At noon on the 28th, having sent away those fit for transport and also those unfit, having performed a last amputation, and having buried the rest of the dead, we set out, with empty stomachs. What was our destination? The innocents, of whom I was one, had no doubt that we should be sent back to France by way of Switzerland. The others, those who had seen the wounded being finished off, especially the wounded officers, declared: “The German military authorities are unrelenting, even though the rankers are good fellows. The patrols who finished off the officers and some of the sergeant-majors were acting on strict orders. If they had been inspired by personal ill-feeling, do youthink it likely that they would give coffee and brandy to the wounded as they do often enough? Would they stop to tend them? It is the high command which is responsible for this base practice. Do you think those who set so little store upon the lives of the wounded will respect the red cross?”
Thus it was that, while we were on our way to Dieuze, carefully escorted, the members of our little troop were debating the question: “Are we merely detained for a time, or are we prisoners?” At Dieuze we were marched round the town. This was not necessary in order to reach the railway station, and our capture hardly seemed to afford adequate ground for a triumphal procession. But it was evidently considered desirable to show us off to the inhabitants, who made no sign.
A week earlier, when we had entered Dieuze as conquerors, the shopkeepers had filled our pockets with chocolate and sweetmeats; the publicans had given us free drinks. “Above all,” said the people of Dieuze in plain terms, “take care that they never set foot here again!” Wishing for a French-German dictionary, I begged a townsman to get me one. “I don’t use the article,” he said; “I know no German.” He called his daughter and she brought me her own dictionary. “Pay yourself,” I said, offering her my purse. “Oh, monsieur,” she answered, “I could not take money from a French soldier!” On the sideboard there stood a goblet, and she filled it for me with Moselle.
Throughout the little Lorraine town there was the lively commotion of a feast day. The army and thepopulace were exchanging cheerful brotherly greetings. This delight at seeing one another again seemed so natural. Night fell. The weather was clear and warm. The noise of firing reached us from the vine-clad hills. The regiments were drawn up in line of battle in the streets. A hundred yards from the houses, behind the stooks, a French battery was shooting towards Vargaville. Having walked out to this battery, I enjoyed the only sight of beauty I had during my campaign.
In the calm air, the smoke plumes of the German shrapnel looked like fireworks. Near by, one of our regiments, spread out like a fan, was advancing through the oats. The men had spent the night in the barracks of the light horse. Further on, in the stubble and the green fields, under a rain of shells, the Alpinists were at work with their rifles, in cheerful mood. In good order they mounted the northern slope of the smiling basin between Dieuze and Vargaville. It looked like one of Van der Meulen’s pictures. The sun was setting. The perfumed air was filled with shafts of light. After each discharge, the song of the birds and the humming of the insects was audible. Then, the limbers having been attached, the battery went off at the trot to another position.
On the 28th, on the contrary, Dieuze was like a city of the dead. No one appeared at the windows. Huge flags, celebrating the fall of Manonviller, had been hoisted by German orders. There was a gloomy silence, like that of a deserted inn, like that of Paris at four in the morning; but instead of the carts of the market gardenersand of the dustmen, there were heaps of empty knapsacks, broken rifles, rags soiled with blood and clay, which had been carted in from the battlefield. We marched quickly, keeping the French step, so that our guards were out of breath. Grey-clad regiments passed us without a word. When our progress was arrested by a number of forage wagons filled with wounded, a tall Prussian colonel, on horseback, wearing an eyeglass, accosted us in French, saying: “Fous n’afez pas honte, fous la témocratie française, d’être les alliés des Russes, ces Parpares?”[7]Not one of us made answer. We did not even look at him. He sat there motionless. However, showing him my armlet, I inquired, “Are we detained, or are we prisoners?”
“Prisoners! You fire on our field hospitals!”
“Allow me to say, monsieur, that I do not believe it.” Then we resumed our march.
The station; the long wait; the block of carts filled with wounded; a light cavalryman on foot, with bandaged head, advancing towards us, hatred in his eyes, threatening us with his revolver; the search of our knapsacks; the confiscation of our maps, knives, forks, razors, punches—everything which could be used for cutting or piercing. Then we entrained.
I am so foolish as to believe in the good faith of humanity. It seemed to me incredible that a civilized nation would not respect the red cross. “Unquestionably,” I said, “they will send us to Switzerland.”—“Weshall see,” answered Riffard, “whether our journey leads us southwards.” Were we going south? This was the great question in dispute. Every one looked at his watch and examined the position of the sun. Since the railway line made zigzags, running sometimes to the south and sometimes to the north, we became divided into two camps, the “southerners” and the “northerners,” the light of heart and the foreboders of evil. At times the dispute between the two factions waxed lively.
After a run northward, the train passed through Bensdorf, and at nightfall we found ourselves in the great station of Strasburg. There we were ordered to get out. We were shut up in a room on the landing, below the level of the railway, giving on the street. Through the grated door the passers-by gazed in on us. I was kept awake by the cold and my recent memories of the town. After some hours came the orderVorwärts, and a fresh entrainment. What was our destination? The first glimmer of dawn showed us the green hills of Alsace covered with plum-trees. Alas, we were going northward. Saargemünd. Rhenish Prussia. Saarbrück. Oh, Saarbrück! What a reception we had from the women of Saarbrück! My ears still tingle with their execrations. Then came the Palatinate, then Philippsburg. Good-bye to hope! I did not see the Rhine, for we crossed it in the middle of the night, and I was sleeping on the floor between the seats.
It was obvious when we awoke that we were going down hill. We crossed the duchy of Baden, traversedWürtemberg by way of Stuttgart and the Swabian Jura, with its green valleys, its woods, and its sparkling rivulets; at length, after crossing monotonous plains, at the bottom of a hill we reached Ulm, nestling on the Danube beneath its graceful Gothic cathedral. Our halt was made at Neu-Ulm, the first town we came to in Bavaria, and a town which I shall never forget, for it was there that we made the second meal of our journey. It consisted of a bowl of vermicelli soup in which a gobbet of meat was swimming. The previous day, at Zweibrücken (otherwise known as Deux-Ponts), we had been given a slice ofLeberwurst. This pittance seemed heavenly to us, for we were starving after a three days’ fast. Be blessed among all the towns of Germany, Neu-Ulm and Zweibrücken!
For the third time since our departure from Dieuze night fell. The train continued its journey, and its direction was now south-south-east. The southern faction was on the increase, and the wind was setting in the direction of hope. In the course of an animated discussion, rendered lively by hunger and by the doubts which Guido expressed as to the likeliness of our liberation, I fell asleep. At two o’clock in the morning the train stopped. I did not wake up. Abbé Guido, tough and rugged like the mountain district in which he toiled, one of those peasant priests who wed the church with fanatical asperity, just as they would have wedded their land, Guido was not asleep. He was sitting all of a heap in the corner of the carriage, wearing his képi wrong side before,smoking cigarettes. From time to time the sardonic fold of his lips was rendered yet more bitter by a sigh as he said: “Ah! vidasse! qué vidasse!”[8]He must have given vent to the apostrophe, which showed his utter weariness of life, twenty times at least, when, morning having come, I awakened to the sound of this malediction.
It was an oppressive day. The sun was fierce; the sky leaden, without soul, without life. In the carriage it was stifling.
“Where are we?”
“At Ingolstadt.”
Ingolstadt! The “forty propositions,” Luther, Father Eck, the celebrated attempt to unite the two churches, the great “disputations” of the sixteenth century. But the sight of the bayonets of the Bavarian guard on the platform dispersed my train of reminiscences.
My stomach was complaining loudly. We were told that the stop was for six hours. The sergeant of the guard assured us that we were to be sent to Switzerland. Then a medical officer, thick-lipped and hook-nosed, with small, laughing eyes, a man who waddled continually with a sort of conceited good-nature, passed through the carriage, and said in a nasal accent: “Pas te malades? Pas te fièvres tes gôlônies?”[9]This Judaico-Swabian French revived our spirits. But the gnawing in our stomachs continued.Would they not give us a slice ofWurstor a plate of soup with a gobbet of meat in it? But they brought us nothing. The six hours had passed. The midday heat made the blood boil in our veins.
It happened but yesterday, and yet it has aged me by a century. I say it without hatred, without the shadow of a desire for vengeance. Under the ancien régime the crowd was amenable without restriction to talliage and to the corvée; now that it reigns, the crowd is gullible without restriction; it is nothing better than an unstable puff of vapour at the mercy of the winds. My heart is filled with pity for the crowd.
“Where are we going?” I asked of theFeldwebel[10]in command of the detachment.
“To Fort Orff, two leagues from here, towards the north. You will find there a thousand of your compatriots.”
“Are you keeping the men of the red cross as prisoners?”
“So it seems. I can’t understand it. At Fort Orff there are certainly quite a hundredSanitäter.”
“These are fine spoil!”
ThisFeldwebelwas a tall, ruddy young man, trim of figure, gentle and shy. His name, he told me, was Conrad Kilian, and he was a schoolmaster from Upper Franconia. He stationed me at the rear of the column, beside himself, to act as interpreter. He was greatly concerned about those of my comrades who were tooobviously exhausted. “How on earth will they be able to walk uphill for ten kilometres?” This impotent kindness of heart was touching. The setting sun cast its rosy light over the Danube and the ancient city, bristling with church spires and surrounded by Gothic walls with massive towers. We passed through it under a deluge of cries of “Death!” And what a litany ofkaputs![11]“Pariskaput! Manonvillerkaput! Verdunkaput!” One might have imagined that the whole world waskaput! The gentler-minded among the townsfolk flashed electric torches in our faces, saying modestly: “You know that our armies are but a few leagues from Paris?” The better educated regaled us with French. “La foilà,” they said mockingly, “la grande nation!” People streamed out of the public-houses as we went by. On the threshold the calm and paunchy drinkers waved their mugs and vented their guffaws. The whole city was agog beneath the great royal and imperial standards. It was really ludicrous, all this fuss about fifty field hospital orderlies.
It was quite clear that the German nation was the martyr of Europe. “As for us,” said my friend theFeldwebel, “our conscience is quite at ease!” Yes, we, the French, were the aggressors; we were theapacheswho had come furtively (sicut fur in nocte) to disturb the dignified repose of these excellent people, full of humanity, thoughtful and gentle! It wasunquestionably the anger of an offended conscience, the holy joy of justice at length avenged, which found expression in this tumult. How easy it is to distort facts, to cook public opinion! I looked on and listened with greater interest than at the most exciting of plays. From the casements, graceful beneath their Gothic gables and bright with window-gardens, imprecations rained down on us. And the gestures of the silhouetted figures standing in the front of these lighted interiors sufficed to show those among us who could not understand Swabian the significance of the volleys of homeric abuse.
I was not in the least humiliated by the hubbub. My condition was one of strange exaltation. I was very sad and yet fascinated—sad at the spectacle of mankind, and yet fascinated at the chance of seeing man as he really is. Tacitus, Machiavelli, Stendhal, Ferrero—not one of these writers had succeeded in giving me so strong an impression of human reality. But I will defer my comments. Thoughts conceived under the spur of hunger and in a sort of physical dementia are not likely to be just. Besides, it is difficult to keep one’s head cool when the whole world is crumbling around one. I fear lest I may have to laugh some day at the partiality of this simple and matter-of-fact story, written for some one whom I love, and in which I faithfully desire to use no colours but those of truth.
Of our arrival at the fort I can recall nothing but the memory of a great iron gate which groaned onits hinges when it was opened, of a few lanterns held by sentinels running hither and thither in the darkness, of a gloomy and nauseous staircase where I stumbled and where my nailed boots made a clatter that aroused distant echoes, and of a casemate, this casemate, with cemented floor, bare, without even straw, its arches sweating damp. I threw myself on the floor, my cheek on my knapsack. My head was throbbing with fever. I spent a sleepless night, not thinking, but a prey to delirium.
September 16, 1914.
The casemate is empty. My comrades have gone up to the nine o’clock roll-call. I am still “confined to my room by illness.” I am happy to be alone. It is cold. Wrapping my rug closely round me, I lie listening to the bitter wind. I am alone; I am free. It seems to me that the current of life has swept me away to the end of the world, depositing me amid dumb deserts of infinite vastness.
The straw upon which I have been lying for a fortnight is reduced to powder. I roll myself in it as if it were a dust bath for chickens. How thin is my rug! My limbs shake with the cold of fever. Yesterday for a quarter of an hour I dragged myself along in the east court, but I was unable to get as far as the first glacis. When I was coming downstairs on the way back, my legs seemed heavier than hand grenades. I am very cold. Through the upper part of the two screened windows I catch a glimpse of a strip of sky, grey and heavy, crushing down on the slope, on the portcullis on the top of the slope, on the wild rose bush whichbreaks the straight line of the portcullis. On the steep slope I see the long grass bending before the gusts.
I am alone. How delightful! What wealth! What a privilege! Here we are never alone.
We sleep, we dress, we eat, we amuse ourselves, we walk about, we hunt for lice, we attend to the calls of nature, we dream, we are filled with indignation, we soften, we caress the dear relics hidden in our knapsacks, we retire into ourselves—we do all this in public.
How well do I understand the phrase of St. Bernard, the phrase of a monk,O beata solitudo, sola beatitudo! Sometimes in the morning, when we awaken, this awakening devoid of dignity, full of oaths, when the same voices gabble the same platitudes, in the same eternal access of sterile boredom, makes me feel positively sick. How long will it continue, this life in a herd? It seems to me that the effluvium of the crowd, of the sweat of human cattle, has penetrated into all the interstices of my soul.
No, it is useless; the effort to pull myself together and to become what I was before these days in prison is too much for my poor strength. I am shivering with cold. To throw off this torpor I should need to eat three or four times as much as we are allowed. Alas! the wretched half loaf of the first few days has been reduced to a third of a loaf, for the German authorities are methodically restricting our rations. Even the dullest of the soldiers, heavy, good-natured fellows, those who never think and consequently waste very little energy,find it difficult to keep going. Poor mothers, could you but catch a glimpse of your sons, your fine lads, those whom you used to pet so tenderly! On the slopes and in the dry ditches of the fort you would see them gloomy and slow, with drawn features, with a yellow and dirty skin, almost always crouching on the ground. They look like shades in Purgatory. Are these the youths of France?
Sergeant Bertrand is the first to come down. Without saying a word, he throws himself on his heap of straw beside me. Then, one behind the other, come dreamily in Sergeant Boude and Guido, my terrible and dear Guido. Soon all the rest of the section enters, a stamping and noisy rout.
Bertrand does not move. Leaning against his knapsack, pipe in mouth—a pipe carved by Boude—he looks straight in front of him. He is in a fine fit of the blues, our “agent de change,” as he is nicknamed by his comrades from Marseilles. If his fiancée could see him thus, his fiancée of Ciotat!
At the end of the room, beneath the windows, two groups are playing cards for pfennig stakes. Beyond them, leaning against the bars, Sabatier, grave and mute like a bonze, is plaiting a horsehair watch-chain. Over there, from every mouth, from all the Bavarian pipes hanging over the players’ stomachs, there mount thick clouds of smoke.
In our corner, spoken of as the “club” by the men of the “fond” (the window end), every one is silent.Bertrand is in Ciotat. Guido, hunched against the wall, his képi pulled down over his eyes, seems to be turning over thoughts even more disconsolate than those of theImitationor ofEcclesiastes. Boude, the good Boude, with the soul of an artist who has lost his way in everyday life, stands up, looking at our trio.
All of a sudden, Bertrand, with a yawn, murmurs, “I would sell my life for a penny.”
Boude smiles at hisalter ego. “For my part, old chap, I brought with me from Marseilles a certain store of philosophy.”
“That also gets used up, Sergeant Boude,” says Guido, “just as certainly as the cigar that you are smoking. And once your cigar is finished, in these times of dearth, you may find it difficult to get another.” Then, turning to me, and lowering his harsh voice: “Richeris,” he says, “is the happiest of us all. For him there is nothing but God. If God wills it, he is satisfied; if God does not will it, he is equally satisfied.”
Silence for a time.
Then Boude remarks quietly: “I’m going to visit big Boétti. His dreams seem to come true. On the 19th, the night before our capture, he had a red dream. Perhaps last night he may have had a blue one.”
“Oh,” observes Guido, with a laugh, “I too have, not dreams, but presentiments which come true. The day of Boétti’s dream, when we had left Bourdonnaye and were in the marshy wood just before you get to Dieuze,I said to myself, ‘This time it’s all up with you, old chap, absolutely all up!’ You see, itisall up, and for a good long time!”
Then Boude, “Oh, Guido, you see everything in dark colours.”
“Quite true, I see everything in dark colours. I leave it to you others to gaze through the rose-tinted window. I keep to the gloomy outlook. Until a day or two ago I had hopes of freedom in October. But since Riou has read us the news, what he calls ‘good news,’ I hope no longer.”
“All the same, I’m going to see Boétti,” declares Sergeant Boude, opening the door.
The club relapses into silence. Bertrand dreams. Guido, his faith in original sin thoroughly re-established, meditates upon misfortune and upon human malice.
Oh, how empty and sterile life is. My head swims.
Lambert, who sees that I am shaking with cold, little Lambert, kindly and gentle as a good grandfather, comes and wraps his rug round my shoulders. He gives me a cheerful smile, but says nothing. Returning to his place opposite mine, he devotes himself once more to the study of the civil code. The comrades at the other end of the room noisily continue their game of cards. Sabatier, hard at work, is standing up. It is raining, and the windows have been closed. Young Soulier, stretched at full length on his back, his hands beneath his head, staring at vacancy, whistlesan unending succession of operatic airs, music-hall songs, waltzes, and tangos. I listen. Gradually this flow of sounds wearies me, and ends by exasperating me. What shall I do? Faces of those I love, how in this pit of fever and weariness I endeavour to revive you in memory. Where are you now? If one could only write. Very likely they think we are dead. Has the Ministry of War notified them of our imprisonment? Does the Ministry itself know?
Lambert’s rug has made me feel warmer. I have taken from my haversack the manual of French-German conversation the commandant has lent me. I read the dialogue which deals with agricultural life.Wiese,Wald,Gebüsch,Saatfeld,Ackerfurche,Herde,Mühle,Landhaus. These humble words seem friendly. I read them again. I murmur them to myself half aloud. Laying the book on my knee, I repeat them slowly by heart.
Is there some magic charm in these simple vocables? Called up by the sounds, images of freshness, so soothing to my fever, come to keep me company. I forget Soulier and his music. I no longer hear the wrangles of the card-players. The misery of being nothing better than a poor sick mole at the bottom of a crypt is gradually effaced from my mind. The magic of words! Yet these words are the words of the enemy. My brain finds relief. My eyes are caressed by pure colours. My ears are delighted with the supple cadences of melodies which recall the scent of hay and pastoral quietude. It seems to me that I am in a sun-kissedvillage. In front of the pillared porch of the white church, dazzling white against the limpid blue sky, apple-cheeked girls are playing games. How charming is the aspect of their flaxen plaits against their mauve aprons! How graceful their movements! How angelic the clear ring of their voices! They smile in a comradely way as they look at me. But you are the daughters of the enemy, little sisters singing so sweetly, little sisters whom I love.…
September 20, 1914.
It is exactly a month since we were taken prisoner. Here is the great event of this day of jubilee. It is a culinary event. None but the famished could appreciate it.
I dressed hastily, for I had to be upon the upper slopes at seven o’clock. I had an appointment with a peasant woman, small, thin, with scanty hair, who comes here from time to time to cut the grass. Yesterday she brought me two pounds of sugar. The price was sixty pfennig. I gave her a mark, telling her to keep the change for her two girls. These latter, working bare foot in the damp grass, rewarded me with a profusion of reiteratedDanke schön, and I had said to myself that they were good folk. Acting on this impression, I commissioned them to buy chocolate to the value of three marks, to be delivered next day at seven o’clock.Morgen früh, sieben Uhr.This matter having been settled, I took possession of the wheelbarrow, heavy with damp grass, and, as fast as I could, followed by the three breathless Bavarians, I trundledmy load as far as the guardhouse, nearly slipping a dozen times on the smooth slopes.
Here I am then at seven o’clock to keep the appointment. From this spot there is a view over the entire fort and the huge plain of Ingolstadt. A thin haze limits the horizon. White vapours rise from the Danube. Some factory chimneys behind the town are slowly vomiting their black plumes straight up into the foggy sky. Not a stir in the air. The houses on the plain have a liliputian aspect, seeming lost in the immensity.
There was no one in the upper courts, no one on the slopes. How pleasant it was in this damp solitude. Church bells in the neighbouring villages were ringing for mass. It was raining steadily—a gentle, quiet rain. I took shelter beneath a parapet and waited. Close at hand a poor little acacia was softly dripping. Since I left for the war, this was the first time I had begun the day quite alone. The “Our Father” mounted to my lips. I prayed for France, for all the soldiers of theVölkerkrieg. I prayed for my own dear ones … God, France, Andrée.…
Still the woman did not come. My coat was drenched. I was hungry. I made up my mind to abandon my fruitless errand.
In the casemate it was just like any other morning. Each one of us pushes back against the wall the truss of straw which the previous night he had spread out to make his bed, arranging it to form a rectangle, and covering it with a Bavarian rug. Thus, roundthe “square” we have two rows of low couches, greyish brown in colour, provided by way of cushions with our knapsacks padded with our French rugs. The two chambermaids—to-day they are Sabatier and Ancey—sweep the floor and trim the lamp. When the work is finished our casemate looks almost coquettish.
Now Guido returns from mass. Standing silent in the draughty doorway, he smokes his first cigarette. I instantly perceive that he has an idea, and ask for information. He thinks of nothing less than commemorating the melancholy jubilee of our capture by a cup of chocolate. A great thought, but difficult to realize! I hesitate. But Guido, egged on by hunger, is resolute. Knowing that I am on good terms with the kitchen, without further discussion he gives me a mess-tin and a few sticks of Suchard, saying, “You can manage it all right.” Doubtfully I make my way to theKüche. I open the door. A cloud of steam and smoke rushes out, enwraps me, and almost chokes me. In this fog I knock up against a Norman from the Auge valley—“Marie, the scullerymaid.” Without explanation I hand over what I am carrying. “That’s all right!” he says. I return to the casemate. “All well?” asks Guido. “All well,” I answer. In a few minutes Marie, alias Auguste, appears. He has the mien of a conspirator! Beneath his stained and greasy tunic he conceals as well as he can the hot vessel. With a secret air he says: “Here it is!” “Bravo!” I exclaim. But can this be my mess-tin? It is quite black, like the bottom of a cooking pot. The tin hasmelted and run into warty drops half-way up. Yes, it is really my mess-tin; but what a baptism of fire it must have experienced! Never mind. In a trice Guido makes a cunning hole in the straw to keep it hot and to conceal the windfall. Hurrah! everything is ready.
In the casemate, stretched out on our blankets, we all await the dinner-hour.
“Room 17!” comes the cry from without. We leap to our feet. Two by two, as is the custom in German barracks, we make our way to the kitchen—a long procession of individuals who chatter impatiently in the dark and evil-smelling passages. When we reach the happy door we are arrested by the order, “Halt.” We have to wait until those of room 16 have been served and dismissed. Now comes the moment. “Seventeen, enter!” orders Dutrex. We defile in front of the cauldron, and each man in turn holds out his bowl to the cook. This last, Davit, an Angevin, wearied of doing the same thing five hundred times in succession, handles the great ladle mechanically, absorbed in his own thoughts. His arms and shoulders are bare, and one cannot doubt that he has the torso of the Farnese Hercules.
One by one, hastily and yet cautiously, we return to the casemate. Reclining in Roman fashion, seated or squatting, we crumble into the clear liquid, faintly sweetened, a little of our rye and barley bread, of the consistency of putty, and forming a pappy mass in the soup. The silence is religious. Eating is a solemnfunction in these days of scarcity. For a lengthy interval nothing is to be heard in the “square” but the rattling of spoons upon tin.
In our corner, where two friends sitting very close together sip steaming chocolate, the fervour is even greater than among those who are taking what we good-humouredly speak of as “café-au-lait.” Our mothers would consider our brew extremely crude. No milk! No sugar! But the palate of a prisoner of war differs from that of a pampered child. Bending over our joint mess-tin, Guido and I are silently and sadly happy. Poor joys of the famished, how one makes the most of you with a greedy and simple soul!
September 21, 1914.
You remember that Andromache, made captive when Troy fell and allotted to Neoptolemus, the son of Achilles, rebaptized with Trojan names the streams and the hills of the Epirot capital, adorning the gloomy present with glorious memories. As at Troy, she had her Scamander. In this way, on clear nights, when she walked beside the river in the solitary fever of insomnia, it was sometimes possible for her to forget Neoptolemus and the hatred of the Greeks, and to dream of herself still living beside Hector as queen, wife, and happy mother.
All prisoners are alike, be they epic heroines or soldiers of the third republic. I, too, have my Scamander in Epirus.
On the slopes of the fort there are a few poor trees. I do not know how they manage to grow there, for very thin is the layer of grass-clad earth which covers the cemented arches. The rain runs off as from a tiled roof, and the weakest sun scorches the humus. Nevertheless, on the northern spur there is a squad of smallacacias with two or three stunted poplars, sheltering beneath their scanty shade a humble growth of mosses, dwarf gentians, scabiouses, and thyme.
When the réveillé sounds, before the fort is overrun by the other prisoners, I visit this little “grove.” The habit, somewhat undisciplined, is of recent growth. I have known my Thebaïd for two days only; I am there for the third time this morning to revive my memories, not of Ilium, but of Fontainebleau.
Fontainebleau!
Do you remember last May, during the week when the great poplars of the Allée Sully were scattering their down on the water of the pond? There was some of it in your hair the morning when I spoke to you. You looked straight in front of you, as in a vision. You were walking without saying a word, bending backwards, restraining the impatience of the enleashed Katia and Douchka.
In the evening we walked together on the fringe of the forest. The night was warm and fine, and the petals rained gently on us as we went. Our acacias were in flower. We looked at the moon through the slender network formed by their white clusters.
My poor Fontainebleau of Ingolstadt!
September 22, 1914.
There are more than a thousand of them squatting on the grass. The sun rages down on this quadrilateral, as big as the Place des Victoires, enclosed by the steep slopes of the scarp. Every one is nodding. The German flag and the Bavarian flag hang inertly along their twin staves. This frippery has been hoisted to celebrate the taking of ⸺. There is not a breath of wind. The heat is stifling. Sentinels pace to and fro. What is going on behind the forbidden slopes? Above the parapets crowned with flowers we can see nothing but the sky—a wide sky, barely blue. Some prisoners are chatting as they sit on a pyramid of grenades.
“How short our campaign was!” exclaims Sergeant Foch of the 10th Chasseurs, a fine fellow who seems modelled in bronze. His dark, golden-speckled eyes seem to devour you. He speaks harshly, and one feels that his wrath is intense. He spits out his phrases, with long intervals of silence.
“And all this happened through an idiot who ledus straight to Raon-l’Etape, a regular Boche ambush!…
“As for me, tonnerre de Dieu, I could not help thinking of our captain. Captain B.! He was a soldier, if you like—first man of his year in the Ecole de Guerre, certain to become a general. One day he showed us the photo of his children, seven children, all in a row. He had tears in his eyes. He was a man! He could do what he liked with us. He was brave and prudent, and we had nothing to do but to follow where he led. One felt safe with him. There was a man who knew how to take care of his company.
“I wish you’d seen what happened at Vallerystal! Such a rain of shells we had there. I counted five hundred on my own section alone. I lost my two chums there. One of them came from my own village, and he and I were like brothers—always together. All of a sudden there came a pig of a melinite shell. There was a hell of a noise and a lot of smoke. I was knocked out of time, bowled over and over. Then I got up and dusted myself. Absolutely unhurt! Oh, how that black smoke stank! And on either side of me my two chums, blown to bits, their guts bulging out all over the place. Cré nom de nom! My knapsack did me good service that time! It stopped a shell splinter which set the collar of my coat on fire behind. Just look.
“While this was going on, what do you think our captain was doing? He was walking quietlyup and down, pipe in mouth, in front of our rifles.
“‘Better lie down, captain,’ we said to him.
“‘What’s the use? One’s just as likely to be hit lying down as standing.’
“By the evening he had a wound in the head and a torn biceps. Do you think he left us on that account? His wounds were temporarily dressed.
“‘You must go to the field hospital,’ said the surgeon. But he did not go! There’s a fellow for you. If they were all like this B.…”
“Did it do well, your section?” asked Piétri, a red-haired sergeant-major, sturdy, with bloodshot eyes, a Corsican with the trick of staring you in the face, seeming to listen with his eyes, greedily, like a deaf man.
“Did they do well? I believe you! My reservists were splendid. ‘The beasts!’ they cried. They were spoiling for the fight; they clenched their fists. The 10th battalion was proverbial. ‘The men at Provenchères are devils,’ said the Boches; it was we.
“At the start it was like playing at soldiers. The Uhlans were coming on in little groups, their gloves spotless with pipeclay, wheeling to right and to left, as if on parade. Bram! Bram! Down goes one of them. The others perform a fantasia of retreat. We pursue. They dismount. I say to my men: ‘Lie down!’ Not a bit of it! They kneel to take better aim. ‘Fire!’ A lieutenant is killed; there are six dead or wounded. Another time, four Uhlans aretrotting quietly along the road, as if on scouting duty. ‘Fire!’ Ten shots: patrol gone! Yes, it was funny at first. One might have imagined oneself at the summer manœuvres. But from the 10th to the 25th, oh Lord! Nothing but artillery fire. It rained! It rained, I tell you!”
“Did you kill any Boches yourself?” asks big Corporal Durupt, compared in the 2nd to a buffalo’s head on a pikestaff. “In my section at Mesnil, near Senones, I handed my rifle to the bugler, a record shot. In a quarter of an hour, at two hundred yards, he brought down ten.”
“I did my share,” answers Foch. “But the shot of which I am proudest was one which I fired at twelve hundred yards, just for a lark, at a Uhlan patrol. There were three of them; I bowled one of them over. But I will tell you about a shot of which my old comrade Kaiser was especially proud. An Alsatian like myself. I always gave him his orders in German. I don’t know if he’s still alive. I have not seen him since August 25th, when we were under machine gun fire in Bertrichamps wood.
“In my section we had one odd sort of beast who was always in a blue funk. I kept him by my side as I led my section. The captain says to me: ‘Foch, see if you can’t stop this machine gun which is worrying us.’ Off we go, and soon the bullets are flying thickly. I meet an old territorial. He has his handkerchief pressed to a bleeding wound. I want to dress it for him. ‘No, no,’ he says, ‘don’t botherabout me. Go ahead with your brave fellows!’ All at once my trembler falls down, crying out:
“‘Mon Dieu! mon Dieu!’
“‘Are you wounded?’
“‘No, a sprain!’
“‘Don’t you try to gammon me; up with you!’ He gets up; he can walk all right. ‘You see,’ I tell him, ‘I beat God Himself. I’ve cured you in half a tick.’ But now, at two hundred yards, I see the German section with the machine gun. I fire, once, twice; I pick off two of them. Then, close at hand, on the right, appears a bunch of Germans. The devil! I call Kaiser, who is acting as my orderly. A Boche advances on him. ‘Look out!’ I cry. The Boche shoulders his rifle and fires. Down goes Kaiser. The Boche advances, but Kaiser is only shamming dead. Suddenly he rises on his knee. Bram! Head over heels goes the other, and Kaiser hurls himself on the Boche. ‘I’ve got him all right,’ he shouts, as pleased as Punch.
“The German squad retreats. My section sends them some parting shots. Two wounded Germans come to us, and I dress their wounds. One of them wants to kiss me, but I’m not having any.
“I say to my funker, ‘Get behind that little ridge. You will be close to me.’ I have hardly spoken when he begins to bleat: ‘Wounded! I am wounded! I’ve been shot in my behind. Let’s escape!’ Next minute, ‘Mon Dieu! hit again! Let’s escape!’ Two bullets in his behind; oh dear! He did not know what todo with himself; he had not enough hands to stop the holes. He let go of one leg in order to seize the other. We who looked on were screaming with laughter. I’ve never laughed so much in my life. And all this was under fire! Girard was laughing with the rest. Then, suddenly, ‘I am hit,’ he says; ‘lend a hand!’—‘You must wait a moment, old boy; the fire is too hot.’ The blood was pouring from his wound, making a lather like soapsuds. Two minutes later the bugle sounds ‘Cease firing.’ But they don’t want to cease firing. They simply will not stop. I have to get up and shout at them, to brandish my arms. At length they assemble around me. And here is my funker, who gets up quite easily, notwithstanding the two bullets in his behind. The firing continued from the German side, and the leaves were falling on us from the trees, for the aim was too high. We were able to withdraw with our eight wounded.
“Ah, it was a fine time, but oh, how tired I was! Had it not been for ⸺ I should have gone through the war till the last shot was fired. I no longer gave a thought to my wife or my children.”
September 23, 1914.
The useful furniture of our casemate consists of the following articles: a ewer, a dish, and a lamp. I say “the useful furniture,” for we have also an imposing iron stove, some heavy bars of iron to barricade the doors and windows, and two pieces of sheet iron about half an inch thick. But there is no table. There was one at first, but they took it away from us to furnish the chapel, where it serves as altar. As for chairs, benches, stools, there is nothing of the sort. Consequently a man who wishes to write, and who has never written except seated at a table, is not likely to feel thoroughly at home in casemate 17.
First I made myself a study out in the open, in a corner of the east court, on the steps of a little cement stairway in the slopes. I got some fine headaches there, sitting for hours in the sun without noticing it. But rainy weather having set in, it became necessary to seek shelter.
It is at this point that Dutrex intervenes in myprison life—Corporal Dutrex, of martial and elegant figure, a strange compound of the ingratiating characteristics of childhood and the energy of manhood. At Bièvre, in Belgium, when the village of Messin was burning, and when under the fire of machine guns our soldiers were effacing themselves in the furrows, Dutrex, ammunition bag on shoulder and cigarette in mouth, walked unconcernedly from one rifleman to another distributing packets of cartridges.
Arriving here with the first convoy on August 27th, his knowledge of German immediately led to his selection as interpreter to the commandant. By degrees he has become Major von Stengel’s right-hand man. I noticed the young fellow from the first. He is blond, with a long, fine moustache, with hair cut en brosse, thin, very erect. I remember that I felt a secret joy when I discovered that this simple corporal of the ⸺th occupied so important a position in the fort. It was pleasing that the German authorities should see France through the medium of this particular Frenchman. Too often have I had the misfortune to study the deficiencies of the official hierarchy, and the unanticipated revenge now taken by the natural hierarchy was agreeable to my reason.
To Dutrex, then, one wet and gloomy morning, in quest of shelter for my pen, I explained my difficulties. He knew myEcoutes, and we had been friends from the first. At noon he handed me the key of the double casemate, No. 55.
With the permission of the commandant he hasestablished a store here. From nine to ten daily, soap, slippers, brushes, blacking, string, and other little necessaries, are sold at cost price.
In this heroic place, a real ice-house, with walls of formidable thickness and screened windows, I spent a long afternoon. I fell ill at once in consequence. That very evening when I returned to No. 17 I was shaking with fever. It cost me a week on the straw. But I bear no grudge against No. 55. It secured me the exquisite luxury of a few hours’ isolation. I shall always think kindly of its strong and cold arches, of its chains for moving the garrison-guns, and of its sepulchral atmosphere, faintly perfumed with haberdashery. But I shall not renew my acquaintance with it, for I learn that the occupants of No. 70, who were being eaten alive by lice, have been transferred to 55. I commiserate them for having to make their choice between lice and rheumatism! As for Dutrex, his soap and other wares have been removed to No. 72, where the sun never enters.
I am now able to work in a warm and dry place, for yesterday, as honorary minister without portfolio, I entered what is spoken of as “the French governing body” of the fort.
Do you think these vain honours? Not at all, for they provide me with a table. To have table and lamp of one’s own, with many hours all to oneself for observation and reflection! In my view, free time is preferable to money. “Time is money,” say the English. I would rather say “Money is time.” It seems to me that the only object of working is to secure leisure.The man within us is formed by leisure. Work produces money, money produces leisure, and leisure produces more work—but this last is noble, lofty, and disinterested work, the true work of humanity. With me it is an article of faith that the true work of humanity is the work of leisure. Thank goodness I have now a little leisure and solitude.
My solitude, a very precarious one, is a kitchen. You must not laugh.
Near the door of the huge room is the region of the cooking stoves, encumbered, filled with iron and smoke, under the care of Bouquet, the “chef,” a delicate and gentle lad from Quercy. But beyond this plutonic zone you enter a spacious quadrilateral, which the cooks usually speak of as the “salon.” Two large windows looking to the south flood the place with light. It is fairly clean. The cemented floor is flushed down with water after the vegetables have been prepared, after the serving of each of the three meals, and, speaking generally, whenever there has been much coming and going. At the further end of this kitchen, between the two windows, there stands a table, a little deal table,thetable. M. Prudhomme would say: “This table, it is the heart of Fort Orff.” It is here, in fact, that is established, in almost continuous sitting (upon three deal stools), our ministerial council. Here we plan reforms. Here we elaborate details of organization. Here is regulated the entire internal life of the colony. It is here, finally, that by means of various stratagems we learn the news from outside.
This table, or to be precise, the left side of this table, is now mine. The deep mouth of the sink yawns just behind my stool on the floor level. As I work, my left arm touches the window-sill, on which I place my pipe, my mess-tin, my papers, and your photograph. Such is my kingdom. Here I read, write, and dream. Here thrice daily when meals are served I watch my brothers in captivity file by. Here I listen, and here I observe. Notwithstanding the buzz of talk, the trampling of those at work, and the smoke from the fire, I delight in this corner close to the cooking stoves. Upon our scanty regimen I have become as chilly as a cat. Besides, where else could I work?
Thus my life is divided between my “Fontainebleau of the slopes,” my stool in kitchen No. 22, and casemate 17. For I continue to sleep on my old heap of straw. It is nothing more than a derisory bed of dust, but I am more comfortable there than I was the first night. I am glad to say that my back is now covered with callus; my nose has become hardened; even my ears during the night are less sensitive than they were at first to the noises, now strident, now guttural, of the sleepers. At the outset, suffering from insomnia, I passed hour after hour, sickened by this frogs’ chorus. I longed to run away from it. I summoned sleep with all my might. Smile if you like, but I feel my faith in the human soul weaken when I contemplate a sleeping man whose mouth gapes and who snores like a great hog. The horrible stench which tainted the damp breeze at Moncourt, Lagarde, and Kerprich, rising fromthe putrefying corpses of men and beasts, was to my mind less strongly insistent of the animal relationships of man than is the slow, irregular rhythm, the dull and undignified noise, of snoring. But one gets used to everything. I have become accustomed to the snoring and to the yet more disagreeable incidents of our too intimate association. I hardly notice the foul smell of drains which permeates the passages of our ant-hill, and which made me feel positively faint on the evening of our arrival. Man is so greedy for happiness that he speedily becomes immunized against the toxin of his daily troubles. Day by day I am less keenly conscious of my miseries. At night, on my heap of dust, I often meditate upon this marvellous characteristic of our nature. Towards eleven, passing into a condition of gentle melancholy, I manage to get off to sleep between Sergeant Bertrand on one side, dreaming love dreams, and my terrible and dear Guido on the other—Guido, a prey to pessimism and insomnia, whose cigarette continues to glow in the darkness.
September 26, 1914.
Things are going badly with the Germans. Our guards may keep their mouths as tightly shut as they please, and may deprive us of newspapers, but despite our isolation we feel that things are going well for France.
There was a splendid sunrise. When I went out to greet you and the dawn upon our acacia slope, the cold was dry and sharp. The air had an agreeable aroma of fresh earth. It was a pleasure to let the eyes dwell upon the play of morning light across the open country. The cord on the flagstaff, now bearing no flag, shook in the wind and made a clicking sound as it struck the wood. For a moment from underground there came the sound of the bell rung at the elevation, a gentle, calm, and mysterious sound. It was the hour when Richeris and Guido are accustomed to serve mass for one another.
In the kitchen I found Corporal Durupt at breakfast. He stood with his back to the fire, poised askew on his heron’s legs, looking, as usual, as long and thin asa hop-pole. The co-minister of Dutrex had toasted a slice of black bread sprinkled with aniseed (bread which he detests), and, rocking to and fro a little, was moistening it in his bowl. Around him the great iron cauldrons, which had been taken down from the stoves ready for the distribution, were steaming like locomotive engines. He was drinking his coffee with a thoughtful air, one which gave him a lofty, conscientious, incorruptible aspect. When he saw me his large and trusty eyes sparkled. I detected a mischievous twinkle behind his glasses.
Instantly he began: “I havegrand’choseto tell you.” He is an Alsatian and has phrases peculiar to himself. In his vocabulary “grand’chose” means something of extreme importance. And for Durupt there is but one thing of real importance, and that is the extermination of Prussia.
He hates Germany with a hatred which has been a cult in the Durupt family for generations. He went to school at Mülhausen. He took part with the Alsatian boys in terrible fights with the German boys. Thus, in his case, hatred of the Teuton was in the first instance a suggestion of childhood. But this hatred has become envenomed by experience and mature reflection. At an age when the heart begins to devote itself to the work of life, he was subjected to the forcible, rough, relentless constraint imposed by the foreign master. The daily experience of “Germanization” had filled his kindly nature with gall against everything German.
“At Paris,” he says sometimes, “in the restaurants,in the post-offices, wherever I could, I plagued the life out of all the Boches who came my way!” On the banks of the Brusche, and especially at Saulxures, where the two sides were firing at one another haphazard in the fog, he killed furiously. Now, being a prisoner of war, and having neither rifle nor bayonet, he devotes himself to the endeavour to sow discouragement among the soldiers who guard us, considering that an army contaminated with discouragement is ripe for defeat.
Durupt is a thoroughly upright man. His everyday judgments and his ordinary actions recall the evangel of ’48 and the solid bourgeois virtues. He belongs to that undistinguished élite which forms the real backbone of every nation, the élite consisting of those who know how to speak the truth and to live for truth. Above all, he belongs to that France unknown to foreigners (although in it is concealed the secret of our marvellous resurrections), to that moral France which lies ever hidden beneath Gallic and frivolous France, producing, as times change, a St. Louis, a Calvin, a Saint-Cyran, a Pascal, a Lamennais, or a Fallot, men of a single colour, with consciences of iron, terrible to themselves, obedient to the point of heroism, and often scrupulous to the point of disease. Those I have named are generals of the army in which Durupt serves as a private.
He has a great love and admiration for his brother, Jacques Durupt, Goude’s antagonist at Brest in the last parliamentary elections, and, during the heroic timesof Marc Sangnier, leader of the Sillonist left in association with Gacmaling and Archambault.
Durupt himself lived on the confines of the Sillonist movement. Like all the readers ofDémocratieandNouvelle Journée, he has the republic and the Christian faith in his blood.
I esteem our “co-triumvir.” I find him a trifle too meticulous for my taste. He shows little interest in the witty and graceful sides of life. He has a tendency to emphasis, and is a little inclined to act the judge. He is fond of giving an exemplary flavour to his actions, and at times plumes himself somewhat when speaking of what he does. But his heart is as clear as crystal, utterly void alike of hypocrisy and malice. His whole life, at home and abroad, even in its most trifling details, is upright, controlled, deliberate.
A certain sympathetic pleasure attended my gradual discovery in this Catholic of the merits and defects characteristic of the Scottish puritan and of the French radical. Moral, practical, ardently patriotic, ingrained with the civic spirit, something of a preacher, without any change in his modes of thought or his personal habits he might well be regarded as a perfect disciple of Christophe Dieterlen, Fallot, or Frommel, and even of Charles Wagner, Paul Doumergue, or Wilfred Monod, the file-leaders in France of reformed Catholicism.
Everywhere, fortunately, men remain men. Protestants have the Catholic spirit and Catholics have the Protestant spirit. Individual psychology laughsat doctrinal oppositions. Throughout the entire human race, temperaments and characters develop, underground, their indestructible stratifications, regardless of the walls built on the surface by the leaders of men, walls which these leaders, with their imperious will, imagine to be durable.
Durupt devotes to the indulgence of his national hatred the whole of that conscience which his Christianity (quasi-jansenist in type) has produced in him. He hates as a duty. He injures as a duty. How can he injure the Germans now that he is at their mercy? By demoralizing their men! Having an excellent knowledge of German, he has made it his mission at Fort Orff to prove by a + b to our successive relays of guards—Landwehr men on their way to the frontier, or men wounded in the first onslaught and now returning cured to the firing-line—that Germany is beaten in advance.
He arrived here on August 30th, three days after Dutrex, and the whole of Germany in the fort, from the commissariat captain down to the lastGemeiner(the commandant, whose conduct towards us has throughout been a model of courtesy, always excepted), set to work forthwith to din into his ears, “Pariskaput”—literally translated, “Paris pulverized.” For a whole fortnight this was the refrain. When the quartermaster, an ill-natured beast, stupid and uncouth, came down to the kitchens, his way of saying good-day was to laugh maliciously as he announced a newkaput: Verdunkaput; Rheimskaput; Manonvillerkaput! Even theVerpflegsoffizier, Captain Friedrich Wilhelm Weidner, of the Prinz Ludwig regiment, a Nuremberg merchant with a lofty air, very erect, much mustachioed, with frank blue eyes, did not disdain, from time to time, to unfold ostentatiously among the stoves, under the noses of Dutrex and Durupt, copies of theNürnberger Zeitungand theMünchener Neueste Nachrichtenwith headlines screaming victory.
These were their happy days. The gateway leading to the open was black on Sundays with a gaping crowd: townsfolk in their Sunday best, wearing cocks’ feathers in their green felt hats; rich farmers’ wives trying to look comfortable in hats; swarms of children, for the most part bare-footed; peasants in ill-fitting ready-made clothes; pathetic village dames, clad as in Dürer’s pictures, the head covered with a kerchief, a black fichu over the shoulders, a wadded corsage to fill out their figures. All these idlers, looking poverty stricken when compared with those of like class in France, would spend hour after hour staring at the “pantalons rouges,” occasionally shouting through the bars their eternal “Pariskaput,” the cry which had been reiterated from Dieuze to Strasburg, from Stuttgart to Ingolstadt, and with which our ears had been ringing since our capture.
This foolish jubilation exasperated Durupt. He kept quiet about it for some days. At length, however, having recovered his spirits, he threw himself heart and soul into the task of keeping up our hopes.
“It is absolutely impossible that we can be beaten,” hewould say to the preachers of evil. “Agreed, their advance guards are at Rheims, Meaux, and Compiègne. But does this mean that Paris has been taken? What about the naval guns with which the Government has filled the forts? Make your minds easy; they will lose much time and much blood before they will plant their standard on the Place de la Concorde! Let us suppose the worst. Let us suppose that Paris has fallen. Does that finish the matter? Remember Chanzy’s plan. In his view, the strategic bastion of France is not Paris but the Massif Central, the Auvergne and Cévennes mountains. Let them make their way, then, to Clermont-Ferrand and Aurillac! Besides, we are not fighting single-handed. The Russian waterspout is getting ready, and will soon break over them; it will make short work of their five poor army corps. Its waters will dash on to Berlin. The floods will chase their navy out of the Kiel Canal, will force it into the North Sea—where the English dreadnoughts are awaiting it, and will swallow it at one gulp!”
The least enthusiastic among the prisoners were enraptured at these speeches. Sometimes a voice would be heard saying, “Even so, we shall be here till the spring!” To which Durupt would peremptorily reply: “All Saints’ Day will find us at home! I know Germany as I know the palm of my hand. The country is penniless. Moreover, it is not with France alone, this time, that Germany has to do; she has to fight France, Belgium, England, and Russia—thatocean of humanity. You must be mad, I tell you, if you do not feel that Germany is going to be wiped out!”
In these surroundings, Durupt is the man with a duty, a mission. Though he is a prisoner, every hour is fully occupied, each moment has its allotted task. His life is governed by a single rule: “Every day in which we fail to enlarge our own hopes and to spread discouragement among the Germans is a day lost.” Consequently, the essential matter for him is to secure news.
The instant he has finished his supervision of the distribution of our meals and his work in casemate 16, off he goes on the hunt. He accosts Max, the canteen-keeper, the mightiest beer-drinker on the Upper Danube, a light-hearted soldier, florid, paunchy, so rough that he laughs when he tells you that in the Vosges a French shrapnel has just taken off his brother’s arm, and yet, though rough, a good fellow. It is from him that Durupt learns the gossip in theWirtschaftenof Hepperg, Lenting, Kösching, Wegstätten, Oberhaumstadt—in a word, in all the village taverns within reach of the fort, both on the hills and in the plain. Having finished with Max, he proceeds to pump the guard.
Here his reception is rather cold, for he is a poor diplomatist, and shows too plainly to these men of the Landwehr that at bottom he is their hereditary enemy. Still, he has a talk in the guardroom, smokes a cigar, and drinks a glass of beer with the men,exchangingProsits. Sometimes he sees on the table, amid the beer-jugs and other debris of the meal, a newspaper which they have forgotten to put away when the Frenchman came in. My Durupt pounces upon it and stuffs it into his pocket. He strides across the bridge, hurries down the staircase, and bursts into the kitchen, breathless and radiant, with the air of a victorious athlete or a hero who has saved the republic, and brandishes his paper as if it were a flag taken from the enemy. Now he reads it, translates and comments, with exclamations of joy or of rage at the passages which delight or infuriate him. He actually talks, argues, and fights with this newspaper; he regards it as a flesh and blood Bavarian who is trying to deceive him, and with whom he has to join issue. Woe to the Bavarian if he does not admit defeat, or at least disquietude, for he will then learn to what lengths Durupt can go in his anger!
Never shall I forget these readings of theIngolstädter Zeitung. If I am ever tempted to doubt that the press exercises a terrible power, that its influence upon the public resembles that of a shell bursting in a cavalry square, I shall call to mind certain hours of imprisonment here, passed round our table, Durupt reading aloud, Dutrex and I sketching maps to clarify the news, while leaning over our shoulders, anxiously following us, are Paix, Scherrer, Badoy, Noverraz, Donel, Lagier, and a few others. When we break up in the evening we know what will be the public sentiment next day. According as Durupt is able to singa triumphal pæan, or, on the other hand, the evidence of misfortune is overwhelming, will our thousand comrades be light-hearted or sad, will hope or despair permeate the fort from this centre, from this table, from the newspaper on this table, from the group of men who sit round it evening after evening.
Sometimes Durupt, returning to the kitchen excited by the chase, is pulled up by the notice I have posted for the protection of my work: “Please do not speak to me.” He then sits down beside me without saying a word and unfolds the newspaper he has got hold of. Elbows on table, head in hands, his whole body bent eagerly forward, Claudel would say he is engaged on the “ingurgitation” of his paper.
Look at him, dissecting the leading article, heavy fare in which the most trifling details of information are sandwiched between philosophical disquisitions. He turns the fragments over and over as a starving man turns over the contents of a dustbin. He labours to unveil hidden meanings, to detect masked avowals. He displays a truly German patience in securing here and there,rari nantes in gurgite vasto, the name of a town, the number of an army corps, or some other shadow of positive information.
Then he brings forth his maps, which are shabby in appearance, worn at the folds, stained by the rain and sweat of his campaign in the Upper Vosges. He takes out his pencil. He marks the places. At length, unable to restrain himself any longer, he feels that he must tell me what has happened. He turns myprotective notice with its face to the wall, and starts upon his commentary.
The splendid thing is that this commentary invariably leads up to the proof of a victory. For him every French retreat is a strategic movement, while every German retreat is a rout. All good news is positively certain; all bad news is a falsehood published to restore the courage of the German populace. Guided by these principles of criticism, he arrives at a certainty of the truth; he then cons it over to himself, gives it a portable form, and hurries off to disseminate it through the fort. He bursts into No. 19, where Merlier, Charlier, and Gautin receive him as an angel of the Lord; into No. 17, where his enthusiasm breaks vainly against the obstinate and disdainful pessimism of Guido; into No. 34, where Brissot and d’Arnoult, two mischievous devils who are equally well acquainted with German and with the beer served out to the guardroom, treat him simply as a gossip. Unfortunately, in the course of his round he will encounter, now the quartermaster, now aGefreiter, now one of the sentinels. Remorselessly he overwhelms them with his news, thus making himself more unpopular with them than before.
Thus he takes ample revenge for the “Pariskaput” of the first few days. Dutrex and I chaff him about it, saying: “You’re behaving like a Boche in being so regardless of your adversaries’ feelings!”
“Poor fellows,” he makes answer, “it is obvious that you don’t know the Germans. As far as they areconcerned the proverb is absolutely true: ‘Oignez vilain, il vous poindra; poignez vilain, il vous oigndra!’”[12]
I was walking the other day with Durupt and Sergeant Foch. We were on the little footpath which runs along the parapet, and opposite to us, across the great ditch, on the road which skirts the outer slopes, there appeared two German women. They were walking slowly, wheeling bicycles, and they looked at us curiously. We mended our gait, for no one likes to look unhappy under the eyes of the enemy.
Durupt spoke to them in German.
“Have you a newspaper?”
“No.”
“What’s the latest news?”
“Things are going well in France.”
“For which side?”
“For ours. Trainloads of wounded are coming back every day.”
“Your wounded?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, it is for our side that things are going well!”
“Possibly.”
These women had such fat bodies and short legs as to produce an impression of caricature. Sergeant Foch, Alsatian and infantry chasseur, has a malicious wit. He was cogitating a joke, but I managed to induce him to suppress it.
We walked on slowly, talking across the ditch, and the women said:
“You treat our prisoners badly, and you finish off the wounded!”
“Who told you that?”
“It’s in the papers.”
“All your papers lie, and you are stupid enough to believe them. It is just the same with the war news. You are beaten everywhere. It’s perfectly clear to any one who can read intelligently. Yet you believe yourselves to be the victors! The newspapers take their readers to be idiots. Is it possible that they are right? The real fact is that we are starved here, whilst in France, where people are rich and generous, your prisoners are fed on the fat of the land!”
“It may be so. But it was those rascals of English who caused all the trouble. If only I had them here!” (the larger woman shook her fist). “The English are the apaches of Europe (die Lumpen Europas)!”
Thus the conversation began. It must have lasted about half an hour. The conscientious Durupt “sowed discouragement” in the minds of his interlocutors, refusing to leave them until he felt that their confidence in victory had been undermined.