Daudet, Alphonse. 1903 & 1917. The Siege of Berlin. Vol. XIII French Fiction, in The Harvard Classics Self of Fiction, edited by William Allan Neilson and Charles W. Eliot, 431-437. New York: P F Collier & Son Company.
This story depicts a physician recounting to a friend an experience he had with a former patient. Much earlier in his career he had been called to the home of a former French colonel who was prostrate on the floor and near death. He was attended by his granddaughter. His son, her father, was away fighting the Prussians and all of France worried over the progress of the war.
Eventually the colonel regained some consciousness and in his stupor sought confirmation that the war was going well for the French. The doctor affirmed this untruth and the man improved slightly. Between the granddaughter and doctor they decided to try fabricating French victories over the Germans, and each time they did the patient improved.
As the war drug on ever more badly from French troops, they deluded the colonel of the opposite. They made up victories that were not happening, and hid the advances of the enemy. Eventually Paris was under siege. The conspiratorial caretakers instead described how Berlin was under siege by French troops. As canon fire could be heard in the distance they told him it was celebratory, and that soon their troops would be parading down the Champs Elysees through the Arc Triomphe. The patient’s apartment overlooked the likely parade route. He prepared to receive the troops by stepping out onto the balcony in his best uniform. Eventually the ‘treatment’ ended as he saw the Prussian helmets approaching with their spiked domes. He fell prostrate again on the floor, this time dead.
Daudet approaches the story with a combination of descriptive action, inner thoughts, and dialog at times hushed between the physician and granddaughter, or confident when either of them gave assurances to their patient. Daudet in some ways links the fear and despair of the French public over the actual war with the concerns he depicts in the caretakers of the colonel.
This story depicts a physician recounting to a friend an experience he had with a former patient. Much earlier in his career he had been called to the home of a former French colonel who was prostrate on the floor and near death. He was attended by his granddaughter. His son, her father, was away fighting the Prussians and all of France worried over the progress of the war.
Eventually the colonel regained some consciousness and in his stupor sought confirmation that the war was going well for the French. The doctor affirmed this untruth and the man improved slightly. Between the granddaughter and doctor they decided to try fabricating French victories over the Germans, and each time they did the patient improved.
As the war drug on ever more badly from French troops, they deluded the colonel of the opposite. They made up victories that were not happening, and hid the advances of the enemy. Eventually Paris was under siege. The conspiratorial caretakers instead described how Berlin was under siege by French troops. As canon fire could be heard in the distance they told him it was celebratory, and that soon their troops would be parading down the Champs Elysees through the Arc Triomphe. The patient’s apartment overlooked the likely parade route. He prepared to receive the troops by stepping out onto the balcony in his best uniform. Eventually the ‘treatment’ ended as he saw the Prussian helmets approaching with their spiked domes. He fell prostrate again on the floor, this time dead.
Daudet approaches the story with a combination of descriptive action, inner thoughts, and dialog at times hushed between the physician and granddaughter, or confident when either of them gave assurances to their patient. Daudet in some ways links the fear and despair of the French public over the actual war with the concerns he depicts in the caretakers of the colonel.
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