montparnasse station—cold and grey on this dull august morning. groups of people, each setting out with its escort, might be seen streaming in from all the neighbouring turnings towards the square which the last tooting trams were crossing. they formed but one swarm, scattered and renewed without ceasing. there was nothing like these huge quivering masses, the preoccupation of all paris, magnificent in their emotion and courage, who succeeded each other at the gare de l'est. poor women, young and old looking almost equally faded, were carrying old handkerchiefs containing the possessions of their husbands and sons,—working-men in broad belts. beside them, fathers wearing decorations and beautifully dressed mothers and sisters surrounded young bourgeois dragging heavy kit-bags. all these people were holding back their tears and smiling, saying that they would see each other again!
as for me, i was alone. i was leaving nothing behind me. so much the better; i was glad of it. i[pg 73] was starting on the great adventure, with an entirely open mind, in the r?le of an on-looker.
the two staircases were barricaded. only one entrance was open, reserved for soldiers carrying their railway warrants in their hands. i followed the stream. we climbed the slope. from the road below passers-by made us signs of encouragement. i noted the quick sprightly steps of most of my companions. mine were rather slower but firm and decided nevertheless. i unconsciously adopted the gait of a man who means to see the thing through.
i should, i thought, see nearly all my contemporaries in the regiment turning up at this meeting-place. i rejoiced at the thought of spying out, on each one's forehead, the reflection of his private feelings.
the comrades of my twenty-first year! there is no age at which a life lived in common is responsible for forming more attachments than this one, but i was among those who had made the fewest friends during those ten months. i had had a room to myself in town, while many of them agreed to share with two or three others. i was considered a bore; a report which i had started, a state of affairs which i exploited, in order to escape endless fatigues. beyond that i was neither liked nor disliked. they mistrusted my coldly mystifying disposition, they envied me the calm insolence with which i defied my non-commissioned officers. when the time came for separation, and the exchange of addresses, i did as the others did; without any illusions; nobody would bother to look me up, i felt sure. i was mistaken. someone did come: guillaumin.
he was a grotesquely ugly chap, with a great thick red nose, short-sighted eyes, and a hoarse voice. a[pg 74] chatter-box, energetic and obliging, loved and chaffed by everyone. what should he do but get the idea into his head of keeping in touch with all those he had considered good fellows down there! and he had almost succeeded in doing so. he was the living index which one need only consult for information on the fate of all the old lot in our platoon. he dropped in to see me from time to time, on his way from the office where he vegetated as a clerk. we dined together on those evenings, and for him, i deserted laquarrière, who, having caught sight of him one day, did not spare me his sarcasms on my grotesque "regimental friend."
i arrived in the station. it was swarming with reservists leaving to rejoin their regiment. not many faces that i recognised. one already felt lost, and groups were formed instinctively.
the first one i shook hands with was laraque, the handsome laraque, whose rosy shaven face and marked features, prepossessing and imperious at the same time, gave him simultaneously the air of a roman emperor or of a ballad prince.
"well, there we are!" he said. "killing, what?"
"killing, oh rather. got your ticket?"
"what do you imagine! i think they might give us a free trip!"
his tone showed me where i was. i could see that it was going to be the proper thing to take everything as a joke. not to show one's feelings in any way.... good! we should see how long that would last! i should have my revenge as an on-looker.
faron joined us, the son of the professor at the sorbonne. he himself was a barrister, thin, energetic,[pg 75] and impenetrable. he buried himself in his newspapers. then holveck small and witty. he had just started a bank, with a branch in new york. ladmiraut, an old normalien with a puffy face and thick, hanging lips, an erudite pedant and a simple soul who used to be the picked target for all the practical jokes. big denais, the finished type of the don't-care-a-blow-for-any-one shover. fortin, who had taken a degree in history, a lecturer and public speaker, not long returned from germany, and already in search of a public.
it was a very lively scene. all meeting and recognising and calling to one another.
"helloa miquel, is that you?"
"what a nice surprise!"
"no! it must be a put-up job!"
they were all here, all going to fight. but with what will, i could not yet decide.
our train, the 7:16, was almost due. laraque dragged me away towards the platform, out of breath and purple in the face, his hat and eye-glass on one side. he wiped his damp forehead and shiny nose.
"do you know what delayed me?"
we did not listen to his story, he realised it, and cut it short.
"and ... what about the old lot?"
i mentioned some names and expressed my surprise at not seeing boutet.
"what! you haven't heard about it! poor wretch! he's been at berck, for the last six months."
"oh, i say ... that's the limit," said laraque.
he laughed, but i felt that it was only half in fun.
guillaumin continued:
"i came across little frémont outside."
[pg 76]
"oh!"
"he couldn't tear himself away from his wife."
"what, frémont married?"
"yes, rather, six weeks ago."
just think of that. the idea amused me. he had been the youngest in the platoon, enlisting at the age of eighteen, though he did not look more than sixteen. he was as beardless and fresh as a girl and scared at first by the round oaths in the barrack-room ... and now he was married!
"what's his wife like?"
"also quite young. they're like two children! she wants to go to f—— with him."
the journey lasted just four hours.
we had scrambled into one of the "commandeered" carriages which within a few days would take us on to the scene of action.
we were gay with a gaiety in some cases spontaneous but for the most part, assented to, though neither forced nor painful. magnificent inconsequence! and the delight of meeting again like schoolboys at the beginning of the october term.
at certain moments we touched lightly upon some subject of serious discussion. england?... oh yes! england!... some facetious remark soon put an end to it. holveck turned to guillaumin:
"you'll have to do away with your eye-glass."
"why?"
"because of the splinters ... if you get a bullet in your eye!"
this sally raised a general laugh. through the open windows our gaze roved over the countryside. it was a little depressing no doubt. this war! how[pg 77] many would set eyes on this landscape again next year!... but let's hope for the best whatever happens. after all, it simply meant that man?uvres would last rather longer than usual!... this state of affairs would not last for ever; two or three months, six at the most! and it would be all over!... and philoppon, the fair-haired dandy who had been brought to the station in a car by his people, already had visions of next winter, which he expected to spend as usual on the riviera.
"i tell you what, you chaps, i shall see an extraordinary improvement in it after the war, what!"
on our arrival we went straight to the barracks.
the weather was stormy. in crossing f—— i was reminded of our former route marches.... our platoon heading the battalion. the company commander gave us as guide a great lout of a sergeant who kept up a stream of invectives. all the world and his wife were at the windows. left—right! left—right! our pace quickened going up the hill, and we had to hang on to each other in order to keep our intervals. what an effort it was, weighed down, and with the muscles of the thigh contracted, and those of the calf aching, to cover the last lap.
i called these things to mind now all the more easily because i again found myself struggling with my pack on the same ascent. i was perspiring, and already tired and depressed. and then in those days i had the buoyancy and the enthusiasm of youth, and facing these trials i used to say to myself, "it's got to be gone through!" i had the feeling that i was buying repose for the rest of my life.
what a sigh i had heaved when my time was up.[pg 78] i had thought my period of physical constraint, the most trying of all, over and done with!... and now i had got to go through it all over again.... worse even than that. the hardest part by far still awaited me!... how i loathed in advance the bitter hardships to come, the defilades at the double, the tramps across the ploughed fields under the crushing weight of the pack, all the cursed, humiliating, bodily subjection.
but i made a childish vow not to "overdo" things, as they say.
