Chapter I: Have a Palliasse (3)

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 that their 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 meet Noverraz, 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 word _Frankreich_. 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 among the 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 shot is 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.”

A BLACK MOOD

_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’s _Histoire d’un crime_; Noverraz is dozing over Balzac’s _Chouans_; 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 the _Chouans_; d’Arnoult, “le Chasseur,” has closed _Histoire 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 caught _flagrante delicto_ a 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 my _Feldwebel_, “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 the _Nürnberger 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 the _Feldwebel_ is 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 the _Donaubauer_, 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 open my 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’s _Procession_ rises 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.

A FRANCONIAN QUARTERMASTER

_December 4, 1914._

The “Salle du Jeu de Paume” was born, if I may use the expression, from a conjunction of coups d’état.

Day by day the quartermaster became more exasperated at the happiness of five Frenchmen. In accordance with the good German rules, they ought to have been sleeping upon the damp cement in the basement, which is really a dungeon. But since we have had palliasses, the house-surgeon, the apothecary, and their friends—Laloux, Badoy, Scherrer, Massé, and Noverraz—have been sleeping in the consulting-room, where they are masters. This first-floor casemate, adjoining the _Kommandantur_, is dry, has a boarded floor and a southern aspect. Every evening they made their beds side by side and slept the sleep of the just. M. von Stengel good-naturedly closed his eyes. The Bavarian guard, grateful for the castor oil and the cuppings of Laloux, did likewise. But Ploss, the reservist quartermaster, a Franconian stonemason who speaks of himself as a “sculptor in the building trade,” was scandalized. He is a patriot, a flaming patriot—except where his own skin is concerned. Called to the front a few weeks ago, he went to weep upon the commandant’s bosom. The weeping gained its end, and he is still at Fort Orff.

Frenchmen sleeping dry, with plenty of room! Five Frenchmen bedded in a spacious casemate! Frenchmen passing night and day in the next room to the _Kommandantur_! Ploss’ soul was desolate.

One morning he went to see Baron von Stengel, and declared that the casemate of the guard, which adjoins on the west the commandant’s casemate, was too small, and that it was essential to use the consulting-room as an overflow. The consulting-room, divided in two by a wooden partition, could serve as a sort of office for the _Feldwebel_ and for himself, the quartermaster; thus the faithful _Landwehrleute_ would have the delight of guarding their dear _Herr Major_ on both sides. The argument was irresistible. The _Herr Major_ acquiesced. Intoxicated with delight, Ploss promptly went up and down the fort announcing the news everywhere, to the guard, to the interpreters, and to the banished men. Prouder even than M. de Morny after the 2nd of December, he luxuriated in his coup d’état.

The door of the room occupied by the six French medical officers opens into the same corridor as the _Kommandantur_, but on the other side of the main entrance. Laloux and his companions promptly go to knock at the door. They explain the situation. Next minute, M. Langlois, in full dress, wearing gloves, emerges. He descends upon M. von Stengel. He has the most pressing need of a consulting-room, spacious, airy, and sunny! He is crafty, and as persistent as he is diplomatic. The baron agrees to let him have No. 46, the next room to the French officers. An obstinate defender of our rights, he demands in addition that the members of his staff, who give their services to French and Germans alike, shall have permission to sleep in their workroom. Permission is granted. He returns. Our exiles, whistling and singing joyously, hasten to remove their palliasses. Ploss watches them sourly; his coup d’état has missed fire. These French monkeys, they always fall on their feet! But what sort of a _Herr Major_ is this, who can refuse them nothing?

Downstairs, in kitchen No. 22, another turn of fortune’s wheel! The major from the Ingolstadt headquarters, who is but a Ploss with a commission, has been inspecting the fort, and has caught sight of the twin palliasses of Dutrex and Riou. Placed against the wall opposite the stoves, they have been an offence to him. “Clear out, messieurs!” What are we to do? Our places have been filled in our old casemates. We, too, visit M. Langlois. Hitting two birds with one stone, he includes us, as well as Durupt, the money-changer, d’Arnoult, the secretary, and Détry, the dentist, in his request to M. von Stengel. Thus the entire pharmaceutical staff and the whole French bureaucracy of Fort Orff are assigned to the consulting-room.

This happened ten days ago. Since then the victims of the two coups d’état have furnished their quarters. They have adorned their windows with half curtains and have divided their casemate in two with a hanging of flowered lutestring. During the day they arrange their ten palliasses in two piles and cover them with rugs, so that in hours of despondency they have two imposing couches—thrones, as it were. At the very end of the room are the two tables, the one known as the “operating-table,” and the little table whose heavy drawers contain iodine, cupping-glasses, and blue ointment. At their request, Le Second has designed for them shades “à la ballet russe” for their two lamps. On the shelves they have arranged the vermicelli boxes which they use as lockers. The men of room 26, a centre of artistic life, have made them some additional shelves. An old herring-box plays the part of flower-vase, filled at this moment with silver thistles and a spray of barberry, magnificently red. Ploss can’t get over it! His own “büro” is a melancholy place. The old consulting-room, formerly spruce and gay, has become a mere empty loft since he took possession. _Herr Gott Sakrament!_ Hang these Frenchmen!

After dinner the medical officers, especially MM. Langlois, Romant, and Bouvat, come to No. 46. We draw back the curtains. We stretch a string across the room to serve as net, and for an hour we give ourselves up to the joys of chamber-tennis, using our hands as rackets. It is for this reason that the new consulting-room has received the imposing name of Salle du Jeu de Paume. Sometimes, also, it is designated “la chambre des huiles,” _das Oelenzimmer_.

Poor Ploss. He cannot get the better of these Frenchmen. He would like to see them yielding, to see them cringe beneath his rod, to see them thoroughly miserable. And yet, whatever he can do, despite their hunger and their fits of the blues, they are cheerful. They sing, they decorate their prison. They are always finding new devices. If they have no tools, they make some. They work unceasingly in wood and stone. All the casemates have tables now, stools, chairs, lockers, water-kegs, draughts, and chessmen. Guiton d’Ancenis and Robert le Bordelais are neither smiths nor carpenters, and yet No. 26 is well furnished. They had no spoons; they “forged” some out of old “bully-beef” tins. They had no forks, but they have cut some from the birches on the slopes. To economize matches, they have made a float-light. To save their fingers from the heat of the boiling soup when it is poured into their bowls, they have fashioned wickerwork saucers. Almost all of them had been compelled to give up their knives; lengths of iron cask-hoop, patiently hammered straight and sharpened, have supplied the lack. Their windows are decorated with tiny pine-trees, planted in herring-boxes. They hope to take them home and grow them in France.

Do what he could, Ploss has not been able to stamp out this creative fervour. He knows it, and it infuriates him. Oh, if he had but been commandant! How he would have hunted down without mercy all those concerned in the underground traffic, in the great commercial enterprises by which our illicit supply of provisions has been gradually centralized. There are two such enterprises, and thanks to the competition between them we have for some weeks been securing, at stable and almost reasonable prices, supplementary rations of inestimable value. With what joy he would compel Marin and Brissard to shut up shop, two men who, with a chance armamentarium, have in kitchen No. 42 established a flourishing foundry of tin rings. And Crussol, who puts the finishing touches to the stones which are prepared for him by a whole squad of drillers and escutcheoners, and who has secured a reputation and customers even among the officers at the Ingolstadt headquarters. How promptly would he be dislodged from his niche in the northern parapet, where he works all day in any weather, squatting and mute like a second Paphnuce.

But, thank goodness, though Ploss can restrict as much as he pleases the meagre governmental rations (and he does not fail to make use of his opportunities in this respect), his jurisdiction does not pass beyond the limits of the storerooms and the kitchens. Throughout the rest of the fort the major reigns supreme, and his regime is so strictly courteous that even the most ill-conditioned among the non-commissioned officers of the guard think twice before ordering any of us strict arrest on bread and water.

Ploss is disheartened. Ploss is wounded. Ploss is sad. Ploss envies Fort A3, a German league from Fort Orff. Here a mere non-commissioned officer is in command. The fort is in truth little more than a redoubt. Two hundred and fifty Frenchmen of the 6th corps are packed into the place. Their only exercise ground consists of muddy and dark passages, a narrow ditch, and a tiny platform of about a hundred square feet. There is no upper story. In front of the windows, fifty yards away, are the iron gate and the precipitous slope. Eternal twilight reigns within. The governor is like a narrow-minded usher, a jealous and timid despot, trembling before orders from headquarters and terrible to the prisoners. If only Ploss were _Vize-Feldwebel_ of Fort A3!

I know this little fort. My friend Cambessédès, house-surgeon from Paris, a doctor serving in M. Langlois’ group of stretcher-bearers, has been sent there from Fort 8 as medical officer, accompanied by M. Valois, a prosector from Montpellier. In a note, clandestine, of course, he let us know his whereabouts. Kindly, as usual, Baron von Stengel allowed the medical officers and me to pay them a visit. Thus it came to pass that last Sunday, escorted by a _Gefreiter_ and a soldier with fixed bayonet, we walked from Orff to Wegstetten. It was thawing. Tiny blue rivulets flowing through the pastures and along the furrows of the ploughs reflected the quiet sky. We met groups returning from vespers: women, children, and old men, peaceful folk who nodded to us as they passed.

When we reach the fort, which is insidiously buried in the interior of a bald eminence and is invisible a hundred paces away, a parley is necessary. The _Gefreiter_ hands the officer of the guard of A3 the permit issued by the commandant of Fort Orff. The sentry opens the gate. We pass in. Lining the walls, the red-trousers form an inquisitive and saluting hedge. Cambessédès runs up quite out of breath. Through long, dark, and narrow passages he conducts us to the medical officers’ quarters.

These are screened off by wooden partitions from the remainder of a gloomy casemate. Two beds, two wooden chairs, a table; no vacant space. It suggests a midshipman’s cabin on a man-of-war. The air is raw. Illustrations cut from the _Woche_ are pinned to the wall. Upon a little shelf above my friend’s bed I see his wife’s photograph. A whiff of French perfume is wafted to my senses. I think of Paris, home, the fireside, work, peace! I say little during the visit. We sit down haphazard on the beds, the chairs, the table. A little soldier from Châlons, very quick and lively in his movements, comes in with a jug of coffee and an odd assortment of half-pint mugs. The company talks of the Geneva Convention and of medical and technical matters. Those from Orff get the others to tell of the recent happenings at Fort 8.

I pay scant attention to these petty details, swallowing my coffee mechanically amid the clash of voices and laughter. All my thoughts are in Paris. How strange seems this society of Frenchmen in the remote Bavarian redoubt. It is borne in on me of a sudden that madness rules the world.

Cambessédès and Valois, as hosts, now show us round. A crowd of soldiers follows us. Some of the adjutants post us concerning the life of the prisoners. Poor fellows, they have no von Stengel! In A3 it is impossible to procure any kind of supplement to the official rations. It is impossible to get a jug of good beer from time to time to keep up one’s spirits.

From the platform there is a fine view over the village of Wegstetten and the wood-crowned hills. M. Langlois, at least, thinks so. He looks with all his eyes. He is in ecstasy—when the sentry, a stumpy Swabian in a black greatcoat which is threadbare, weatherworn, and turning rusty-green, pounces upon him, charges bayonet, and touches the major’s tunic with the point of the steel. Our surgeon-in-chief protests: he has made no attempt to climb up the turf-covered breastwork; he has not trespassed into a forbidden region; he has merely been admiring the view. “Quite so,” barks the obstinate little bulldog, snorting angrily; “to look outside is forbidden.”

Unquestionably A3 is very different from Fort Orff! Whatever you do, baron-gaoler, do not ask for leave until we are set at liberty. Do not hand us over to a Ploss!

But even Ploss has his good hours. French lightness of heart is able from time to time to exert its charm over this hard Franconian noddle. His surly air passes off. With a brisk gesture he pushes his greasy _Mütze_ back over the nape of his neck. His brown tuft of hair makes its appearance, giving him an engaging and almost sportive air. During these calms, Davit, the Hercules cook, can with impunity seize the quartermaster, wrestle with him, and make as if to throw him head-first into a boiling cauldron. The paunchy cook of No. 42, when the herrings are being distributed, can then, under Ploss’ very eyes, sneak a good-sized “Bismarck” and stuff it into the pocket of his smock, with the tail sticking out. But beware! The quartermaster’s ordinary temper will suddenly return, and the prisoner with whom he has just been laughing will find himself sentenced to three days’ cells simply for having kept up the game for a second after the eclipse. Ploss is then capable of making allegations likely to bring a man before a firing squad. He will say, for example, “Prisoner X attempted to kill me by striking me on the head with a ladle.”

* * * * *

What a wonderful thing is this French light-heartedness! Heavy-witted northerners term it levity when they should speak of it as vitality. These little Frenchmen! To-day you see them sad at heart. The weather is grey; a languorous humidity prevails which seems to reduce the scale of the landscape and to make the noises draw nearer. We hear the roar of the trains in the plain, trains moving westwards, towards France. Those afoot walk as in a dream; many never leave their palliasses. The men from Provence are thinking of the sunshine; the Parisians recall the joyous meetings of Saturday evening when work is done; the Bretons listen in imagination to the heavy, rhythmical sound of the great surges breaking at the foot of the native cliff. Every one has “the hump.”

Suddenly comes the sound of singing from the corridors. “They are singing! Have the letters come?” One and all rush to be first at the main gate, close to the _Kommandantur_, beneath the gloomy arch. There is coming and going and much talk. “Is it true that there are lots of letters?”—“Two or three hundred, so d’Arnoult says!”—“What luck! When shall we get them?”—“Oh, the sorting will take some time.” The procession to the kitchens is animated. The hope of being about to receive a letter has eased the nervous tension.

But what, among eleven hundred men, is the handful of letters reaching the fort from time to time? For one who is made happy, there are thirty disappointed. My friend Foch, the awe-inspiring sergeant of the “vitriers” [infantry chasseurs], the most martial man in the fort, a hero, has not yet received a single line from Colroy-la-Grande, in the Vosges, near the Lubine pass. Since August the French have been fighting on this crest, advancing and retreating alternately. In the frontier villages the skirmishing never ceases. What has become of his brave wife, who, scorning bullets, leading her seven-year-old twins by the hand, used to bring dinner to her husband in the firing-line? Is she dead? Has she been interned? And his house, the little house known so well to the men of the 10th Chasseurs, where they had often received food and drink, is it still standing? Poor Foch! His energetic countenance, with its flashing eyes, is clouded; his tongue, formerly so glib at a story, is stilled. Nor is he the only one who continues to await the first letter from home. I am among those specially favoured, and of ten letters sent to me, but one comes to hand, taking three and often four weeks on the journey.

Fortunately, money orders and parcels, exempt from the delays of the censorship, arrive regularly. Received as if they had been Father Christmas himself, with transports of delight which well-nigh make us jump for joy like children, these are the great dissipators of depression. They have completely modified our life, bringing into the fort a sort of plenty. Jerseys, woollen helmets, Russian caps, comforters, thick hand-knitted socks; every one is now wadded against the cold. Muffled in wool, men toboggan merrily down the slopes. Sometimes we have little dinner-parties. On the rickety tables knocked together by our amateur carpenters there are cups of tea and chocolate, pieces of gingerbread, sponge-cakes, jams, long twists of French tobacco. These love-feasts are not very grand, but to us they are delightful. We nibble our piece of cake, we sip from our steaming mug, noiselessly, slowly, our hearts filled with tender thoughts. We think of the hands which have made the tart, of the eyes which have watched the seething of this jam. If one of the guests should make a joke, he is wasting his wit. The laugh dies on our lips. Every one is full of memories. Our picnics are communions.

After the horror of the first two months of imprisonment, when many of us knew no other feeling than that of hunger—hunger by day and by night, the hunger that keeps a man awake and gnaws like an ulcer—now that winter has come we are having a fairly agreeable time. Our bodies have become accustomed to the regimen. The monotony of life is broken by happy events, by the arrival of parcels, money orders, and letters. The work we have had to do at Ingolstadt, Hepperg, and Wegstetten has widened the bounds of our prison. Every one has made a circle of friends. Some of the casemates, with their tables for bridge or poker, have now the aspect of clubs. We have learned how to circumvent German discipline. Our service for the supply of smuggled victuals works smoothly, so that we are at least able to provide ourselves with chocolate and tobacco. Some have purchased books; numerous French works belonging to the Fayard, Nelson, and Flammarion libraries have made their way through the gates, across the ditches, and over the walls; they pass from hand to hand until they fall to pieces. Some of the prisoners are learning German. My big dictionary is, as it were, an ever open mill, where all can make themselves at home. Every room has its writers of topical songs. Stretched on their palliasses, paper and pencil in hand, they cudgel their brains for rhymes. I cannot say that the outcome is sublime, but the verses, caustic without ill-nature, peppered with puns, and stuffed with allusions to the point of unintelligibility, amuse us all. The following stanzas dealing with the “ministerial council,” written by Cormarie and sung by Saint-Lanne of Agen at the Saturday concerts in No. 7, go to the air of the _Paimpolaise_:

Nos deux majors veulent extraire
Du beau riz si blanc et si sain
Une huile pure limpide et claire
Qu’ils appel’ront l’huil’ de riz-sain
Pour avoir le _Ri_
_Où_ s’adresseront-ils?
Chambre 17 ou aux cuisines!
Il écrit toute la journée!
A chaque repas, drôl’ de combine!
On lui sert des figaro-thés.

Il porte pour la circonstance
L’habit vert d’Académicien;
Les palmes en sont restées en France
Pour les canards de son quotidien;
Car je les ai vu
Et même à _fon lupt_.
Je dis: ne crois pas ces canards sauvages
Car ils s’ébattent soir et matin
Avant d’être envoyés aux sages
Dans une mar’ d’eau de _Laubin_.

But France is a nation of prose writers; at the fort there are many more authors of memoirs than of songs. Memoirs abound.[28] Why is it that men who have never before tried to record their experiences in writing should feel impelled to recount the happenings of their campaign, and to describe their feelings of discouragement during a lengthy imprisonment? Do they do it to relieve tedium? Have they an obscure need of confession? Or do they consider the circumstances of their life in war-time so exceptional as to deserve the honour, in their view an extraordinary one, of written record? In my opinion this last motive predominates. Rightly or wrongly, the “little soldiers of the republic” regard the present conflict in an epic light, and at bottom, notwithstanding their ingrained tendency to grumble, are not a little flattered at being among the heroes of this affair. They know that as long as men exist people will continue to talk about the great war, and that in the schools children will learn the names of the battles in which their fathers have fought and suffered. They want to be able to astonish their little ones, to be able to say: “I was there; I fought in this battle; read my account of the matter and you will see how everything happened, what my leaders did, and when I received my wound.” Men, Frenchmen above all, whatever their station, have such a hunger for fame.

Yesterday I came across Maze on the slopes, wearing his great red chéchia, which accentuates his stature, already considerable. His shirt was drying in the wind, tied to the lightning-conductor, and flapping like a flag. He was sitting behind the parapet, sheltered from the wind, and was reading. “What may you be reading?”—“My battle.”—“Can I look at it?”—“Here you are.”

In his note-book, worn and dog’s-eared, the following account was pencilled on the pages he showed me. I reproduce it verbatim, with its mistakes in spelling:

It was on August 19th that our company set out from the village
of Couture. We crossed the fields to rejoin the Metz road.
After we had marched two kilometres along this road, we took
shelter in a wood in order to avoid being seen by a German
areoplane. After a short hault here, we started off once more
towards Fresne-en-Saulnois. We left this village on our left
to march upon Auron and Vivier. We found trenches made by the
enemy and some dead horses. In the evening we were before Duron
and Vivier, the Germans having left these two villages a couple
of hours earlier. We, the company “146,” occupied all the exits
from the villages. At about half past eight in the evening the
company shoulders knapsacks and we go to the outposts before
Frémery. We passed a fairly quiet night, a few shots were fired
towards midnight, and we thought there was a night attack, but
it was only a skirmish between patrols. Next day, August 20th,
at three in the morning the captain commands us to extend in
skirmishing order, for we had been warned that the enemy is
in front of us. In two or three leaps we reach the crest of a
little hill in front of us. At this moment we receive a few
bullets which oblige us to assume the ofensive. The lieutenant
orders us to fire at five hundred yards upon the enemy
advancing towards the crest. At this moment our comrade Arnold,
the cook, comes from the village of Frémery, the bombardment of
which has just begun, he held in his hands two pales of coffee
which he brings to his section, although the captain told him
to go back. But, he listening only to the commands of his own
courage and coolness, succeeds in joining his section which
was then engaged with the enemy. On reaching the line he began
to distribute the coffee, but hardly had he begun when he was
hit near the left eye not seriously, which stopped him for a
moment. But this did not hinder him from continuing his round,
stopping from time to time to fire his rifle. It was when he
had nearly reached the end of the line of skirmishers that he
was hit on the right rist. At this moment he was close to the
sergeant-major, who was lying at full length in a furrow and
who with the aid of his soup spoon was digging a hole for his
head; at this moment we had no orders, for most of the non-coms
and privates had been killed or wounded.—The sub-lieutenant
gives the order to retire to those who are able, but the
sergeant-major stoped where he was saying to a man who was near
him and who was wounded. “No slackers here” giving him a blow
with the flat of his sword.—At this moment, the Germans make
their charge and come close up to us, the sergeant-major lifted
his arms into the air, crying, “quarter! my wife my child.”—A
little while after we were under the guard of some German
soldiers, who conducted us as best they could to the hospital
at Lucy. On the way the sergeant-major said to us that but for
his spoon he would perhaps be a dead man?

I was touched by this little story. Maze thinks only of praising Arnold’s heroism. He says not a word about his own wound, although this was severe. He was struck in the neck, and the bullet is still beneath the shoulder-blade. One day he stripped in my presence and I felt the projectile. At the same time I had a good view of the sun, the stars, and the nymphs wherewith his chest is decorated, framing the great portrait of Carpentier which Maze had had tattooed while in Paris.

Speaking generally, the memoirs I have read have lacked interest. The hero speaks of the beer he has drunk, of the naps he has been able to snatch between the attacks, gives the names of his sergeant, of his comrades. We get absolutely no idea of the battle he was in. I reproduce, however, the story of Marius-Eugène G⸺, who was made prisoner on August 27th at Moyen-Moutier. It is the best I have discovered in the fort:

_ACCOUNT OF WAR AND IMPRISONMENT
by
Marius-Eugène G⸺_

_Moyen-Moutier, August 27, 1914._

Am alone, have lost my regiment, my company, am at
Moyen-Moutier. Endeavour to join up with the 52nd or the 75th,
can’t do it, stop and think, the firing begins again. The
Germans are bombarding the town. What on earth shall I do? I
lose my head, I am alone, I have no friend, no one to advise
me. I run like a madman; I stop when I hear the whistling of
the German projectiles I stretch myself at full length on
the ground they fall two hundred yards from me and then come
nearer. At length I give myself up for lost, I loose my head
more and more however I think much of Rive-de-Gier of my dear
employers of my dear love also of my brother and sister-in-law
and of my dear little niece in fact of every one dear to me
and it is with sorrow that I see the shells raning round me I
ast myself if I shall ever see again this dear family, this
idol which I carry in my heart. Having received a slight
wound in the arm I went to the red cross and I have made the
acquaintance of a dear friend of the 75th where we always
remain brothers in misfortune since the hour when we were
made prisoner, Thursday August 27 1914 at five o’clock in the
evening; from there they sent us to sleep in a school, without
a straw, still get through the night somehow and early next
morning they make a list of the prisoners and send us to Saale
which is on the frontier twenty kilometres from Moyen-Moutier,
on the way the German soldiers make a long stop and gives us
a bit of food a meal which I and my compatriots much enjoyed
for we were getting very hungry at length we reach Saale it is
about five in the evening, they make us sleep hard just like
last night only instead of a school it is a church which has
been transformed into a dormitory no great catch, the night
is rather cold but we get through it somehow. Saturday August
29 we entrain at Saale station at nine o’clock in the morning
without knowing where we are going it was a day of anguish
for me and also for all my friends in the same situation as
myself, we remain all day in the train all night and all Sunday
August 30 when we arrive at our destination Ingolstadt at eight
o’clock in the evening, they tells us that there is still 2
hours march to reach Fort Orff where I am still in prison after
4 weeks.

September 24. The weather to-day is rather grey and cold we
stay in the rooms, tell what has hapened to us during the
campane and the poor fellows serving with the colours when the
war broke out said that this was the day of their discharge
however we did all that we could to enliven the dull life we
have had since our imprisonment.

Being quite without money to provide for my little wants, I am
sorry to say that I have had to sell the ring that belonged to
my dear mother the one she gave me the year before she died
I was forced to sell it to buy food for they do not give us
enough to eat and it is with regret that I sacrificed it in
order to avoid coming to a bad end, all this is due to this
cursed war from which I have been suffering for 2 months now,
I hope it will soon be over and that I shall be able to resume
the life of peace and happiness I led in the barracks where I
had a happy time during the week and on Sunday was happy to be
able to get leave to go to Rive-de-Gier where I passed such a
pleasant day with my dear employers and my dear girl and that
dear family of which I often think, at every moment of the day
my thoughts turn to them.

Now at length the day is finished and the moment has come to
go and fetch the wretched pittance which they give us as food
then to have some talk with my friend, companion in misfortune,
bedfellow for we sleep together on one heap of straw and with
one blanket, all this because of this cursed war, still never
mind the suffering, it is for France.

September 25. Glorious weather, one can feel the warmth of the
sun, I take advantage of it to get up quickly, to have a wash,
then I go to fetch the trickle of hot water they give us for
coffee, I profit by the opening of this fine autumn day to take
a turn or two about the fort to take my thoughts off and to
proffit by this fine sunshine which has been very rare since my
imprisonment in Bavaria.

Then, I do like many of the comrades my fellow-prisoners, try
to do some work upon Bavarian stone, to make a souvenir of the
fort, but I have no patience and chuck the thing away, for it
does not take my thoughts off?

Good biz! a friend in the room has a pack of cards and we begin
to play game after game of manilla, this turns our thoughts a
bit but its not as good as the old games we used to play in
the taverns of the old Couzonnais quarter. In spite of all I
think of everyone I left behind me in that old town, of my dear
employers, of their old parents who was so good to me and also
of the dear parents of my dear girl who is never out of my
thoughts and who I hope she thinks much of me.

Thursday, October 1st. Having been one day without writing I
hasten to quickly write these two words, these moments are so
sweet for me besides to write one is obliged to be alone and
that is why to-day finding myself at the top of the fort where
I look over all the plane and at the end of it the fine town
of Ingolstadt I see many factory chimnies which are smoking
also the fields where some Bavarian peasants is working in
this place one would never think, seeing the sight which is
spread beneath my eyes, one would never think that canon are
thundering a few(?) kilometres away. All that I have written on
this page makes me feel sick at heart for outside this cursed
fort there would be liberty and peace for always. For such a
life as we have been living, everyone of us here, is not to be
envied. After a war like that we are going through, just as
much for the german people as for the French, there is ruin for
the 2 countries where are killed or wounded numerous fathers
of families who leaves a wife without support with one or more
children! I have not yet the rite to be mourned like these
fathers of families, but in spite of everything I think much of
my life in the future when I hope to be able to make the girl I
love happy and whom I hope will not desert me even though she
gets no news of me. Here then is the month of October begining
very sadly I live in hope that the end will be a little better.

There, it is not very grand, but it is so sincere, and in any case this work of the pen makes the time pass less heavily. Poetizing, music, memoirs, tobogganing, little dinners, German, cards, whittling, stone-carving—some of the prisoners find the days too short. What an odd creature is man!

Tesson came to see me just now, bringing his last piece of work, a great slab of stone depicting the entrance to Fort Orff. The whole kitchen staff formed up in circle round the masterpiece. “Well I’m blowed!” said Devèse. “That’s not been done with the point of a pickaxe,” remarked Deschênes by way of praise. I also expressed my admiration. Then the master drew from his pocket a book with clasps, cut in limestone. He had carved on it the title: _Les Mémoires de Victor Tesson, prisonnier de guerre, à sa méchante Louise Huber.—Dolomieu, Isère._ While I was praising the dedication, he showed me his tools, saying: “Here are my cold chisel and my piercer. I made them out of my bicycle pliers. Here’s my ruler; I ‘forged’ it out of the tyre of a wheelbarrow.”—“Is that all?”—“That’s all. I have no dividers; I measure with a straw.”

Unquestionably the Frenchman is a very live animal. When I hear my fellow-prisoners applauding the artistes of No. 7, Lannessan, Grignon, Saint-Lanne, Bouquet, or the “artistes socialistes” of No. 38, the members of the audience splitting their sides with laughter at the satirical allusions and joining lustily in the choruses; when I go to No. 13 to visit Le Second, who receives me with the affected airs of a dandy as he ushers me into his domain of five feet square, incredibly elegant and quaint, fitted up à la Martine; when I contemplate the roguish gaiety of all these “Gavroches,” their indefatigable activity, the effervescence of their wit—I think of a Swiss friend of mine who is always saying, “These devils of Frenchmen!” I can even understand the stupefaction of that great barrel of a Max! One will never get the better of these fellows. One will never bend such bodies beneath the yoke of servitude. Without violence, by the simple play of their natural life, they would tame the most mulish of masters. The substance of which they are composed, ever radiating energy, is irreducible. It is evident that, by special privilege, they are born “free men.” Sovereign people!

How right is Péguy when he says that their watchword is “Hope.” Misfortune befalls them; they seem overwhelmed. From disorganization they pass to grumbling and from grumbling to revolution. Come back to look at them to-morrow; you will find them valiant, dashing, light-hearted heroes recking no longer of yesterday. They laugh at their sufferings. They sing. They defy their gollywogs of gaolers. They combine to think out some new plan. They engage in some fresh piece of work. Merely to look at them renews the savour of life.

At first everything went amiss here. Apart from eating our starvation rations, we had nothing to do. It was a terrible time. But contemplate them now; they are blithe enough. They are prisoners, and yet you would say they were in their own homes, masters, owners. Prisoners? They seem to be the guardians of their sentries; they go so far as to chide the sentries if these are slovenly in the performance of their duties. It is not that the prisoners have adapted themselves to the environment, but that they have forced the environment, willy nilly, to adapt itself to them. Like certain mosses which grow where there is no humus, they catch flying grains of dust and force these to yield the scanty soil which will enable them to live.

Moreover, events seem to favour this natural propensity to hope.

* * * * *

The last thing was your card with a picture of the _Victory of Samothrace_. You had erased the title and put a date in its place. Every one came to see this bulletin of victory which I had put up beside your portrait! I wish you could have heard the comments.