Chapter IV: Part 4

The officers nodded their heads, without betraying what they thought. The two priests, for the first time, looked at one another. They looked at each other over the coffin, and bowed as if they had only just arrived. Moved by the same impulse, they both affected a curious smile; but their eyes had no share in it. They confronted each other like two members of a family who have a feud of centuries behind them, and who meet in the presence of a man of the world.

Between them, the stake was, not a soul, but a box containing a stiff body, distorted by a death-agony of ten days--a box wrapped in a symbolic shroud which a light breeze ruffled.

The two priests looked at one another with interest for one long moment. On one side, the country priest, with an ungainly peasant build: on the other the cultured and cosmopolitan rabbi, with the sophisticated smile, old as the Bible.

“Really,” whispered Augustus in my ear--“really, Bénezech has done it often enough in his time; he might let the other have a chance.”

“You be quiet!” said M. Gilbert, who had overheard him. “You are a fool to talk like that. This is no laughing matter.”

Bénezech was just very slightly shrugging his shoulders; he lowered his eyes and stammered:

“Monsieur, if Lieutenant Limberg was really of the Hebrew faith, I would prefer to withdraw.”

“Do as you think best, Bénezech,” said M. Gilbert.

The rabbi continued to smile. He had the patient look of a believer who knows that the Messiah once failed to appear at the appointed time, and that one must continue to expect him for thousands of years again.

“Then,” said Bénezech, quite low, “I withdraw, Doctor.”

He made a few steps, and we heard him murmur as he withdrew:

“The chief thing is that he should receive the sacrament. And he has--twice.”

The rabbi was still smiling, as if he was thinking: “As for me, I remain.”

M. Gilbert made a sign. Commands rang out, and everybody stood at the salute.

FIGURES

No, my dear fellow, the war hasn’t changed everybody.

You didn’t know M. Perrier-Langlade?

He was what we should call a great organiser--a man who might, for instance, hit upon a spot where everything was going on all right, and everyone knew his job and was busy at it. But to M. Perrier-Langlade, who had very original views as to what was practical, everything was going quite wrong. Objects had at once to be moved from their places and jobs had to be exchanged. He walked with a stick in his right hand--_his_ working tool--which he waved like a fencer or an orchestral conductor: he tapped everybody with this annoying stick, and commands fell from him like hail from a cloud. One works-section which his genius had reorganised was several weeks before it could be set going again with anything like its old smoothness. M. Perrier-Langlade had ideas: and that is an event of momentous importance. For ordinary mortals, you know, can never pretend to ideas: these are the preserve of the great. And the height of M. Perrier-Langlade’s ingenuity was to think that the suggestions we had all been wanting to work out were entirely his own. But that again did not lead to efficiency; for this rare mind was ever open to the latest thing in ideas--showing, let us admit, a very generous disposition. He bent to every gust of wind. He was indeed so unpractical that his sense of the relation between thought and action was of the haziest. But that of course is the penalty of an exalted position, and in other respects M. Perrier-Langlade was a great organiser.

He loved figures. Let us do him this justice: he handled them with the freedom of an expert. He saw in them a deep meaning which always escaped our unmathematical minds.

M. Perrier-Langlade I had only seen from a distance--and on rare occasions; but at last I was to talk to him. What am I saying!--I am presuming a great deal: you know what my rank is--well, then, I was at last to be admitted to the presence of M. Perrier-Langlade, to hear him discourse, to profit by the kind of education which the most insignificant of his utterances and movements were able to bestow.

It occurred last winter, during the weeks of intense cold. For a fortnight it had been blowing--a sharp, despairing, cold east wind.

The cold and the wind had given rise to an epidemic of fires on the front. The little stoves had been stuffed to their fullest capacity, and they crackled and smoked convulsively, and the corners of sheds sometimes caught their fever. A flame stuck its nose outside: the wind snapped at it, twisted, stretched it, swelled it like a sail, and most often it cost five or six thousand francs in wood, paper, canvas, and other materials. When the Germans saw it happening within gunshot distance, they despatched a few explosives with the charitable object of helping on its sinister designs. It’s what you must expect, you know. You either make or you don’t make war. And the miserable world has made it--there’s no shadow of doubt about that.

We had lost in this way many huts, which were happily cut off from the others, and it had been a useful warning to us when, one night, about one o’clock, a fire--a terrible fire--broke out in Hut 521, which could be seen on the plain three or four miles away from us.

We had just put on our boots and had gone out to watch it. What a sight it was! The huge furnace with its tongues of flame, the bluish country benumbed with frost, the wind which seemed to ripple like water in the moonlight, and the reflections of the fire on the Siberian landscape, honeycombed with the old trenches of 1915.

We were horrified at the thought of what was happening there; but we did not dare to leave our post.

And we did right; for towards 3 A.M. a long line of motors came hooting before the door--some of the wounded rescued from the fire were being brought to us.

We got them out of the cars. How patient they were, poor things! Two with fractured skulls, one with an amputated leg, and another with a broken leg, and several less seriously wounded. They had lost in the fire all the possessions which, as soldiers, they were allowed to have--the linen bag you see hanging on the bed, containing a knife, a box of matches, three or four old letters, and a small lead pencil. I repeat, they did behave well; but they were pitiful to look at. They really looked like people who for one awful moment had lain helpless in their beds while the flames surrounded them, and who were conscious of only one agonising thought: “If help doesn’t come at once, in five minutes it will be too late.”

We put them into bed, and got them warm again: they needed it. I well remember seeing icicles glistening on the bandages of the man with the broken leg. It was a sorry business. The whole night long we looked after them; and only in the morning were we able to chat round the coffee-pot. The wounded were dozing. The hut was almost warm. We had made them wear cotton caps and woollen vests, and drink a cupful of boiling milk. They were in a half-dozing, half-waking state and seemed to be thinking: “Lord! what a narrow shave! And it’s the second one too. We had better look out for the third.”

It was then, old fellow, that M. Perrier-Langlade arrived on the scene.

I had gone out--I don’t remember why--and I was kicking my heels on the frosty ground, when I saw a sumptuous motor-car come to a stop on the road. The door clicked open, and M. Perrier-Langlade came out, staggering under a heavy, luxurious fur cloak.

I at once thought: “Ah, good! Here’s M. Perrier-Langlade coming to cheer up my poor patients.”

I had a hundred yards to cover. I leaped over some dizzy gratings, and I arrived, rather out of breath, just in time to spring to attention before the door. M. Perrier-Langlade stamped with annoyance.

“What!” he said to me. “There is no one here to receive me!”

“I ask your pardon, Monsieur----”

“Hold your tongue! You can see for yourself there is no one here. You have to-night taken in some of the wounded from Hut 521. I went to see the fire myself--at two o’clock in the morning--risking an attack of pneumonia. I’m not bothering about that, though; but it is my wish that some one should be here to receive me--here--when I come out of the car. If you hadn’t come there would have been no one, and I will not be kept waiting these very cold days. In future you will have an orderly permanently stationed here.”

“But you understand, Monsieur----”

“Hold your tongue! How many wounded did you take in to-night?”

“Thirteen, Monsieur. It is true that----”

“Enough! Thirteen! Thirteen!”

M. Perrier-Langlade began to repeat the number, presumably for his own benefit. It was quite clear that this number suggested to his mind thoughts of a deep and wide significance. I don’t know what foolish impulse made me then open my mouth.

“But note, sir----”

“Be quiet!” he said angrily. “Thirteen! Thirteen!”

I felt extremely confused and took refuge in complete silence. That didn’t last long. Ravier was approaching as fast as his legs could carry him: he had seen the motor, and had galloped.... He stopped dead at five paces, his two heels stuck in the crunching snow, and saluted.

“There you are,” remarked M. Perrier-Langlade--“not too soon either. How many wounded have you taken in to-night that you wouldn’t have ordinarily?”

Ravier gave me a despairing look. I showed him my open hand, holding apart my fingers, and Ravier, in spite of his discomfiture, replied:

“Five, sir.”

“Five! Five!” said M. Perrier-Langlade. “Then it is not thirteen, but five!”

I jumped as if some one had stuck a hatpin in me.

“But note, sir, that----”

“Hold your tongue!” he said, with an authoritative calm. “Five! Five!”

And he began to repeat this word, with an air that was at once Olympian and indulgent, like some one who cannot reproach men who are too ignorant to enjoy the supreme delights of arithmetic.

We looked at one another, astounded, when we heard the tread of a pair of hobnailed boots, and M. Mourgue appeared, his nose blue with cold, his little beard quite stiff, and emitting, as he panted, a cloud of steam.

“Ah! at last!” cried M. Perrier-Langlade. “Here you are, Monsieur Mourgue. Will you be good enough to tell me how many men you have at present in your huts?”

M. Mourgue appeared to sink into himself before replying, in a preoccupied tone:

“Twenty-eight, sir.”

M. Perrier-Langlade this time laughed a bitter, discouraged laugh.

“Well, well! it is not thirteen, nor five, but twenty-eight! Twenty-eight! And I was suspecting----”

“But, sir----” we cried all together excitedly.

From beneath the cloak of fur he thrust out his hand, which, in spite of its velvet glove, was none the less a mailed fist.

“Be silent, gentlemen! You do not understand. Twenty-eight!”

We looked at each other as if we had suddenly gone mad. M. Perrier-Langlade, carried away by sublime meditation, walked to and fro repeating, “Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!”

I noticed his voice had almost a provincial inflection, and was not without geniality. For a few moments he repeated, first shaking his head, then with increasing joy, “Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!” And I was convinced that to him figures did not mean the same thing as they do to you or me.

Then he abruptly saluted, with a supreme, imperious courtesy.

“Good-bye, gentlemen! Twenty-eight! Twenty-eight!”

And he went off to his car, rubbing his hands together, with the savage joy of a man who has got hold of some absolute truth.

DISCIPLINE

Frankly, I do not regret those four days’ imprisonment. True, they cost me a terrific cold--and perhaps I may here be allowed to say that the guard-room was anything but clean--still, I learnt some very useful things. Indeed, I can hardly cry out against the injustice of it in view of the inestimable benefit I received and the insight it gave me. No, I am not sorry for having experienced, at the age of forty-six, the straw of the prison cell that every one admits to be damp and unhealthy.

When the sergeant, who is not at all a bad fellow, though afflicted with a painful disease, came and told me, “Monsieur Bouin, you’ve got four days guard-room,” I was at first amazed and incredulous. At the same time, it was early in the day, and the sergeant, who never joked before his morning operation, added with a doleful expression:

“Some one named Bouin ought to have been on duty last night in the hospital. But no one turned up. It wasn’t perhaps you, my poor Monsieur Bouin, who cut your job, but it’s certainly you who have four days’ imprisonment.”

The sergeant stopped. I felt something gripping me in the pit of the stomach, and a heavy blush added to my discomfort. Right up to the first weeks of the war, my life had been peaceful and happy: there were some emotions I had not until then experienced, and I could not get accustomed to them, so that I was acutely conscious of the indignity I now had to suffer.

“Sergeant,” I said, “it can’t be true. I was on hospital duty the day before yesterday, and I am to-morrow again. It wasn’t my turn last night, I am quite certain.”

I must have been very red and trembling, for the sergeant looked at me for a moment or two, evidently feeling very sorry. Then he said, “Just wait a moment. I’ll go and see the orderly officer”; and he went out.

I went back to my scrubbing. That is very tiring work for a man who has spent his life studying mathematics; but in September 1914 a spirit of determination and of sacrifice had aroused all Frenchmen worthy of the name. I had volunteered to serve my country humbly, proudly, within the extreme limits of my strength; and as it was upon my physical strength that the demand was chiefly being made, I used every day to scrub the floor with enthusiasm. On that morning I threw myself frantically into the job, with such a will indeed that heavy drops of perspiration undid my work. I suffered, but was quite content: we water our native soil with what we can. Don’t you think so?

The sergeant came back.

“Monsieur Bouin,” he said, “it’s you all right. You’ve got four days’ clink, and it’s a dirty trick they are playing on you. Quite lately a doctor joined up who has the same name as yours, but he hasn’t yet been given his rank. As he does the work of a major, he hasn’t to stick it on night duty. But the clerks, who never know anything, put him down for duty, and that’s how no one turned up. You understand? Then the colonel ordered four days’ imprisonment. But the orderly officer got him to see that he couldn’t punish the doctor, who’s got his job to do! But you see the punishment has been posted under the name Bouin; and as some one has got to be punished, I suppose it’s got to be you....”

I was holding one of those scrubbing-sticks at the end of which a piece of wax was usually fixed. I was so astounded that I let the thing fall. The clumsy clatter seemed to be cruelly emphasised by the echoing walls of the room. It sounded like a smack. I felt so wretched.

“Go yourself and see the officer,” said the sergeant, rather touched, shifting from one leg to the other. “I have now to see about the signatures....”

I let him go; for when this good fellow talks of signatures, he is tortured by a very necessary need, which he cannot satisfy without suffering those shooting pains....

I placed my scrubbing implements in a corner, and I hastened to the office, buttoning my little jacket with trembling fingers: my equanimity was never real, and I felt some difficulty in controlling my emotions.

I knew the officer: he was an old Alsatian whom the war had dragged out of a _mairie_ where he was spending the days of his retirement. He had not, up till then, appeared to me a difficult person, nor needlessly fussy; and I did not despair of being able to make him unbend and to acknowledge himself in the wrong.

“Ah! it’s you, Bouin,” he said coolly. “Well, you’ve got to do four days’ imprisonment. You begin at noon.”

“But, sir,” I said, “while my name is Bouin--Bouin, Léon--and----”

He cut me short.

“It doesn’t matter what your Christian name is. There was no Christian name on the list. You have seen the name Bouin: you’ve only got to carry out----”

“But, sir, the times I go on duty have been definitely fixed for the last two weeks. I haven’t noticed----”

The man jumped to his feet, and I saw he was short--almost ridiculously short. He came towards me angrily, sputtering into his moustache.

“A punishment has been ordered. Some one has got to take it; and it’s you who’ve got to do so. What is your profession?”

“A teacher of mathematics, and a volunteer.”

He added in a tense voice:

“It doesn’t follow that because you are not a conscript you’re going to be cock of the walk here. Besides, men of education like yourself ought to be an example to the others. Follow my advice, and do your four days, my boy.”

“But, _Monsieur l’officier_----”

“You do as I advise you. This is not the moment, when the enemy is hammering at the gates of the capital--this is not the moment, I repeat, to scatter germs of indiscipline.”

“But, sir, discipline----”

Lines appeared on his brow and round his mouth. Then he muttered in a tone that was at once arrogant, sad and sententious:

“Discipline!--why, you don’t know what it is! You can’t teach me anything about that. Do your four days.”

I understood from the gesture accompanying these words that I must depart. An unexpected reply escaped me.

“Sir,” I said, “I shall send in a complaint to the colonel.”

The dwarf brought down his fists on a pile of documents.

“Good! good! Another row! And we think we are going to win with such people! Get out of my sight, will you!”

I thought he groaned, and I found myself in the passage. Midway between the floor and the ceiling ran a water-pipe, making a babbling noise. It seemed to have been installed there in the silence since the days of Adam.

I went staggering back to my work.

The doctor of the third division at that time was a man named Briavoine. What a delightful and sympathetic person he was! He had such a jolly way of feeling convinced about everything he said. And how I loved to see him smile, with the wrinkles on his wide bare forehead and round his eyes!

M. Briavoine was in his office when I arrived; but on that day no smile lit up his face, which was frowning and majestic.

“No, no!” he was saying to those around him. “Dufrêne is a general, but I--I am mere Briavoine.”

A silence full of respect greeted this firm avowal. The reputation of M. Briavoine was more than European. He had distinguished himself in the delicate art of making childbirth a less difficult and painful process, and many princesses had benefited by his care.

I was so obsessed with my little affair that I began to wander over the room without any real or apparent aim; and, in doing so, I very clumsily knocked up against M. Briavoine.

“Be careful, my friend,” said this kind and courteous man.

The urbanity of M. Briavoine, the gentleness of his voice, his correct and exquisite gesture, soothed my violated self-respect. I retired gratefully and with modesty to a corner where papers were being classified. And I thought: “How very polite he is, from every point of view!...”

Gradually I regained my equanimity and took an interest in the conversation of the officers--an interest which soon became very keen.

They were expecting, that very day, a visit from the Chief of the Medical Staff of the Forces--General Dufrêne. The imperious and diligent visits which this weighty person paid to the armies were worthy of the highest praise, and were, too, occasions for keen criticism.

M. Briavoine took off his braided tunic: gold and silver stripes adorned the sleeves.

“Give me my overalls,” he said. “Monsieur Dufrêne wishes to be received by his subordinates in full-dress uniform; but the needs of our profession require a coat like this.”

A breath of rebellion disturbed the atmosphere. Those standing round M. Briavoine were understood to murmur their assent, in which there was at once something of bitterness, irony and defiance. Dressed in white, the great doctor looked at himself contentedly.

“I am going to receive Dufrêne,” he said, “as I am now, in overalls, without my _képi_; if he takes it into his head to object, he may find that though I may be a subordinate, I am a man who has a right to some independence. That I serve my country disinterestedly no one can dispute, and I am not going to be lorded over. What have I to gain? My work in civil life is worth all the honours that I could ever get here.”

These sensible views were hardly uttered before Professor Proby came in. He was a very tall man, with straw-coloured hair, and a look that expressed a seriousness bordering on stupidity. He used to bawl in talking, cutting up his sentences with all kinds of interjections and expletives which completely altered the sense of what he wanted to say. He plunged into a conversation with as much good manners as a buffalo.

“What! What are you telling me? But I don’t care a hang.... Him! Why he knows quite well that--what! I am Paul Proby! And I am a member of the Academy; and I....”

It was true: Professor Proby honoured the Academy with his contributions. He beat his foot on the ground, jingling his glittering spurs, and the rather showy parts of an accoutrement that had remained unused in a cupboard until the outbreak of war.

“Dufrêne! that man!” he said again. “I’ve always been on good terms with him. But one mustn’t ... how annoying it is ... that man!”

M. Briavoine, who had tact, thought the conversation was getting incoherent. With one turn of the rudder, he brought the ship back to its course.

“It’s not a question of personalities, but a question of principle. We are not, like our enemies, a race that has been brutally enslaved....”

This generalisation seemed to bring an atmosphere of philosophy into the sunlit room. Everybody began to listen attentively, and the spirit of revolt became measured and serious.

Since my interview with the orderly officer, one single word leaped and danced in my head. I repeated it mechanically. I dissected its syllables, obsessed and anxious.

Suddenly I felt that the word was going to be uttered; that it was ripe, fertile, bursting; that it was going to spring out of my head--escape--and alight, in turn, on every mouth that was speaking there.

“You cannot,” said M. Briavoine, “ask Frenchmen to accept without question an authority that has no bounds. I will even admit without any shame that our race is the least disciplined in the world.”

“Authority, like alcohol, is a poison which makes man mad,” said a spectacled young man with sharp looks.

“I thoroughly agree,” cried the doctor. “As for discipline....”

A sigh of satisfaction escaped me. It was done. The word had come out, and I saw it disporting itself outside of me with a feeling at once of deliverance and curiosity. I gazed at the celebrated doctor with a very real gratitude. My satisfaction was indeed so great that in spite of my low rank I vigorously nodded to show how completely I agreed with Dr. Briavoine. And approval being always acceptable from any one however insignificant, Dr. Briavoine gave me in passing one of those generous smiles of his that were half-hidden away in his beard.

“Discipline,” he was saying, “is not perhaps a French virtue. But, God be praised! we have others; and our critical spirit alone, so subtle, incisive and delicate, is worth all the heavy qualities of our enemies.”

Doctor Coupé had come in almost unseen in the midst of the general interest. Taken to task by his colleagues, this excellent old man looked like a late-season leaf which the storm was trying to tear away from a bough. For a few seconds he hesitated between his innate terror of authority and his love of mischief. The vehemence of the views, however, that prevailed left him no option; and the dry leaf sped away, swirling in the gale.

“We are ready to shed our blood, if we are called upon,” the doctor said, stating a principle; “but, in God’s name! they should ask us politely.”

“The very least! Manners!” muttered Professor Proby. “I am disciplined enough--on condition ... what?... We ask for some consideration.”

“You know what Dufrêne did, the day before yesterday?” ventured an important-looking person, who was trying by a clever adjustment of his collar and movement of his chin to keep his beard in a horizontal position, and who acquired in this way an air of extraordinary majesty. “Listen then....” And in the middle of a chorus of protestations and laughter he began to tell the latest little scandal invented by imaginations which are not content with the reading of the communiqués of those glorious and tragic days.

There were about a dozen doctors in the room. Four or five were indeed princes among doctors. The war had given me a unique opportunity of knowing these distinguished personalities, and I assure you I felt a not unnatural emotion in hearing them speak freely before me. My conversation of the morning with my orderly officer had very much upset me.

Mathematics impose on the mind stubborn habits of order. I am unfortunately a bachelor, but I have quite rational, serious views on the family and society, as you would expect from my tastes and my profession. I know that very learned mathematicians have been able to imagine triangles which did not have three sides, or parallel lines which ended in meeting in a point.... I cannot follow these masters on such a path: perhaps I am too old to follow such tracks. Anyhow, I am satisfied with what I do know. When looking at my library, and turning over the pages of my lecture note-books, I always experienced a pleasant sensation of order and discipline. Besides, the study of mathematics makes you logical. And what had happened to me that morning was not logical--in other words, was not just. And the thought that the demands of order required an illogical action even in the midst of the chaos of war, appeared to me the wildest incoherence.

You can then imagine the relief, even enthusiasm, I felt on hearing these eminent men justify my rebellious attitude. I listened to their words, marking them with approving nods of the head. I felt a keen, almost trembling enjoyment, mingled with pride and a kind of superstitious terror.

Gradually I became aware that the last emotion was becoming the dominant one. I feared I was relying too much on reason; without knowing my position, these gentlemen were too excited and earnest in their approval. This verbal exaltation of indiscipline made me feel an exquisite uneasiness, almost of pain. Forced to be quiet out of respect, I nevertheless mentally and repeatedly begged them to be calm: “Take care, gentlemen! Be calm, sirs!”

Such were my thoughts when, in the general uproar of voices, a bell was heard ringing: it was the visitors’ office bell. Immediately the room was strangely quiet.

“_Monsieur le principal!_” said a sergeant who had just appeared at the door; “the motor-car of the Chief of the Medical Staff is at the gate.”

“Good heavens!” said some one whom everybody called familiarly Father Coupé. Then automatically he adjusted his _képi_ on his head, and stepped towards the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Professor Proby in a voice that was arrogant yet without much self-assurance.

“I’m going to receive him at the entrance,” replied the old fellow.

“What! There are other people for that. We can wait for him here while we work.”

“You mustn’t think of it,” said M. Coupé. “The custom----”

“Why, I used to call that fellow Dufrêne, without the Mr., in civil life,” muttered Professor Proby. “And I contend that ... ha! the idea!”

“It’s a question of courtesy,” commented M. Briavoine. “Let’s go to the door. Give me my tunic.”

“Don’t you wish to keep on your overalls, my dear master?” said the young man with the sharp look.

“Of course. But I’m afraid of catching cold. Give me my _képi_ as well; I can’t walk across the garden with nothing on my head.”

M. Briavoine turned towards me.

“My friend,” he said, “look for the registers, and be so good as to come along with me.”

Then he repeated, putting on his hat:

“There is no point in catching cold.”

A warm ray of sunlight entered by the open window! I thought M. Briavoine had no reason to fear colds, and I took the registers.

The group of officers were now going down the wide stairs, in a tumult of voices and footsteps.

A feeling of uneasiness, it seemed to me, gave a slight chill to the conversation. As we arrived under the arches, I heard M. Briavoine saying to M. Coupé:

“It’s the first time, since the war, that I meet the Chief of the Medical Staff, General Dufrêne.”

He added, not without a certain gravity of tone:

“Vernier, go back and see if they have swept the subalterns’ room. Some cotton was lying about there just now.”

“Hang it!” mumbled Proby; “he must not come and interfere with us. And he’s going to be received like this! We’ll tell him--what!--we’ll tell him a thing or two.”

“We will tell him, right enough,” said M. Briavoine with decision. “We’ll tell him that the hospital is badly lighted; the gas-pipes and water-pipes are innumerable; that the food is not as it should be----”

“I shall not stick at anything,” interrupted Father Coupé: “I shall insist on the important improvements I want for my work.”

As we got to the steps of the entrance, Professor Proby became suddenly irascible, and, taking on one side one of the attendants who was wearing a white coat, said to him:

“You, there! Get yourself into uniform. It looks better.”

The motor-car of the Chief of the Medical Staff was coming to a stop in front of the door. It opened like a dry fruit, and shot out its contents on the pavement.

What an impressive personage! He was tall and, it seemed to me, of enormous proportions. A typically military face--no one could mistake it--deep features over which the fingers and the nails of the sculptor must have passed again and again; on the nose, too, the sculptor’s thumb must have been at work, pressing and moulding delicately the lumps of flesh; a bristling white moustache and imperial, of the kind specially reserved for soldiers advanced in age. He wore an old general’s uniform, which many give up with the greatest difficulty, like old ideas. Gold, jewellery, velvet, and silk facings adorned his body with such refulgence that the imagination could hardly conceive that, beneath this barbarous splendour, there were lungs, muscles, bones and a shrivelled skin covered with grey hair.

A look escaped from beneath his bushy eyebrows, which was at once violent, questioning, and suggestive of unutterable pride.

He came forward in grave silence.

I expected a scene; but from that moment what took place has remained mysteriously veiled in my memory.

In one single movement everybody there took up a certain position, and they made a correct military salute according to the rules taught so patiently in barracks to recruits from the country.

Faces imperceptibly became rigid. The light in one’s eyes became dull and fixed. Ten centuries of a habit imposed and accepted petrified tongues, muscles and minds.

Some thistleseed flew away with the breeze. As I saw it fluttering, white, woolly, without weight, I thought--I don’t know why--of that subtle, fine, delicate, critical spirit. It vanished in a gust of wind. A big insect loaded with pollen could be heard buzzing around.

I felt stupid! A long pause; then the white-moustached gentleman decided to let these words fall from his lips:

“Good-day, gentlemen!”

The visit began in the rooms which had been packed with the wounded from the Marne front. There young men were lying who had been face to face with War, and who had calmly recognised it as the old Devil of the Species. From that time they spoke of it just as they always will, now that three years of blood, suffering and torture have decimated, maimed and broken them.

But nobody bothered about their thoughts. Sheets were drawn back, bandages were undone, wounds were left open to the air. It was now a question of “cases” and of lesions.

A scientific discussion was commencing, to which I listened with an eager curiosity. As I have said, doctors were present who were princes in their profession. They came on the scene with minds, I thought, which were profoundly independent--even aggressive. And I looked forward to an interesting controversy.

M. Dufrêne was closely examining some one’s thigh, in which a dark, quivering hole had been made by a shell.

“What do you put in it, Proby?” he said.

Professor Proby began a detailed explanation of the way in which such wounds ought to be treated.

“It has been my habit,” he said, “for thirty years to put in some cotton wool--I lectured to the Academy of Medicine--what! And nothing gives me such good results, because----”

At that point the Medical Inspector-General struck the sick man’s little table drily with his pencil.

“Hurry up, Proby,” he said, in a calm, cutting voice.

Proby started a little, and mumbled again:

“For thirty years I have always used cotton wool----”

“Believe me, Proby, that’s enough. You will not put any of it in the wounds. You understand.”

M. Dufrêne turned his back and began examining the next wounded man.

I watched Professor Proby’s face. I was sure the honoured academician was going to burst in again. The much-expected scientific controversy was at last about to take place before my eyes, and ideas would cross to and fro like glittering swords. I waited, holding my breath.

In grave silence, the academician replied:

“Very good, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_!”

I looked at everybody in turn. It seemed to me that a glove had been thrown down, and that some one was going to pick it up with polite audacity. But everybody looked vague and attentive. Professor Proby went up to the Medical Inspector-General, and repeated mechanically:

“Very good, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_!”

The experience of thirty years’ practice vanished like a light that went out.

M. Dufrêne went from bed to bed, heavy and majestic. “You made a mistake in operating upon this man: you would have done better to wait,” he said. Sometimes he approved: “Here is a result which justifies our theories.” Most often his criticism was unrestrained: “Why didn’t you use my apparatus--the Dufrêne apparatus? I wish to see it used here.”

Then murmurs of assent and promises were heard. To everything Proby replied invariably, “_Oui, Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

Doctor Coupé got red and confused in trying to express appreciations of the Inspector’s methods that seemed like excuses for his own.

I was watching M. Briavoine: he was nodding his head unceasingly, and murmured in a dignified way:

“Obviously, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.... Of course, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

These words were always being repeated by everybody. They were repeated as a refrain to almost every syllable and pronounced with a mumbling mechanical promptitude, so that every sentence, and every reply, seemed to end with this ritualistic rhythm: “_Mossinspecteurjral_.”

M. Dufrêne, more and more, gave expression to a kind of triumphant lyric. He spoke of himself, of his works, with a growing volubility and frequency. I thought he was disposed to qualify as “quite French,” or “national,” and sometimes as “a work of genius,” methods and ideas which were strictly his own. But this attempt to objectify things had a very slight connection with modesty.

At one moment this towering personality came towards me without seeing me with such vehemence that I nimbly got out of the way, as I would before a train. I uttered hasty words, which were:

“I beg your pardon, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

I had never, in the obscure life of a teacher, had the good fortune to be in the presence of a military man of high rank and hear him speak. I had only imagined, or come across in my reading, the virile outline of the real old soldier. As I looked at this doctor in his military boots and listened to his comments, I repeated to myself: “At last! the real thing!” I was overwhelmed, crushed, but in spite of that I was able to enjoy a feeling of security and confidence, and I always ended by thinking: “The sheer impudence of it! Still, it takes some doing to carry it off like that with such fellows as those doctors.”

The Medical Inspector-General had seized a fountain pen and was covering the walls with prescriptions. He explained in emphatic sentences what decisions ought to have been made and what action must be taken. After each diagnosis, those who attended him chanted the liturgic refrain: “_Oui, Mossinspecteurjral._”

“You must,” he was saying, “remember that you are soldiers before everything. In putting on the uniform, you have put on responsibilities. The independence of science has to yield before the necessity of a uniform method. Personal experience has to give way to discipline.”

With this simple injunction, personal experience yielded to the sway of discipline. In one voice the least disciplined race in the world replied:

“Of course, that is quite understood, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

The spectacled young man was standing near me, his arms rigidly at attention and eyes front. I heard him whisper a strange thing to his neighbour:

“Times have changed: every dog has his day.”

But his neighbour made a slight gesture of impatience, and the young man took up again his stiff attitude of respect.

His remark was quite out of place, I thought. Yet it got me out of my trance, and I began to reflect painfully on the incredible phenomenon which was then occurring before my eyes.

And it was now entering upon a critical phase. The inspector was examining the room where wounds were dressed.

“This room,” he said, “is large and well arranged. It was altered according to instructions I made in 1895 when I was reorganising this hospital. In fact, the whole place seems fairly satisfactory. Have you any complaints to make, Coupé?”

Doctor Coupé blushed, was rather upset, and ended by saying:

“Nothing at all, _Mossinspecteurjral_.”

M. Briavoine, when asked in his turn, appeared to ponder, and then replied that everything was as he wished.

Professor Proby, recovering from his coma, hastened to stammer:

“Ha! here everything is all right, _Mossinspecteurjral_.”

I remembered something M. Briavoine had said. I seemed to see him again buttoning his linen coat and saying, “What have I to gain?” Then I looked, greatly astonished, at his attentive face and respectful bearing. In the same way I observed his colleagues and, thinking of these men who had nothing to gain from their effacement and who had given way so completely, so hopelessly, I experienced a great admiration for them, and I had an insight into the meaning of discipline. But the perceptions of the intellect are often betrayed by other less noble impulses, for at the very same moment I could hardly restrain an inclination to laugh.

M. Dufrêne had stopped in the middle of a dormitory. Fifty wounded men were lying there: some talked in low voices, others groaned from time to time, and others again were delirious. The Inspector-General clapped his hands: at once the silence was complete. The least disciplined race in the world stopped moaning; they ceased from their delirium.

“Soldiers!” he said in a formidable voice, “the Government of the Republic has sent me to you to see how you are looked after. See how the Government of the Republic cares for you.”

From one end of the room to the other heads were raised, necks were stretched, and all those who had any breath left in them replied together:

“Thank you, General.”

M. Dufrêne was going out. Behind him, the least disciplined race in the world followed in good order down a staircase leading to the gardens.

I followed too, bringing up the rear.

I was enveloped in the shadows of the stairs, and before my bewildered eyes interrogation marks began to dance multicoloured. They vanished, and I then imagined a theatre where men appeared in their turn, said what they had been taught, and arranged themselves in good and proper order, some to speak again, others to dance, some to carry heavy loads, and others to die. Across the top of the stage a word was engraved which I could not make out, but which suddenly became luminous when I heard the spectacled young man on my right whisper to his comrade:

“It is a convention--a great convention in the midst of all the other conventions of life. It’s very queer, but not more so than that which compels us to arrange the words of a conversation in such or such an order.”

We were now in the garden. The green and amber glow of late summer put an end to one’s dreams.

The inspector had grouped his audience and was saying:

“You, Coupé, I congratulate you heartily. And in so doing I am conscious of the real pleasure I am giving you.”

M. Dufrêne was making no mistake, for the excellent doctor felt so pleased indeed that he blushed to the roots of his white hair.

There were other congratulations too, and also criticisms. Those who had been praised were surrounded by courtiers. Those who had been blamed were humiliated and left alone. Thus Professor Proby could be seen withdrawing, alone and abashed, like a schoolboy sent into a corner.

M. Briavoine closed the door of the motor-car with his own hands. As the vehicle was about to start, the phenomenon of the salute was witnessed once more: left arms to the sides, right arms raised simultaneously.

The most undisciplined race in the world stiffened itself into the regulation attitude.

The motor-car started off with a hoot.

“All the same, he’s a very remarkable man,” said Doctor Coupé, who seemed to be still half-asleep. And he repeated: “Yes, all the same----”

“He behaved well,” said M. Briavoine.

I noticed the person with the horizontal beard. His fine growth seemed to point down towards his chest, but he readjusted it by a voluntary movement of the chin, and said:

“Certainly, very well; but I would never hesitate, on occasion, to tell him exactly what I thought.”

“Certainly,” said M. Briavoine, “obedience should never go to the length of surrendering your reasoning powers.”

Everybody looked as if he had been doped with a subtle poison, but was gradually getting back to consciousness.

The sweet-smelling breeze played over the grass. I saw fluttering before my eyes the flighty thistleseed, winged and fleecy. With a neat little movement M. Briavoine caught it as he would a fly, and looked at it absently as he ended his sentence:

“Discipline,” he said, “does not imply, with us, the suppression of our critical spirit.”

And I saw, in fact, that the critical spirit had returned.

The group was disappearing. I was contemplating the tips of my shoes. The registers weighed heavily on my arm, and I tried to understand--to understand it all, when a hand struck my shoulder.

“Well! you are not in the guard-room, my boy! Good! That’s right!”

Purple, apoplectic, the orderly officer looked at me furiously but there was also in his eyes a sad, pleading expression. He added:

“You make your complaint. You’ll see what’ll happen.”

I raised my eyes towards the hospital. A clock adorned its front.

Then, clicking my heels together, raising my right hand to the height of my _képi_, I replied quite simply:

“Sir, I am not going to complain. It is five minutes to twelve. At twelve I shall be in prison.”

The bulldog face relaxed. I thought he was going to thank me. He was finally content to mumble:

“That’s a good thing!”

He went away. I proceeded, without laughing, to the guard-room.

You know the rest: I passed four days and four nights there. It was in the middle of September. At that time the flower of the French army were accomplishing such deeds of valour that an immense feeling of gratitude seemed to stir the whole country from end to end. And it was in a prison that I was fated to offer these men my humble thanks.

During those four days I thought of many queer things. But of them I will tell you another time.

CUIRASSIER CUVELIER

The Cuvelier affair made a deep and lasting impression on me. M. Poisson is not a bad man--far from it! But he is too old, you know.

All these old men ought not to have been allowed to take part in the war. You know what it cost us. And the curious thing was, sir, that everybody admitted it; for in the end all these old fellows were sent out of harm’s way to Limousin, one after the other. But let’s talk of something else: this is almost politics, and is no business of mine.

Talking about M. Poisson, he has one great fault: he drinks. Apart from that, as I have told you, he wasn’t a bad sort. But the stuff a man is made of soon degenerates by being soaked continually with small doses, and often large ones too. M. Poisson drinks, and that’s unfortunate in a man who fills a responsible post.

What makes him even more peculiar is that he is not made as we others. He is in himself a unique type. The world, as M. Poisson sees it, falls into two classes. On one side, all those who are above him. When he is facing that way he salutes and says, “I understand, _mon général_; of course, colonel.” On the other side, all those who are below him. And when facing them, he gets purple with shouting, “Silence, will you!” and things of that kind. At bottom, I think he is right, and that he is bound to behave like that in his work. I repeat he isn’t a bad man--only timid. He shouts in order to convince himself he is not afraid.

But after all, that is a question of army administration, and it’s no business of mine. Let us talk of something else. It is a principle of mine never to speak of these things: it’s forbidden ground.

But I have a personal grudge against M. Poisson for having put me in the mortuary--I who can write in round hand or slanting hand, in Gothic or flowing hand, and a dozen others, and would have made such a capable secretary.

Just imagine how I was received: I arrive with my helmet, knapsack, and all my rig-out. I am shown into a hut, and am told: “The doctor is in there.”

At first I see no one. M. Poisson is buried up to his hair in papers: I can just hear his asthmatical breathing, like wind blowing through keyholes. Suddenly he comes out of his hiding-place, and considers me. I see a rather heavy old man, short-legged, not very clean, with black-lined nails, an excess of skin on the back of the hand, a freckled skin that overlaps. He examines me carefully, but behaves as if he does not see me. I, on my part, look straight at him and observe him in detail: on his nose he has little varicose veins, his cheeks are rather blue, and under his chin hangs some loose skin, like the snout of beasts, and beneath his eyes two pouches that are never still, and brandy-coloured, which you feel like pricking with a pin.

He looks at me once again, spits, and says:

“Yes....”

I reply immediately:

“At your service, sir!”

Then he begins to shout in a hoarse voice:

“Speak when you are spoken to. Be quiet, will you! You see I’m up to my neck with this offensive, the wounded, and all these things here.”

What could I reply? I stand at attention and again say:

“Yes, sir; at your service, sir!”

He lights a cigarette and begins to wheeze, as you may have noticed, from the effects of alcohol on his chest.

At this juncture an officer comes in. M. Poisson exclaims:

“It’s you, Perrin? Oh, my dear fellow, let me alone, will you, to get on with this job! You see I am tired out with the work. Just look at my list: nineteen! I’ll never get to the end! Nineteen!”

The officer takes me by the arm and says:

“Oh! but this is the extra man that has been sent to us.”

Then M. Poisson comes nearer, looks at me closely, and bellows, his breath reeking with alcohol:

“Send him to the mortuary! Some one is wanted there. He can help Tanquerelle. To the mortuary! And no more nonsense!”

Ten minutes later I am stationed at the mortuary.

* * * * *

I became, sir, very wretched. I am fairly cheerful as a rule, but moving corpses about all day long cannot be called life. And such dead! The flower of the country, degraded to a depth which imagination cannot fathom.

Tanquerelle is an old butcher’s assistant. He too drinks. He is always given the most unpleasant work because he drinks, and his unpleasant work is an excuse for giving him more drinks. But I am not going to expatiate on that. The drink question is not my business, unfortunately.

Tanquerelle is no company: he is a calamity, a scourge, a breed apart, so to speak. When he is hungry, he never speaks; but he never is hungry. Usually he indulges in small talk--the comments of a drunkard, painful to hear in the presence of these corpses.

We are told, sir, that dead bodies mean very little to one after a time, and that when you habitually live with them they become nothing more than stones to you. Well, that’s not my experience. Every one of these corpses, with which I pass my days, ends in being a companion to me.

I get to like some of them, and I am almost sorry to see them taken away. Sometimes, when I carelessly hit up against them with my elbow, it is with an effort that I do not say, “I beg your pardon, my friend.” I look at them, with their blistered hands, and their feet covered with corns after long trudging over the roads, and my heart understands and is touched.

I note a flighty ring on a finger, a birthmark on the skin, an old scar, sometimes even tattoes, and finally one of the things which man does not leave behind him: his poor grey hair, the lines of his face, the relic of a smile around his eyes, more often traces of terror. And all that sets my mind thinking. From their bodies I can read their history: I imagined how much they had worked with those arms, the many things they had seen with their eyes, how they had kissed with those lips, how proud they must have been of their moustache and their beard, on which now the lice were crawling, away from the cold, dead flesh. I think of these things as I sew up the corpses in the sacking; and the emotion I feel rather startles me, because mingled with my misery is a feeling of pleasure.

But I am wandering off into philosophy. Not being a philosopher, I haven’t the right to bore you.

I think I was speaking to you about Cuirassier Cuvelier. Well, let me return to the story.

It takes us back to the May offensives. I assure you, I wasn’t idle in those days. What numbers of dead passed through my hands! The poor unfortunate widows and mothers need have no anxiety: in my way, I did my duty. All of them were taken away with their mouths tightly closed with a chin-cloth, arms crossed on their bodies--that is, of course, if they still possessed mouths and arms--and I carefully wrapped them in the sacking. I do not mention their eyes: it was beyond my power to close them. It is too late, you know, by the time they arrive at the mortuary. Oh, I took good care of my dead!