Chapter I: Of the Meeting Which Befell Me One Day on the High Road

The high road through Artois and Flanders is long and dreary. It stretches in a straight line, without trees, without ditches, through flat fields that are always full of yellow mud. In the month of March, 1815, I travelled along this road, and a meeting befell me which I have never forgotten since.

I was alone, on horseback, I was wearing a handsome white cloak, a red uniform, a black helmet, pistols and a big sabre; it had been raining in torrents for the last four days and nights of my journey, and I remember that I was singing “Joconde” at the top of my voice. I was so young!--The King’s household, in 1814, had been filled up with children and grandsires; the Emperor seemed to have taken all the men and killed them.

My comrades were in front, on the road, in the train of King Louis XVII.; I saw their white clocks and red uniforms, right away on the northern horizon; Bonaparte’s lancers, who were watching and following our retreat step by step, from time to time showed the tricolour pennons of their lances on the opposite sky-line. A lost shoe had delayed my horse; he was young and strong, and I urged him on, so that I might rejoin my squadron; he set off at a rapid trot. I put my hand to my belt,--it was well enough furnished with gold pieces; I heard the iron scabbard of my sabre ringing against the stirrup, and I felt very proud and perfectly happy.

It was still raining, and I was still singing. However, I soon grew silent, tired of hearing no one but myself, and I no longer heard anything but the rain and the hoofs of my horse, which was floundering in the ruts. The road was unpaved; I was sinking, and was obliged to go at a walk. My top-boots were covered, outside, with a thick crust of mud as yellow as ochre; inside they were filling with rain. I looked at my brand-new gold epaulettes, my joy and comfort; they were roughened by the wet, which distressed me.

My horse lowered his head; I did the same: I began to think, and to wonder, for the first time, where I was going. I knew absolutely nothing about it; but that did not trouble me long: I was certain that, my squadron being there, there was my duty also. Feeling at my heart a deep, unchangeable calm, I gave thanks for it to the indescribable sense of Duty, and I tried to explain it to myself. Seeing at close quarters how unaccustomed fatigues were gaily borne by heads so fair, or so white, how a secure future was so cavalierly risked by so many prosperous men of the world, and taking my share in that miraculous satisfaction which is imparted to every man by the conviction that he cannot evade any debt of Honour, I concluded that an easier and more common thing than people imagine, is SELF-SACRIFICE.

I wondered whether Self-sacrifice was not a feeling innate in us; what was this need of obeying, and resigning our will into another’s hands, as if it were a heavy and wearisome load; whence came the secret happiness at being rid of this burden, and why human pride had never rebelled against it. I saw clearly how this mysterious instinct bound peoples together, everywhere, into powerful unions, but nowhere did I see, so entire and so formidable as in Armies, this renunciation of individual actions, words, wishes and almost of thoughts. I saw resistance possible and usual everywhere, the citizen, in all places, practising a discerning and intelligent obedience which examines into matters, and may be suspended. I saw how even the wife’s tender submission ends as soon as she is bidden to do wrong, and how the law defends her; but military obedience, passive and active at one and the same time, receiving the order and carrying it out, striking, with eyes shut, like the ancient Destiny! I traced the possible consequences of the soldier’s Self-sacrifice, irretrievable, unconditional, and sometimes leading to terrible duties.

Thus I thought as I journeyed on at my horse’s pleasure, looking at the time by my watch, and seeing the road still stretching out in a straight line, without a tree or a house, and cutting the plain as far as eye could see, like a broad yellow stripe on a grey canvas. Sometimes the watery stripe blended with the watery earth around it, and, when a rather less pallid light illuminated this desolate stretch of country, I saw myself in the midst of a muddy sea, following a current of slime and plaster.

As I carefully examined this yellow stripe of road, I noticed on it, about a quarter of a league off, a little black moving speck. This gave me pleasure,--it was somebody. I saw that this black speck was going like myself in the direction of Lille, and that it was travelling in a zigzag, a sign of a laborious journey. I accelerated my pace and gained on this object, which lengthened somewhat and grew larger beneath my gaze. I resumed a trot on firmer ground, and thought I made out a kind of small black vehicle. I was hungry, I hoped that it was a canteen-woman’s cart, and, regarding my poor horse as a boat, I rowed it with all my might to reach that fortunate isle, in that sea wherein at times it sank up to the middle.

A hundred paces off, I was able to distinguish clearly a little white wooden cart, covered with three hoops and with black oilcloth. It looked like a little cradle set on two wheels. The wheels were sunk in the mud up to the axle-trees; a little mule which drew them was laboriously led by a man on foot who held the bridle. I drew near and viewed him with attention.

He was a man of about fifty, with a white moustache, tall and strong, with back bent like those old infantry officers who have carried the knapsack. He wore their uniform, and you caught a glimpse of a major’s epaulette under a short blue cloak, much worn. His face was rugged, but kind, as so many are in the army. He looked at me sideways under his thick black eyebrows, and briskly drew from his cart a gun, which he cocked, at the same time crossing to the other side of his mule, of which he made a rampart. Having seen his white cockade, I contented myself with showing the sleeve of my red uniform, and he replaced his gun in the cart, saying:

“Ah! that makes a difference, I took you for one of those fellows who are chasing us. Will you have a drink?”

“With pleasure,” I said, approaching him, “I have drunk nothing for twenty-four hours.”

He had hanging from his neck a cocoa-nut, very finely carved, contrived as a flask, with a silver neck, and he seemed rather proud of it. He passed it to me, and I drank a little poor white wine from it with great enjoyment; I returned the cocoa-nut to him.

“To the health of the King!” he said as he drank; “he made me an officer of the Legion of Honour, it is only fair that I should follow him to the frontier. Indeed, as I have only my epaulette to live by, I shall afterwards resume command of my battalion, it is my duty.”

So speaking, as if to himself, he started his little mule once more, saying that we had no time to lose; and, as I was of his opinion, I set off again along with him. I looked at him continually without questioning him, never having cared for the indiscreet chatter so common amongst us.

We went on without speaking for about a quarter of a league. As he stopped then to give a rest to his little mule, which it pained me to see, I stopped too and tried to squeeze from my riding-boots the water which filled them, as if they were two wells in which my legs had been soaked.

“Your boots are beginning to stick to your feet,” he said.

“I have not had them off for four nights,” I told him.

“Pooh! in a week you won’t notice it,” he rejoined in his hoarse voice; “it is something to be alone, you know, in times like those we live in. Do you know what I have in there?”

“No,” I said.

“A woman.”

I said “Oh!” without too much surprise, and marched on calmly, at a walking pace. He followed me.

“That wretched wheelbarrow didn’t cost me much,” he went on, “nor the mule either; but it is all I need, though this road is a devil of a pull.”

I offered him my horse to mount when he felt tired; and as I only talked to him gravely and simply of his turn-out, for which he feared mockery, he suddenly put himself at his ease, and, coming near my stirrup, slapped me on the knee, saying:

“Well, you’re a good lad, though you are in the Reds.”

From his bitter tone, in thus designating the four Red Companies, I gathered what malignant prejudices had been aroused in the army by the luxury and the commissions of these corps of officers.

“However,” he added, “I shall not accept your offer, seeing that I cannot ride, and that that’s not _my_ business.”

“But, major, superior officers like yourself have to do so.”

“Pooh! once a year at the inspection, and then on a hired horse. _I_ have always been a sailor, and since then a foot-soldier; I don’t understand horsemanship.”

He walked twenty paces, looking at me sideways from time to time, as if expecting a question: and as no word was forthcoming he continued:

“You aren’t inquisitive, upon my word! What I said just now should have surprised you.”

“I am seldom surprised,” said I.

“Oh! but if I told you how I left off being a sailor, we should see.”

“Well,” I replied, “why don’t you try? it will warm you, and make me forget that the rain is soaking into my back and only stopping at my heels.”

The good major solemnly prepared to speak, with all the pleasure of a child. He adjusted his oilcloth-covered shako on his head, and jerked his shoulder in a way that no one who has not served in the infantry can picture, in the way that a foot-soldier does to lift his knapsack and lighten its weight for a moment; it is a soldier’s custom, which, in an officer, becomes a bad habit. After this convulsive gesture, he again drank a little wine from his cocoa-nut, gave the little mule an encouraging kick in the stomach, and began.