With these words he began to throw the condemned straw by handfuls between the two stones of his fireplace. What a smoke it made! From time to time, with his hard and black fingers he lifted the scorching lid of the mess-tin, saying, “Just look at this rat, it’s as large as a guinea-pig!” Licking the stick with which he had been stirring his stew, he exclaimed: “I assure you this will be excellent. The dash of fish gives it a rare flavour!”—“But tell me,” I said, “what use do you make of the Münster cheese-rind? The comrades have told me that you collect it from them.”—“I put it in my bowl when I go for my ration of coffee. It melts in the hot liquid. I give a stir, and then I have coffee with cream. It beats caramel. If Brissot knew that, I bet you he’d keep the rind for himself!”
Since yesterday, Brissot has been extremely put out. Germany is short of men, and all the physically unfit have orders to present themselves for re-examination. Upon receipt of his notice, Georg trembled. Providing himself with a pair of large spectacles, he set out for Ingolstadt. To gain the double end of having a good time and of making himself look sickly, he went on the spree. It was of no avail; he was declaredfeldtauglich, fit for active service.
Yesterday the commandant, walking between M. Langlois and me, observed: “MyDienerhas not comeback yet from Ingolstadt. He is a good boy, but he sometimes takes extraordinary ideas into his head. The other day he asked my permission to present his sister to me. I agreed, and gave him an afternoon’s leave to go and fetch her. I did not see him again for three days. When he returned, he acknowledged that his ‘sister’ was a lady-love from Ratisbon whom he was pining to see, and for whose journey he had paid. This time I have sent him before the medical board, and he has been away for two days! He is an excellent servant, but he has odd ways.” Baron von Stengel laughed. I made answer: “Herr Major, yourBurschseems to me a smart man, lively and intelligent, and of imposing appearance. I would rather be served by a clean and ready-witted rogue than by a virtuous dullard.”—“I am quite of your opinion, monsieur Riou.”
Georg did not turn up until this morning. I was working at the “ministerial” table. The eight cauldrons were steaming fiercely. The kitchen was filled with vapour, so that I could hardly see what I was writing. Suddenly some one tapped me on the shoulder. I turned round, to find Brissot, accompanied by Georg. I shook them both by the hand.
“Felduntauglich?” (Ineligible?)
“Nein! Donnerwetter!”
“Georg wants you to do him a service,” said Brissot. “Will you translate for him this letter to the French medical officers?”
I drew a sheet of paper from my haversack. Withoutstudying the contents of the petition as a whole, I translated it phrase by phrase, almost word for word. This is what I wrote:
“Honoured Comrades,—“In an unexpected manner, has struck the hour which summons me to fight for my king and country. Like all of you, I must do my duty; and, like all of you, it is possible that in a short time I shall find myself in France (sic) as a prisoner of war. If I encounter there men having like sentiments with myself, I shall have no fears for the future. As far as I have been able, I have fulfilled towards you and your comrades the duty of loving one’s neighbour.“An old proverb says: ‘What you do to me, I will do to you!’ I trust that you also, honoured comrades, will take this proverb to heart.“I am a poor soldier who was orphaned in early childhood, and who, from the age of eight upwards, had to live among strangers.“From my sixteenth to my twenty-fourth year I have been a wanderer in the world, and my experiences have been mingled of good and evil.“You will excuse me, honoured comrades, if I now venture to make a request.“Among your colleagues there must be some in a position to do me a good turn.“I beg the officers to allow a little collection to be made, and shall be eternally grateful for this permission.“Awaiting your favours, I remain, the most devoted of your comrades,“Georg Doppel.“PS.—I had some conversation yesterday with the principal medical officer of the Ingolstadt hospital. He informed me that there would be a continual exchange of medical officers and of the personnel of the French medical department with German prisoners.”
“Honoured Comrades,—
“In an unexpected manner, has struck the hour which summons me to fight for my king and country. Like all of you, I must do my duty; and, like all of you, it is possible that in a short time I shall find myself in France (sic) as a prisoner of war. If I encounter there men having like sentiments with myself, I shall have no fears for the future. As far as I have been able, I have fulfilled towards you and your comrades the duty of loving one’s neighbour.
“An old proverb says: ‘What you do to me, I will do to you!’ I trust that you also, honoured comrades, will take this proverb to heart.
“I am a poor soldier who was orphaned in early childhood, and who, from the age of eight upwards, had to live among strangers.
“From my sixteenth to my twenty-fourth year I have been a wanderer in the world, and my experiences have been mingled of good and evil.
“You will excuse me, honoured comrades, if I now venture to make a request.
“Among your colleagues there must be some in a position to do me a good turn.
“I beg the officers to allow a little collection to be made, and shall be eternally grateful for this permission.
“Awaiting your favours, I remain, the most devoted of your comrades,
“Georg Doppel.
“PS.—I had some conversation yesterday with the principal medical officer of the Ingolstadt hospital. He informed me that there would be a continual exchange of medical officers and of the personnel of the French medical department with German prisoners.”
Without comment, I handed the letter to Brissot, who then said: “Georg also wants you to give him a letter of introduction to the principal medical officer.” It is a weakness of mine that I cannot say “no,” and I therefore promptly wrote this note:
“Monsieur le Médecin-chef,—“M. Georg Doppel has begged me to translate the accompanying petition, and to give him a letter of introduction to you. In my humble opinion, he has rendered services [I should have liked to add the words ‘extremely onerous’] to many of our comrades. For my own part, I shall gladly contribute to a collection, if you think it well to permit one.“Your affectionate soldier,“Gaston Riou.”
“Monsieur le Médecin-chef,—
“M. Georg Doppel has begged me to translate the accompanying petition, and to give him a letter of introduction to you. In my humble opinion, he has rendered services [I should have liked to add the words ‘extremely onerous’] to many of our comrades. For my own part, I shall gladly contribute to a collection, if you think it well to permit one.
“Your affectionate soldier,
“Gaston Riou.”
In a very few minutes, M. Langlois arrived. “Here’s a funny business!” he cried, laughing with his mischievous eyes and all his fat and benevolent little body. “This letter of Doppel’s is a pearl! I shall treasure it.And the Parthian shaft-the postscript promising my own release! Doppel is really a most amusing rascal.”
“And what are you going to do, monsieur le Médecin-chef? Are you going to allow the collection?
“Certainly not. Hasn’t he fleeced us enough already? He ought to have put something by.”
“No doubt. But he never thought they would send him to the front. He imagined that he would be able to go on luxuriating at our expense in the neighbouring villages, living like a lord, until the end of the war. The fact is, he is pretty well cleared out!”
“Don’t you worry. I’ve been able to make his mind easy. I have just given him a general letter of introduction to the French officers. If you had seen him unbuttoning his tunic and putting away my letter in the pocket of his shirt as if it had been a scapular! To be a prisoner in France will be like heaven to him. I am sure that I have deprived Germany of a rifle.”
Poor Georg! Poor Bavarian Gil Blas! You are of those who come to terms frankly with their prejudices and their appetites. The service of king, country, and religion; the precepts of morality: he has never had any thought of violating these sacred things. He allows them to float vaguely in his heaven and to widen the horizon of his thought, remote images which it is obvious that people love, familiar lineaments of the region in which he is accustomed to live. The idea has never entered his mind to declare that the idols of his nation are false gods. He endeavours to humbug them,but he believes in them. He is no scoundrel. He lacks the unalloyed selfishness, the whole-hearted scepticism, characteristic of the thoroughgoing knave, the successful brigand, the true diplomatist and dealer in men. His actions are unscrupulous, not so his thoughts.
Hedonist, scapegrace, having at bottom the heart of a child, indifferently adapting his practice to his beliefs or his beliefs to his practice, he reveres in good faith, like most Germans, virtue, honour, religion, the prince. With the grandiloquence natural to his race, he embellishes in his own mind the most trifling of his private machinations.
A little while ago, a French comrade asked him to pay a debt. He frowned, drew himself up, and assumed an offended air. Turning to d’Arnoult, who was passing at the time, he said:
“When I think of the way in which, scorning the risk of death, I have provided him with goods, how I have hazarded my life again and again to bring him tobacco, and that he now dares, in your presence, to insult me by asking for this paltry sum of twenty-four marks! I punish such a man with my contempt.”
“Oh,” answered d’Arnoult commiseratingly, “don’t rub it in. You have punished him enough already!”
Georg has a soaring imagination. He loves the great and the impressive, that which breathes order and power. He loves his commanding officer. He loves the royal army. He loves his uniform. He loves that civilians should tremble before him. He loves to beadmired. He loves to make a heroic figure in the world. After one of our casual feasts, when Brissot asks him to sing some Munich songs, he reserves always for the tit-bit certain verses which he declares he wrote himself in praise of one of his numerousGeliebten. We gather that in the village of Hepperg alone six women are madly in love with him—the burgomaster’s wife, the schoolmaster’s wife and sister, the wives of both the grocers, and the belle of the countryside. “The seven nights of the week,” he gravely assures us, “hardly suffice.” Whereupon, this Don Juan removes his cap and takes a small collection from the guests. He is so expert a liar that I suspect him of being the first victim of his own romances. Every one knows him to befelduntauglich, a man unfit for active service. But this is no hindrance to his having taken part in the battle of Dieuze and to his having been wounded there by a French bullet! He bares his chest and makes you touch the scar. Tarascon is situated much further to the north than most people imagine.
On All Souls’ Day we went to the Ingolstadt cemetery. Détry and I carried the wreath. Half hidden by the leafy garlands, tied with the French colours, we set the pace firmly through the Theresienstrasse, which was packed with townsmen come to stare at us, almost all in mourning—old men, women, wounded soldiers on leave, and a noisy rout of children. There were no hostile cries, as there had been two months earlier. Some of the onlookers uncovered as we passed; the children loudly demanded buttons as souvenirs,cryingKnopf,Knopf, in a manner that was not at all bellicose. We went at the quick march, eyes front, knowing well that we, the prisoners, were the victors.
Our squad had a fine appearance. We had selected the best-looking and tidiest of our men. Three of our medical officers, MM. Jeandidier of Longwy, Romant of Marseilles, and Bouvat of Ardèche, sturdy figures all, marched at the head, immediately behind the wreath. Eight Bavarians with fixed bayonets escorted us. Lacking their spiked helmets, which they had been compelled to hand over to men in the fighting-line, still with the countryman’s slouch, for drill had not yet had time to take effect, their stiff legs finding it difficult to accommodate themselves to our brisk French pace, these peasant farmers and agricultural labourers made a poor show. This also gave us pleasure. Among these good Swabians, our feelings were much like those of the Athenians in Bœotia.
But Georg, who marches at my left as a supernumerary, wears a helmet. Dapper, authoritative, disdainfully chiding his compatriots, he feels that his mere presence serves to atone for the humble and awkward bucolicism of the escort. At the cemetery he uncovers; he marshals us around the sixty French graves. He follows the Latin prayers with a thoughtful air. When, in accordance with a suggestion made by M. Langlois, we then go to pray beside the graves of the German soldiers, his eyes are moist. He remains dignified.
When the commemoration is over, and when, the restof the little troop having started back for the fort, the three medical officers, with Durupt, Détry, and myself, go for a walk through the town under Georg’s supervision, he suddenly declares himself in a great hurry to return.
“By the commandant-major’s orders we must be at Orff for dinner!”
“But it is only four o’clock!”
“We’ve a long way to walk.”
“Anyhow, by the commandant-major’s orders we have to go to the bank, the bookseller, the tailor, and the surgical instrument maker.”
“Order? It is not an order. You can hardly call it a permission!”
“Never mind.”
So we go to the Königliche Bayerische Bank, where, in exchange for good French gold, we receive packets of one mark notes; to the military tailor, who, with the assistance of a plump and smiling wife, does his best to find for us among the German reds one that sufficiently resembles our scarlet; to the bookseller, whose window is beplastered with picture postcards of Zeppelins flying over the Place de l’Opéra, of battles, of soldiers in the death agony thinking of their fiancées (figured in the corner of the card haloed in shining clouds); to the surgical instrument maker, where Détry, our dentist, is careful not to supply all his needs on this occasion, desiring an excuse for another visit to the town.
The boot-polisher hustles us on. Here we are in the street, three in front, three behind, flanked by Georg’s bayonet.
All at once, seeing a pastrycook’s window, with a grand display of buns and tarts beneath the lamps, with one impulse, without stopping to parley, we hurl ourselves, all six, into theConditorei. Georg invokes all the devils of hell, but follows us. “Mange,” says Détry to him, forcing him to sit down at a table loaded with custard tartlets and éclairs. And we, who have been craving for sweet things for months, begin to devour all that comes to our hands. Trembling with concupiscence, I go to the counter, I take the mistress by the hand, and, my mouth full, say to her: “Madame, you will be an angel if you can get me two pounds of butter!” She does not sell butter, but a mother is never able to resist the cry of a child, and she lets me have her own butter. “I can buy some more,” she says with a smile. I open the show-cases: “Hullo, Suchard! How much this pile?” She names the price. “There you are.” Then I spy some little sponge-cakes coated with sugar. In a trice I have filled my haversack, which I carry beneath my coat. Big-bellied as a Bavarian, I am unable to rebutton.
“Vorwärts!” cries Georg, stuffed with good things. We pay our shot. Leaving the pastrycook’s we overwhelm our gaoler with prayers: “Do let us go to the ham and beef shop, to the tobacconist.…”—“It’s absolutely impossible,” he cries. In reality, he dreads losing his commission! He marches on at a terrible rate, kicking out of the way, driving out of the way with the butt end of his musket, the escorting rabble of children. It is only two young girls of really charmingappearance, ten or twelve years of age, who walked by my side on the way to the cemetery and to whom I said, “I have sisters of your age who are like you,” that continue to accompany me, notwithstanding the roughness of theBursch. We talk like old friends. They leave us at the wicket of the cavalry barracks, with a parting “Grüss Gott, Herr Franzose!”
My companions are still arguing with Georg. “It won’t take a minute to buy a dozen packets of tobacco and a string of sausages!” The innocents! They reason with Georg. Durupt especially, who is eloquent in the Teutonic tongue, surpasses himself. “To be at the source of all good things and not to drink from it! To pass stupidly by!”—“Ne, ne,” theBurschgrowls continually. Now we are traversing badly lighted streets. We make our way through the suburbs, and beyond the station we reach the dull country on the outskirts of the town.
“Old fellow,” says Détry to Durupt, “we are greatly indebted to you. With all your German, you have not been smart enough to get us the smallest of sausages, a single pipefull of tobacco! It is obvious, O Durupt the Just, that you do not know the only language in which it is possible to persuade Georg!”
We are about to reach a tavern. Détry, who does not know a word of German, lays a hand on the orderly’s shoulder. Abstracting Georg’s hat, he puts it on his own head and decorates the Bavarian with the French képi. Georg beams! Then Détry shakes him vigorously by the hand, saying: “Tiens, mon poteau! voilàpour graisser ta sale patte.”[25]Georg does not understand French, but he understands very well that he has two marks in his hand. Arm in arm, the two comrades lead the way. In front of the inn, Détry loudly calls, “Bier, Bier!” The innkeeper comes forth, wearing a military uniform. All smiles, he invites us to enter. We place two mugs in the hands of Georg and lay before him a plate of steaming sausages. In this rig, with his rifle and fixed bayonet against his shoulder, he is irresistible. I make the tour of theWirtschaftand discover a number of plates charged with slices of cold meats ready for a battalion which is about to pass on its way to the Russian front. “How much,gnädige Frau?”—“Fifty pfennig a plate.”
What a dinner we ate! It was not a varied menu, but quantity made up for everything. The joy of it! You who have never been hungry, you who have never been rationed, cannot understand how it is that there is no delight in the world greater than that of finding oneself, after three months’ imprisonment, in front of plates filled with sausage, salad of ox muzzle, and gherkins. TheWirthad a swarm of children. We treated the children. We overwhelmed them with pfennig. We paid the most polite compliments to thegnädige Frau Wirtin.
Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein,Bei einer Frau Wirtin da kehrten sie ein.…
Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein,Bei einer Frau Wirtin da kehrten sie ein.…
Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein,Bei einer Frau Wirtin da kehrten sie ein.…
Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein,
Bei einer Frau Wirtin da kehrten sie ein.…
We were intoxicated, not with beer, but with the feeling of plenty. We ordered cigars. “Have you boxes of cigars?”—“Here you are.”—“How much?”—“And this cluster of sausages? Can I buy them? How much?” We made a clean sweep. Georg continued to eat and to drink, amid a rain of friendly smiles and pats on the back. All of us being thoroughly replete, we resumed our journey. There was a thick fog. Two companies of the Bavarian battalion in full marching kit, on the way to entrain, met us. They went by, walking heavily, without a word. We were singing.
Détry made Georg repeat some French phrases:
“Mademoiselle, voulez-vous tanser?”
“Non, môssieu,ch’ai mal au pied.”
Master and pupil kicked up their legs in unison. We held our sides with laughter. To tell the truth, this unwonted good cheer had turned our heads a little.
Détry was pelting Durupt with gibes. “Old Aristides the Just, you will never know how to manage men. Georg is like all the Bavarians in our guard—he thinks first of all of his own skin, and next he likes to enjoy himself. Don’t you talk to me about German honour and German virtue. These fellows are very fond of sonorous phrases, but they can’t resist a modest tip!” No doubt Détry was exaggerating a little.
Georg is no longer gay. Closed, alas, his Fort Orff campaign, his campaign of junketings and sensual enjoyments. Now he is to have a taste of real war. Poor Georg, if only his imaginary wound of Dieuzecould suffice. Certainly he loves German “glory,” German “virtue.” Certainly he loves his king. But he loves just as much to be cock of the walk in the villages, with the aid of French money! He loves the fatherland and military displays. But he loves also to feed well and to lie warm. He is fond of so many things that he always chooses the nearest and the easiest, and his actions are invariably dictated by opportunity.
Now he is to go to the firing-line. In a few days he will be rotting in the trenches, his boots sticking fast in the clay. Despite the best will in the world, he may be laid low by a bullet before he has found a favourable opportunity of getting himself safely taken prisoner by the French. His name will then appear in the lists among those of the heroes who have fallen on the field of honour. Such is life!
But how will my dear little Brissot manage in future to procure chocolate and Baltic herrings?
November 13, 1914.
On Sunday, Baron von Stengel went to the Palatinate to buy horses for the artillery. He returned yesterday evening, after an absence of five days, looking a little thinner, his eyes weeping from a cold in the head. The weather in the transrhenish province had been wintry. The railway service was irregular, so he was compelled to make use of an open motor. During the first snows he had to drive about the country visiting horse-dealers. He is seventy years of age.
He has just been walking up and down with us, and recounting to us the incidents of this unexpected journey. “I tired myself out to no advantage,” he said. “Horses are becoming rare with us, almost as rare as louis d’or. You have Algeria, Boulonnais, the region round Tarbes, and the splendid horse-breeding centre of Huysne. We have nothing of the kind. The question of remounts is becoming serious. It has been difficult to buy even a few horses in the Palatinate. Sorry screws, and dear at that! The peasants askedfrom two to three thousand marks for horses worth eight hundred at the outside.”
Our commandant is very tall and upright, with a finely cut jaw, and a round flat beard like the knights in the days of Maximilian of Austria. His manners are above criticism. His natural dignity is relieved by a genial expression of countenance.
He has the equable temper and regulated life of a sage. Precise but never punctilious, he fulfils here the duties of postmaster, money-changer, censor of correspondence, headmaster, major-domo—and does it all without irritability and without giving the impression that he is lowering himself in any way. In his bold, firm, regular, almost heraldic handwriting, he registers the arrival and departure of letters; he enters in the account-book payments we make for haberdashery; he keeps memoranda of the interminable series of money-orders. He works deliberately, making neat rows of figures, using a ruler whenever he wishes to draw a line, and taking great care not to ink his long white fingers or to make blots on the large folios of ministerial paper. There is not a speck of dust on his writing-table; everything is neatly laid out in squares, as in a French garden. Behind him, on the top of the closed wash-hand stand, a lemon, cut in two exactly equal halves, a loaf of ration bread, cut with precision, and a glass of fresh water, combine to form a picture as definite and sober as a scene of still life by Chardin. The casemate is well-lighted, vast, and inkeeping with its tenant. A narrow iron bedstead, a trunk, a clothes-hanger upon which are seen aMütze, a long grey cape, and a sword; two deal tables standing end to end, one for himself and the other for d’Arnoult, his secretary; a small dressing-table, three chairs—this comprises all the furniture. In this formal, cold, geometrical environment sits the huge man (much too large for his table, so that his arms and legs are cramped), writing all day.
Humble work, well within the capacity of any honest “swivel-officer” of the reserve. But Baron von Stengel, bending his long back to it, infusing it with his air of refinement, stamps it with an almost hieratic character. It is possible that he would prefer to be in command of a park of artillery upon the Warthe or upon the Ypres canal. Perhaps he envies his two sons, captains in the army of Lorraine, who have just announced to him almost simultaneously the receipt of the iron cross. But this much is certain, that it is not without sadness that he recalls the last war.
He thinks of the 1870 campaign, which, asOberleutnant, he spent at Ulm, employed, as to-day, in guarding prisoners. He thinks of his young colleagues of those days, of the interminable conversations when they were all intoxicated with the glorious news that streamed in, the news of Wörth, Borny, Gravelotte, Metz, and Sedan. He recalls the ardency of those years, and the cheerful noise of his steps as he walked beside the Danube in the beautiful night-time. He remembers seeing in the river the reflection of thecathedral spire, graceful and ornate, a silent witness of the ancient German glories then renascent—victory, love.
He was an old man when the new call to arms came. Nevertheless he offered his services to King Louis; though a septuagenarian, he begged to be allowed to help. Hence he is at Fort Orff. To one who watches him at work, censoring our letters, doing our little banking business, fulfilling the thousand and one trifling duties of his office, it is obvious that he is performing a rite, the great rite of patriotism.
Although hungry men are seldom just, I have never heard any of the prisoners utter a single ill-natured word about the commandant. As he walks with slow gait along the parapet, every one salutes him with manifest goodwill. White-headed, wearing an ample grey cloak falling in straight folds, he looks like a patriarch of ancient days visiting his faithful tribe. He wields authority so naturally, and is so free from hauteur, that no one dreams of murmuring. He has worked the miracle of uniting in a sentiment of respect for his personality all the inhabitants of this little France of Fort Orff, this miniature of great France, the factious and ungovernable nation, the nation of eternal discontent. He is so obviously straightforward and humane that the most savage of our prisoners would protest if any one, suddenly seized by an evil whimsy, should desire to make this good old man of the great century responsible for our short commons.
The major in command at headquarters in Ingolstadt, on the other hand, who must be a jingo of themost pronounced type, is prodigal of petty vexations. He forbids tobacco, chocolate, and sugar, “articles of luxury.” He forbids the foundation of a canteen; he forbids the receipt of more than ten marks at a time, and the writing of more than one letter every ten days; he forbids pen and ink; he forbids access to the escarp and to the summit of the slopes, doubtless considering the view too beautiful for prisoners of war. He issues orders that the sentinels shall fire without challenge upon any who break his rules, and it was owing to this that Georg, being taken for a Frenchman, was shot at one evening in the gloaming. Every day a newVerbotenis issued.
Amid this maze of prohibitions, our life would be a torture but for Baron von Stengel. Discreet and tactful as he is, those among us who come into close contact with him know with how much disgust, with how much suppressed annoyance, he receives these vexatious orders. He carries them out, being too good a soldier to disobey. But, too good a soldier to misuse soldiers, too much of a gentleman to treat as galley-slaves combatants seamed with wounds, holy priests, red cross men who have received their baptism of fire, he often carries out his orders in a way which is tantamount to a generous evasion.
He is an adept in the art of humanizing his agents, theFeldwebeland the soldiers of the Bavarian guard. Unfortunately these are changed every week, and every week therefore he has to begin this civilizing task anew. The men come to us white hot from reading the newspapers,in savage mood—“duty, duty.” For two days the fort is an inferno. Then everything returns to order—not German order, but our own. Their zeal is mitigated when they take note of the way in which the commandant treats us. Our hail-fellow-well-met air, our good-humoured cheek, do the rest. The soldiers are tamed. Soon they cease to guard us; they contemplate us, and take part in our life. There they stand, with fixed bayonets, somewhat nonplussed and puzzled, almost timid, abashed as it were, hardly knowing, when we dig them in the ribs, whether we are fond of them or are making fun of them. At bottom they feel themselves to be our inferiors, less lively and less intelligent. They all have much the same idea as fat Max, the canteen keeper, who secretly breaks the pumps whenever a fresh levy is being made, in order to render himself more indispensable here than at the front. In view of the activity of our comrades, their carvings in wood and in stone, the tin rings they make, the horsehair watch-chains, the stools, tables, and cupboards which they knock together out of bits of planking filched from the workyards at Ingolstadt, this mighty beer-drinker is unable to control his astonishment. He waves his great arms, exclaiming:
“These Frenchmen, what workers! I’ve always maintained,Herr Gott Sakrament, that every one of them has a devil in his inside.”
M. von Stengel is of much the same way of thinking as Max.
Little as he seems to notice, wishing, as he does,to avoid having to allot punishment, hardly anything happens in the fort without his being aware of it. Nothing licit or illicit escapes his keen gaze, and what he does not see he divines. Nevertheless, with the roguish indulgence of a grand seigneur, he is careful to avoid any display of anger. I am confident that he derives a good deal of secret enjoyment from the contemplation of the network of customs, subterfuges, and evasions, whose threads are interwoven behind the iron grating of German regulations. He watches with amusement the supple boldness with which prudent advances are made, the care with which direct conflict with authority is avoided, and the ingenuity with which the regulations are taken in the flank, circumvented, or ignored. He admires the stratagems by means of which this miniature France, prisoned in a foreign fortress, is enabled to reintegrate the life of the homeland. He does not fail to recognize that these breaches of discipline serve, even more clearly than the ingenuity with which the breaches are effected, to manifest the hardihood of his prisoners, and to prove their possession of an individuality at once gentle and intractable.
This German, at any rate, does not regard the French as “monkeys.” He is not misled by their superficial levity, their suppleness, their apparent scepticism—shining armour with which they protect their ego, a vivacious and rebellious ego, which resists everything, which always gets even, is ever elastic, artful, or frank, as circumstances prescribe, but immalleable, incapable of being passive, obstinately itself. The commandantis impressed with the fact that the Frenchman is what he is and remains what he is, jealous of his privacy, greatly prizing his own humour, tastes, and ideas. It may be that M. von Stengel considers that we are excessively individualized, that whilst we often seem to treat grave matters as trifles, the least onslaught upon our intimate personality arouses in us an excess of fury, a revolt which may go so far as to compromise the collective interest. But it is certain that he knows us and accepts us as we are. He imposes no constraint, and has no desire to refashion us after the Teuton model. It is even possible that he regards with secret approval the delicate compost of national merits and peculiarities. In any case, in his relations with us he is extremely careful to do everything he can to blunt the sharp, harassing, and painful angles of Germanic discipline.
Nevertheless this man, so sensible, moderate, and well-bred, does not possess a perfectly unified character. One recognizes in him both the German and the natural man. The former enunciates cynical maxims to the latter, insisting, for example, upon the value of war for war’s sake. The latter listens, but shies at the idea. It is as if, while enjoying the refined sweetness of a French morning, he should suddenly be disturbed by the horrid bellowing of all the war-horns of the Huns. The dicta of this brutal philosophy rack his ears. But, being good-mannered, he hearkens. His brother seems to him a thick-skinned fellow, coarse-blooded, grim, and savage-hearted. However, he makes no protest. Hisbrother reiterates his statements, repeats his massive assertions loudly and unceasingly, and insists upon agreement. He has to pay for being well-mannered, for hating scenes, for disliking to give pain. From very kindness of heart, from love of peace, from very sensitiveness, he assumes a barbaric mask. The good brother! It goes much against the grain, but he gives an apparent assent.
It is thanks to a series of such sacrifices, invariably one-sided, that the German and the natural man seem, in Baron von Stengel, to live on harmonious terms.
His natural man is good and just. Making no parade of humanitarian convictions, he practises humaneness.
It is touching to watch this grand old man, lofty of stature, with a solid prognathous chin, irreproachably dressed, when he stops to speak to a soldier suffering from despondency. “Fous êtes triste?” he asks in his slow and broken French, gently pulling the man by the ear. The prisoner does not misunderstand; he knows that though the major can read French he is unable to speak it, and that in this laconic phrase he desires to condense an entire friendly conversation.
A few days ago, having learned that a loaf of bread priced at thirty pfennig had been sold at one mark fifty pfennig to a prisoner by a soldier of the guard, he was greatly enraged, and in the presence of Durupt, who was helping him to write up the register of money orders, he exclaimed, “There is but one price for bread, and I shall proceed with the utmost rigour against anyone,be he French or German, who asks a higher price. It is disgraceful to rob prisoners in this way!” The joke is that officially we are not supposed to buy anything at all.
The day before yesterday there was a fall of sleet. The men were loitering up and down the corridors. In front of theKommandanturthere was a great clatter of hobnailed shoes, and the noise was reinforced by light songs, laughter, and chatter. The commandant was reading our eleven hundred letters. Two days earlier he had sent them to Ingolstadt. Headquarters, cantankerous as usual, had returned them, under some pretext, to be re-read. This was something calculated to put the gentlest of men out of humour. Scrupulously obedient to orders, he was now for the second time reading these poor papers, badly written in pencil, insipid, and all exactly alike. On the other side of the door, the procession of prisoners passed and repassed unceasingly. The clatter of nails on the cement got on his nerves. “Oh, the noise, the noise!” he said, as if speaking to himself. D’Arnoult was there and rose from his seat, intending to ask the comrades to be a little quieter. The commandant stopped him, saying, “No, monsieur d’Arnoult, do not go out.Mein Zimmer ist doch nur eine Kanzlei—after all, my room is only an office!” And once more he immersed himself in his reading.
Withal, in the major’s innermost being, the natural man invariably acts and governs. The other, the German, merely utters professions of faith.
Out walking, just now, we had paused for a moment, dazzled by the beauty of the evening. We were on the strip of greyish-white pasture which arches along the edge of the pine wood, and looked like the woolly back of a sheep. Before us, seemingly at our very feet, the Danubian plain, with its gentle undulations, stretched away through the iridescent haze. The sun had just set. A breeze was blowing from the west, chasing before it golden mist-wreaths. The branches and faded foliage of the oaks, dry and nipped by the frost, rustled in the chill wind; the pine needles, interlaced with gossamer, reddened by many sunsets, whispered and murmured. We were a silent company, Baron von Stengel, Major Langlois, MM. Jeandidier, Cavaillé, Lœbre, Romant, Bouvat, my friend Laloux, and myself. The vastness of the prospect, the silence of the fields, the fading of the light, the shivering of the undergrowth in the twilight, the strange sensation of being suddenly plunged into the heart of winter—all these influences combined to keep us mute.
What a waste of time! I thought. Already three months in prison. Three months lost beyond recall. And the baron had just said to me, “England is intractable. I hardly think you will get away before next autumn.” More than a year lived through for nothing, suffered for nothing. A whole year cut out from the short span of our days. I was prey to a cold, hard sadness. Then, my thoughts turned to you.… All at once a song rose from the road. The recruitsquartered at Hepperg were returning to quarters, marching with that slow and heavy German pace which will never be a match for our French step.
They were singing the famous
Nun ade, wir müssen Abschied nehmen.…
Nun ade, wir müssen Abschied nehmen.…
Nun ade, wir müssen Abschied nehmen.…
Nun ade, wir müssen Abschied nehmen.…
with which all theFeldgrau, before going to the front, have made the quiet Bavarian taverns ring, sitting over their great tankards, each holding the beloved one’s hand. I was familiar with the strains. The little sergeant of whom I have previously written to you had made his men sing it to me one evening in the guardroom, and had copied out the text for me:
Now farewell. We must take leave. We must charge our muskets. With stout hearts we shall give to the war and to the fields of battle the finest days of our youth. Farewell, dear parents, brothers, and sisters. Shake hands for the last time. If we are never to meet again, let us hope for a reunion in a better world.Farewell, best beloved, you who know that our parting is harder to bear than death. It may be that we shall never meet again. Yet every day, when night falls, let us renew our hopes.The shells are whistling through the air. The bayonets are fixed. The flags are waving in the breeze. Our dread is concealed beneath the smoke of the combat. As we fight we cry, hurrah, hurrah!We are in the thick of it, like good Bavarians.
Now farewell. We must take leave. We must charge our muskets. With stout hearts we shall give to the war and to the fields of battle the finest days of our youth. Farewell, dear parents, brothers, and sisters. Shake hands for the last time. If we are never to meet again, let us hope for a reunion in a better world.
Farewell, best beloved, you who know that our parting is harder to bear than death. It may be that we shall never meet again. Yet every day, when night falls, let us renew our hopes.
The shells are whistling through the air. The bayonets are fixed. The flags are waving in the breeze. Our dread is concealed beneath the smoke of the combat. As we fight we cry, hurrah, hurrah!
We are in the thick of it, like good Bavarians.
“What are you thinking about, my dear enemy?” said von Stengel all at once with a smile.—“Herr Kommandant,” I replied, in an access of dull rage,“dieser Krieg wird die grosse Schande Europas sein!”[26]
Slowly, to suit the baron, we descended the incline, soft beneath our feet, the turf torn, and littered with fragments of shell; here and there grew handsome stone-pines with twisted trunks. Being unable to run, I was shivering in my summer clothing. We took the road beside the hop-garden, and as we walked the baron gave me his views upon the war.
In truth, all he did was to repeat the words of Harnack, Lujo Brentano, Troeltsch, Willamovitz-Moellendorff, and the hundred representatives of German Kultur. As I listened, I seemed to be re-reading the articles which these writers were now publishing in the war editions of theInternationale Monatsschrift:
“Germany has never desired anything but peace; William is the peace emperor; Sir Edward Grey is the villain of the drama; English commercialism led to the war; Germany was suddenly seized by the throat and had to defend herself; she is engaged in a life and death struggle.…
“Ueber welches Volk wird einst das Tribunal der Weltgeschichte den Urteilsspruch ‘Schuldig’ fallen? Eins ist gewiss! Deutschland kann dem Urteilsspruch mit reinem Gewissen entgegen sehen.”[27]
I had no interest in all this. If the major had been a man of my own age, I should have bluntly begged him to spare me these phrases of the good bourgeois who has just been reading the newspapers. I should have said to him: “In actual fact, our respective countries are at war. Let us leave it to our grandchildren, should they have a fancy for writing history, to ascertain who is responsible for this butchery. But as far as I am myself concerned, be good enough to consider me a man of sound intelligence, and don’t attempt to befool me with your political myths. I agree that these myths have their uses, and that they are necessary for the soldier. To him one must lie perforce. Above all, in our democratic epoch, the violent man does wisely to wear sheep’s clothing, and to give himself the air of defending civilization and humanity, for otherwise the citizen would never be willing to play the part of soldier. If needs must, the citizen will allow himself to be killed for the sake of principles, or in defence of hearth and home, butnever for the interest of the Hapsburgs, the Hohenzollerns, or a business corporation. Agreed, the aggressor must lie.
“But we are not now on a public platform; we are not composing a proclamation. Do not let us deceive ourselves, nor soil our minds with a superfluous falsehood.”
But to this old man I said nothing of the sort. I listened patiently. The wind bit my ears, and my body seemed a vast Siberia. As I walked, I looked at the birches, each one of which was known to me individually. Their delicate ramifications, now leafless, hung like horses’ manes. But the youngest trees, those whose tresses were not yet grown, so that their branches pointed directly upwards like the twigs of an ill-made besom, still retained some sparse foliage. In the icy wind, the white of their stems standing out against the greenish-black of the acacias in the ditch had a somewhat funereal air.
“War,” said von Stengel, “is an essential condition of social life. Without war, the human race would become anæmic, would slip back into barbarism, ignorance, and hebetude. Even though man loves peace, he must also be a great fighter before the Lord,ein Streiter vor dem Herrn. Do not imagine that wars are the work of a few men; the ferment works in the very heart of the race, and when this happens the maintenance of peace becomes impossible. The friction is so great, the heat generated is so intense, that the flames burst forth spontaneously.Then patience is out of place, and it is necessary to unsheathe the sword. Blood, much blood, must flow to appease the fierce angers and to restore men to their customary calm.”
It was the German in Baron von Stengel, not the man, who spoke, enunciating the doctrine that war is necessary, that war is a natural function of social life.
“For the rest,” he added, humanizing to the best of his ability the myth formulated by the German, for now the natural man was resuming sway, “once war has broken out, it is the duty of us all to do our best to diminish its horrors. Men differ widely, and yet, through contact with upright and noble characters, even the worst of human beings, even those of malignant and dark nature, come to learn the value of peace, of good understanding, and acquire the faculty of enduring with equanimity.”
Thus talking, we reached the great iron gate, adorned with the Bavarian lions. I rang. The gate was opened, the baron drew aside to allow his “boarders” to pass in, and these in turn signalled to him to take precedence.
The commandant major, Baron Stefan von Stengel, very erect, head held high, passed through the gateway. The guard, fully armed, stood at attention, lined up in two rows. Upon an order from theFeldwebel, “Hurrah für den Major,” twenty recruits shouted with a single voice. Night had fallen. All the windows of the fort, which had been invisible as long as we were outside the walls, were now seen to be lighted up, and the red ofthe bricks was manifest in the starlight. We crossed the drawbridge. “Now that the snows have come,” said the commandant, pointing to the ditch, “we could make a good skating-rink there.” He saluted, and withdrew into his casemate.
As a matter of fact, I have not entirely lost my time here, since I have succeeded in classifying adequately in the social hierarchy such a man as Baron von Stengel, who is neither hero nor genius, who has no ambition to display supernatural virtues, but who is simply a man with pleasant manners, refined, well-bred, free from all stiffness, easy to get on with, a truly civilized being.
You, my friends, have spoiled me. It is owing to you that I had always remained ignorant how restricted is the genus of “decent folk.” The war has changed my views in this respect. Hardened, simplified, freer in relation to external conditions, as adaptable as any one could wish—when the campaign is over I shall be somewhat less confiding than of yore towards my kind. Now that I sample them in the mass, elbowing them unceasingly morning, noon, and night throughout the entire day of twenty-four hours, listening to them as they talk, chatter, grumble, quarrel, and snore, looking on at them while they enjoy themselves, complain, play, eat, bargain, pull out the personal stop, pass judgments, take things at their ease; now that I no longer contemplate them through the prism of my doctrines and of my leniency,but look at them as they really are, all the scenery of civil life removed, all social trappings stripped off—there are certain categories of mind which I understand better than before. I understand better, for example, hermits, misanthropes, jansenists, and all pessimists, pagan as well as Christian, all those who can see nothing in man but the primitive beast, and those who never cease talking of original sin. How greatly now do I prize good manners, the veneer of culture, the mask of decency. These are but externals, things which do not give expression to man’s intimate nature. They even aim at veiling that nature. But precisely because they exercise this occlusive and embellishing function, they seem to me august. The sight of the real arouses an appetite for fiction, creates a necessity for art and for dreams. Are these lies? Yes, they are lies, poor lies! What matter? Must we live in hell by deliberate choice? It cannot be asserted that such illusions make a paradise of our ill-conditioned and sordid world; but at least they mitigate the stench to some extent, neutralize its offensiveness, and render the bestial hustle a thought less aggressive.
My nose is still uneasy with the memory of the carrion odour from the battlefields of Moncourt, Lagarde, and Kerprich. It was here that I learned the value of shroud, coffin, quicklime, and tomb. Now that I have come to know men better, I know also that the trifling restraints and delicate veils of conventional good manners are absolutely essential.
November 20, 1914.
Snow has been falling throughout the night. Risking a shot, for the new orders from headquarters are still more stringent, I walked for a good hour at dawn upon the northern ramparts. When the sun rose over the village of Hepperg there was sketched in the opposite quarter, towards France, in three strokes of the brush, the most striking of pastels: in the foreground, the old gold of the oaks, flaming, sanguine, and burnished: in the middle distance, the wide field of virgin snow; in the background, the heavy and sombre line of the pines, interspersed with larches, sparkling with hoar-frost.
Solitude amid inanimate things, in the morning, restores me to the tranquil possession of myself, induces a peaceful, strong, and simple happiness which neither the society of my fellows, nor meditation, nor prayer can ever furnish. At one time this calm, as of Eden, used to terrify me. It seemed to me impious. When, as a youth, I loitered among the wild oak-groves which form scattered oases amid the limestone mazes of Païolive in Vivarais, it seemed to me thattheir shade was stifling my faith, that the seated giants of white stone, amid which the Ardèche has hollowed its precipitous channel, were swallowing my Christian dogmas, and that my Eliacin-like fervours were evaporating into the torrid sky, passing upward with the furnace breath which rises in summer from this formidable landscape.
Since then, however, I have learned to feel no doubt regarding the primacy of man vis-à-vis the grandeur of inanimate things.
No, my delight in natural scenery is by no means pantheistic. I believe too firmly in the hierarchy of creation, and I am too strongly imbued with the Christian conception that man is a person, as it were a son of God, an absolute individuality, inviolable, raised above life and death, to be able to lose my sense of personal identity in the contemplation of rocks, fields, and woodlands. It is simply that I love fresh air and open spaces; I love the lineaments of nature, which are more beautiful than the doings of men; I love the society of the meadows and of the trees, a society which is less importunate and talkative than that of my fellows, and which never fails to restore me to myself. Perhaps, moreover, I tend instinctively to idolize colour and light, seeing that God has concentrated in my eyes, above all, the power of sensuous appreciation.
This morning I was interested in watching the gambols of an ermine which had just captured a small black mammal. Supple, slim, and snake-like,it sat up from time to time to look around. It was hard to distinguish, despite its black tail-tip, from the surrounding snow, though this had a bluish tint in contrast with the ermine’s fur, in which there were subtle shades of green. I stood motionless on the footpath, wrapped in the soft cloak which Mme. Paul Weiss has just sent me. The little beast advanced fearlessly towards me, joyously shaking the prey that it carried in its jaws. Did it take me for a tree?
I move my barberry switch. The ermine stops. Sitting up, it looks at me for a long time. How pretty it is, slender and graceful! I think of Musette, a black English greyhound, with perfect points, which won the first prize at Lyons, and was the delight of my eyes for three years. Dear Musette! We were always together. The first time we were parted she died. Madeleine, my favourite little sister, was charged with giving me the news. She wrote me a letter of eight pages. I still recall her great childish handwriting. Her kind heart had inspired the most touching precautions, and suggested the use of angelic phraseology. “We have buried her,” she wrote in conclusion, “in that corner of the garden you are so fond of, beneath the oleanders.”
I continue to look at the ermine, but the animal is doubtless ready for breakfast. Evading the danger, it descends the slope, gains the traverse, and runs restlessly to and fro. I trouble it. Most probably I am between it and its earth. I go.
As I make my way on to the escarp I meetNoverraz, the Parisian, the hero of the look-out episode. He is taking a constitutional in the snow. His waxen skin, pinched by the cold, has red patches on it. His ears and the tip of his nose are scarlet.
“Where have you been?” he inquires.
“Beyond the slopes. I must have walked quite a league this morning. It was glorious!”
“Take care, old chap, if you value a whole skin.”
“Bah!”
“My dear fellow, this is what happened to me on Thursday morning. It must have been about half-past eight. I am taking a walk with my chums of casemate 23. There is a regular London fog. All at once, at the bottom of the west court, we hear the jabber of Boche. I imagine that it is the disciplinary company breaking stones, as usual, in front of the battery. Durand, however, clambers up the slope. After peering over the edge, he makes signs to us to join him. On the road that runs by the ditch are two sections, standing at ease in columns of fours. Their officer is on horseback, wearing a huge grey cloak. He is making a speech to his men. My attention is riveted by the wordFrankreich. I scramble a little higher. Stretched at full length, my head just above the edge, among the grass, I listen with all my ears: ‘Get this firmly fixed in your minds,’ says the captain, ‘for we must not fail to learn all we can from these French rascals [diese Lumpen von Franzosen]. Let me repeat: they climb into the trees; they install their machine guns amongthe branches; they wait there in absolute silence. The German scouts have examined the ground only. Our men pass by. Then comes a sound like thunder! We are mowed down from behind by a rain of bullets. Such are the tricks of these monkeys! Well, let us meet ruse by ruse, stratagem by stratagem. Listen carefully. You are at the front. You dig your trench, the admirable German trench. You settle yourself there comfortably. You are invulnerable. Thence, quite at your ease and without danger, you can fire at the French lines. Is this all? No. In advance of your real trench, eighty or a hundred yards away, you hastily dig another trench. You fill it with dummies. It is quite easy—any old rags of clothing will do. These pigs of Frenchmen [diese Sauleute,dieses Schweinvolk] can fire at this as long as they please. Then, when the assault comes, when they rush into this hole thinking that they’ve got you, you have an admirable target, at short range, and you can quietly exterminate them.’
“Such are the officer’s words. At this moment one of his men asks a question, and I take the opportunity of changing my position, so that I am exposed down to the waist. The captain catches sight of me. After glaring at me for a moment, he demands a rifle, shoulders it, and fires. Nothing happens; the breech is empty. We do not budge. The captain is furious. ‘Give me a cartridge!’ He loads the rifle and shoulders it once more. My comrades and I are about to take cover behind the slope when the shotis fired. It must be a blank cartridge, for we hear no whistle of a bullet. The Boches burst out laughing. Corporal Durand, standing erect with folded arms, gazes at them mockingly. He intends to stay there. ‘My good man,’ I exclaim, ‘hurry up and get down!’ The captain is asking for another cartridge. ‘This time,’ I say, ‘it will probably be a bullet!’
“There you have it. This is exactly what happened. I did not lose a word or a gesture. You had better be careful. With your mania for ranging the outer regions of the fort, you will get your skin perforated one fine morning.”
November 27, 1914.
A prey to depression, we are smoking in the “Salle du Jeu de Paume.” Laloux and Badoy, otherwise known as Badozus, are playing an interminable game of chess; d’Arnoult is reading Victor Hugo’sHistoire d’un crime; Noverraz is dozing over Balzac’sChouans; Sergeant Scherrer, tall and thin, with cold eye and Mephistophelian head, is playing draughts with Massé, a non-commissioned officer of artillery. Seated upon the drawers of the drug cupboard, they are crowded round the solitary lamp. The table is of deal, oblong in shape, one that can be used as an operating-table. Their heads are in shadow. Elbow to elbow and forehead to forehead, the six men are silent. The circle of light is hazy with blue whorls rising from their pipes.
Standing in the embrasure of the window, I am smoking my own Bavarian pipe. There is not a sound in the room, nor in the passages, nor on the bridge close to our windows. Depression must reign supreme throughout the casemates, depression which paralyses mind and body.
How intense is the tedium, uncertainty, and anxiety! No letter for a whole fortnight. Yet she must be writing to me. And Léonce, my dear young brother. I wonder if it is as cold in the trenches at Ypres as it is in Bavaria. Shrapnel, bullets, sudden death. Shall I ever see him again? Is he still alive? Manech, the amiable corporal of No. 13, forty-two of whose Breton relatives have been engaged on the land front or at sea, has already lost six of them. The fighting priest, Gautin, has learned that the body of his brother lies rotting on the banks of the Marne. Sergeant Boullanger is mourning his father. Since we have begun to receive letters, almost every one is in mourning. Can it be that my own melancholy is a presentiment? When will it end, this sinister interlude in the book of peace, our book, our true book, the book of humanity?
Noverraz has fallen asleep over theChouans; d’Arnoult, “le Chasseur,” has closedHistoire d’un crime. He stretches and yawns. The others, huddled together, move their pieces without saying a word.
It is cold. All our thoughts ooze despondency. This brute of a major at headquarters who, meanly, by way of reprisal, has been detaining our letters at Ingolstadt for the last fortnight! Why cannot I throw off my troubles? This evening I am like a child, like a neglected schoolboy who has ceased to hear from his mother.
France, Paris, a blazing wood-fire in my study;Douchka and Katia asleep on the hearthrug. She is there!
No, I am in Bavaria. I am a prisoner. I am at Fort Orff, at the edge of the Swabian forest, among gloomy villages where I know no one, where they believe that we are slaughtering their sons with dum-dum bullets, and that we were the aggressors. A Franconian blackguard is the man who feeds me. Then there is a little good-for-nothing schoolmaster from Hof, a pedant stuffed with German idealism, who appeals to honour and humanity in season and out of season, who, having caughtflagrante delictoa weaver of watch-chains snatching a few hairs from a horse’s tail, gives him three days’ close arrest, saying gravely, “A most inhumane act”—and it is this whipper-snapper, this round-shouldered and short-sighted impotent beast, who is myFeldwebel, “my superior officer”! He is a mean creature. Knowing that I am on good terms with von Stengel, he begged Dutrex to present me. Dutrex did so, saying: “Hier ist unser Schriftsteller[This is our author]”—“I am much honoured, monsieur; I have read an article on you in theNürnberger Zeitung.” He bowed and scraped again and again. He stood there, his ugly little moustache bristling with smiles, looking as great a booby as if he had been before the commandant. The quartermaster is a bad lot, but theFeldwebelis grotesque. And I am dependent upon the caprices of such men! I am a thing in the hands of these contemptible fellows, these hypocrites,who loudly voice their patriotism and boast of the German virtues, while they are shamming rheumatism and heart-weakness to avoid being sent to the fighting-line. Sometimes I am seized with a longing to spit out my contempt in their very faces. Before Baron von Stengel one feels like a man; a noble master ennobles those subject to his orders. But before these subordinates all human nobility withers, wretched instruments who treat us as instruments in turn. Empowered to dominate and to humiliate us, to abuse us as much as they please, their favours are even worse than their severities; it is the brutal landowner in Latium amusing himself with a Græculus; it is theDonaubauer, the fat Danubian peasant, caressing his dog. I prefer their hatred.
The good Badoy, with his huge round head, his snub nose, his little curly beard, his large fatherly eyes, bends forward over the board, humps his back, and clenches his fists between his short legs, saying:
“When will it come to an end?”
“Which, the game or the imprisonment?” asks Laloux quietly, as he takes Badoy’s queen.
“How can you ask?” Then, as if speaking to himself: “Oh! my wife and my three little ones, when shall I see them again? Still no letters! It’s terrible.”
From my corner in the window I contemplate the circle of smoke and of light, and I look at these six men packed together, chilly and sad. I dare not openmy lips. My depression is turning to gall. I am not far, this evening, from understanding certain scenes in the casemates which had astonished me, when taciturn men became suddenly exasperated, and, for a single word, hurled themselves on one another, fighting like horses without oats in a stable. Poor caged beasts! The others, at least, those in Flanders and in France, have room to move. They have an object for action. After the stagnation of the trenches they can assuage their anger in the fury of the assault. But as for us, heavy with wrath, we are confined within thick walls; we can but swing our frozen and idle arms; we are cut off from all news; we are the prey of dreams and of hunger. Outside the screened window, the ditch, the counterscarp, and the grating; outside the grating, a Bavarian bayonet marches to and fro.
What can account for this state of nerves which I am unable to control? The hour for the arrival of the postman has passed. I have been waiting all day. It has passed. There is nothing. I ought to be able to find a reason. Why am I outwardly so hard and inwardly near to weeping? Suddenly there come great silent waves of memory. I hear her singing. She is dressed in green. The dark perfume of her golden hair enwraps me. The melody of César Franck’sProcessionrises athwart my fever; it is broad, sweet, richer and more peaceful than a field of ripe wheat upon a warm evening. It sings within me; it assumes the cadence of my breathing. I am stifling.I live, I love, and I am loved; and yet I am thrust out from life as if I were in the tomb.
Elbow to elbow and forehead to forehead, the six men at the table are silent. I look down upon the circle of light and the smoke of the pipes. Not a sound is to be heard. Buried in the mound, surrounded by meadows and woods, the fort is as cold and mute, as remote, desolate, and dead, as a soldier’s grave in the corner of a field.