. Then she heard another noise, and it sounded dreadfully like a hiss. Confused and dismayed, she sat down.

That made no difference. Everyone was staring at her now. The hissing spread through the stalls in seconds, then began in the circle, too. “I say,” said Bing in feeble protest.

Maud had never encountered such hatred, even at the height of the suffragette demonstrations. There was a pain in her stomach like a cramp. She wished the music would start, but the conductor, too, was staring at her, his baton held at his side.

She tried to stare proudly back at them all, but tears came to her eyes and blurred her vision. This nightmare would not end of its own accord. She had to do something.

She stood up, and the hissing grew louder.

Tears ran down her face. Almost blind, she turned around. Knocking her chair over, she stumbled toward the door at the back of the box. Aunt Herm got up, saying: “Oh, dear, dear, dear.”

Bing leaped up and opened the door. Maud went out, with Aunt Herm close behind. Bing followed them out. Behind her, Maud heard the hissing die away amid a few ripples of laughter, then, to her horror, the audience began to clap, congratulating themselves on having got rid of her; and their jeering applause followed her along the corridor, down the stairs, and out of the theater.

{VI}

The drive from the park gate to the Palace of Versailles was a mile long. Today it was lined with hundreds of mounted French cavalrymen in blue uniforms. The summer sun glinted off their steel helmets. They held lances with red and white pennants that rippled in the warm breeze.

Johnny Remarc had been able to get Maud an invitation to the signing of the peace treaty, despite her disgrace at the opera; but she had to travel on the back of an open lorry, packed in with all the female secretaries from the British delegation, like sheep going to market.

At one moment it had looked as if the Germans would refuse to sign. The war hero Field Marshal von Hindenburg had said he would prefer honorable defeat to a disgraceful peace. The entire German cabinet had resigned rather than agree to the treaty. So had the head of their delegation to Paris. At last the National Assembly had voted for signing everything except the notorious war guilt clause. Even that was unacceptable, the Allies had said immediately.

“What will the Allies do if the Germans refuse?” Maud had said to Walter in their auberge, where they were now discreetly living together.

“They say they will invade Germany.”

Maud shook her head. “Our soldiers would not fight.”

“Nor would ours.”

“So it would be a stalemate.”

“Except that the British navy has not lifted the blockade, so Germany still cannot get supplies. The Allies would just wait until food riots broke out in every German city, then they would walk in unopposed.”

“So you have to sign.”

“Sign or starve,” said Walter bitterly.

Today was June 28, five years to the day since the archduke had been killed in Sarajevo.

The lorry took the secretaries into the courtyard, and they got down as gracefully as they could. Maud entered the palace and went up the grand staircase, flanked by more overdressed French soldiers, this time the Garde Républicaine in silver helmets with horsehair plumes.

Finally she entered the Hall of Mirrors. This was one of the most grandiose rooms in the world. It was the size of three tennis courts in a line. Along one side, seventeen long windows overlooked the garden; on the opposite wall, the windows were reflected by seventeen mirrored arches. More importantly, this was the room where in 1871, at the end of the Franco-Prussian War, the victorious Germans had crowned their first emperor and forced the French to sign away Alsace and Lorraine. Now the Germans were to be humiliated under the same barrel-vaulted ceiling. And no doubt some among them would be dreaming of the time in the future when they in turn would take their revenge. The degradation to which you subject others comes back, sooner or later, to haunt you, Maud thought. Would that reflection occur to men on either side at today’s ceremony? Probably not.

She found her place on one of the red plush benches. There were dozens of reporters and photographers, and a film crew with huge movie cameras to record the event. The bigwigs entered in ones and twos and sat at a long table: Clemenceau relaxed and irreverent, Wilson stiffly formal, Lloyd George like an aging bantam cock. Gus Dewar appeared and spoke in Wilson’s ear, then went over to the press section and spoke to a pretty young reporter with one eye. Maud remembered seeing her before. Gus was in love with her, Maud could tell.