we started that evening from rosny-sous-bois, and spent part of the night in the train, slipping along at an indolent pace. we had not the least idea where we were being taken to. during the last hour, the rumble of the guns began to make itself heard. we were rolling slowly towards it.
the day was breaking when we got out of the truck. a lot of men had dozed, and had puffy faces, and dirty tongues.
there was a persistent rumour that if we stopped in the open country, it meant that the line was cut. there was a station not far off; ducostal bicycled to it and told us when he came back that it was nanteuil-le-haudoin.
the colonel held a consultation with his officers.
henriot was rather pale when he reappeared. he took me aside and told me in confidence that they had just been introduced to a regulation concerning them. all commanders of units whose men showed signs of faltering "would be held personally responsible."
[pg 434]
he sounded me.
"do you think that means that we should—be shot?"
"exactly! you're lucky to have a platoon like ours!"
"that's true," he said, regaining his self-possession.
i added: "while the first—for instance!"
"well, well?"
i stopped, and did not give him my reasons.
playoust had left us, when we started from neuilly. surprised by the sudden order transferring him to the ammunition train, he swaggered as he went off. what an escape! he was sure to get through all right now! we had not had the courage to refuse to shake hands with him. only guillaumin had warned him:
"don't you keep us short of ammunition, or you'll hear about it!"
the troop train which had brought us shunted and made way for the next one which disgorged the fifth battalion. the same thing was going on in front of us and behind us. we must be detraining in force, the whole division apparently.
it was about six o'clock when we started off again towards the village lying about a mile and a half away. the guns boomed incessantly behind the rising ground near by. it was only a few hours since nanteuil had been evacuated by the enemy. i expected the same vision of destruction and smoking ruins which had appalled us so many times near the meuse. no. the houses were standing and intact; but they had certainly taken their share of plunder. i can recall a grocery shop which had been ransacked. the contents of sacks, drawers, boxes, and bottles, too, formed a swamp on the tiles, into which the shop-woman,[pg 435] when she left her counter—i am not exaggerating—sank up to her waist.
a foul smell hung about. we had not been spoilt, as may be imagined, in the way of odours, since the beginning of the campaign. nothing had come anywhere near this, however. the bosches had left their nauseous traces when they went. it was the same thing everywhere—a manifestation of their kultur!
the rare inhabitants who had stayed, not more than a hundred all told, who greeted us on the pavements, had only one expression for them, which they repeated between their cheers:
"ah, the swine!"
we halted for a short time at the entrance to a square. kind women brought us wine (goodness knows how they had managed to keep it), and other people took us to their homes with them.
i let myself be persuaded, but soon came back, sickened. the state of filth in which the huns had left these houses was totally indescribable in polite language. it made me feel extremely ill—the hogs!—but our poilus were more inclined to laugh.
for all that no great crimes seemed to have been committed. one matron holding a little boy of five by the hand was shrieking that one of the brigands had held the barrel of his revolver to his temple. but judging by the round and rosy appearance of the kid, a stupid-looking child, not much harm had been done.
we started off again. another old dame hobbled after us with a tale of some terrible tragedy. they'd had the cheek to commandeer her donkey, and to make it work all day; the poor animal was simply worn[pg 436] out! they harnessed it to a furniture van! and then in the evening—to end up with—they had shot, skinned, and roasted it!
judsi thought it all a farce, and laughed in the old woman's face:
"a relation of yours, was it?"
she fell behind, in a fury, calling us good-for-nothings.
we followed a paved street, then a cross-road, till we came to a wood. we went into it and piled arms.
i sat down with my back against a tree, while guillaumin and the subaltern went off into the thicket. de valpic came and joined me:
"i believe things will go all right this time," he said.
i repeated my conversation with the captain. jove, the man's powers of divination could not be exaggerated, but he might be mistaken in——
"the miracle of this war is at hand," de valpic continued. "i'm convinced of it." his eyes shone. he murmured: "you'll see it—you'll see it all right."
"and why not you?"
he shook his head. "no. i—i shall stay there."
"nonsense!" i upbraided him. what was this childishness? he was no more exposed than i was, or any of us for that matter! why give up hope like this?
he stopped me. "just think a minute. isn't it the best thing that could happen to me?"
"got as far as that?"
"how do you mean 'as far as that'?"
he had a fit of coughing which brought colour into his cheeks and tears into his eyes. "when one has—faith!" he said, "it is less horrible—in fact it is not[pg 437] horrible. what about you, dreher? have you never been a believer?" he asked.
"yes," i said. "my mother was very religious. i was brought up in those ideas. i remember that at my confirmation my one wish, just think of it, was to become a priest or missionary. i kept on going to mass and that sort of thing for some years; but since then—no, that's all over. but i can quite understand people believing."
de valpic shook his head. "how can unbelievers bear the idea of death?"
"there's nothing to be done but fly from it."
"impossible!" he lowered his voice. "for me, for instance——!"
i did not know what to say.
he continued: "of course if one thought of death as annihilation in the dark, if one thought that nothing, nothing would survive of this substance, that one was—ah! how dream of that without terror! i can understand shutting one's eyes to it then. and, on the other hand, it seems to me that to live without thinking of death, and without thinking of it often, is to blind oneself, to renounce all broad and free judgment. how well religion provides for all that! what courage it gives to the dying, as well as to the living! and is not all wisdom resumed in this: to give courage to man?—i was talking to you of my fiancée yesterday; she believes. otherwise would she have continued to be engaged to me when she knew i was ill, and would she have let me go, expecting that i should not come back?" he smiled. "i don't want to preach to you, dreher, but as you once were one of us, let me remind you that the god in whom we hope is just. because our people's hope, throughout the[pg 438] ages, has been in him; because our nation has been the elder daughter of his church, i believe that his hand is upon us. will he allow us to succumb? no. listen! this miracle i was talking about—at heart you expect it just as i do—if i have entire confidence in it, it is because i believe in the existence of an order superior to man; in a providence, if you will, that will not allow the accomplishment of such iniquity. our country will be saved because she will deserve to go on living. how good it is to fight, when one does not feel that one is fighting amidst the cold concatenation of phenomena, but in the conviction that a supreme tutelary force upholds and directs our efforts."
i considered him as he sat there with his chin in his hands and black lines under his eyes. so he had been through the deep waters at the beginning, when he had had to tear himself away from the hope of human happiness. now he was resigned to it. he was not lying when he said that he looked forward to his certain end, which was so near at hand, without horror. his glorious smile retained confidence in the future beyond the grave. it was only a relative end, a transition whose anguish was attenuated since he was sure of living again with those whom he loved.
oh, the consolation in religion! this association of well-worn words recovered its full meaning in my eyes. nothing but faith could raise man to such abnegation. the profound and primitive instinct, an instinct comparable to love in its folly and grandeur!
i was tempted, for a moment, to admit that that also was being reborn in me. and then, no—no! i assured myself that i had been separated from it beyond return, by my reading and speculations. this past would never blossom again. at least i[pg 439] recalled the memory of it with tenderness. for a long time i had thought myself rallied to the quizzical scepticism of laquarrière and his like. how many ties still bound me to the unsophisticated child that i had been. i would have the sons that jeannine gave me brought up in the lap of catholicism, too. neither their mother nor i would take any steps to convert them to pitiless reason too soon. like us they might, later on, be led away by the trend of modern thought and forsake religion, but their stay in its realm would leave them like me with respect for the illusion reflected in certain eyes.
guillaumin came to tell us that it would not be long before we started, the regiment next us was on the move. "what a glorious day!" he exclaimed.
the eight o'clock sun was slipping through the tracery of the branches on to the leaves grown rusty at the approach of autumn. the air was mild and warm. swarms of midges were flying about. we caught the hum of mosquitoes' wings, but they did not sting. the men were rolling about on the moss; our parisians conjured up the delights of the bois de verrières.
we all three went to the edge of the little wood. de valpic stretched out his arms and drank in the health-giving air, soaked with light.
"ah! how good it is!" he said. "how one lives here! how one realises—too late—that one was ill-suited for living in towns, that one would have done better in beautiful country like this!"
guillaumin laughed. "a little flat, this country. it's certainly not up to argonne!"
"my dear chap, don't talk like a snob. just put your prejudices aside for a moment, and take a look."
[pg 440]
de valpic playfully made us admire the trees, the play of the sunlight and the breeze, the immense vista on the right, over a sea of waving corn, and down below those wooded islets, outposts of the deep forests which, we knew, dominated the surrounding country. the sweetly named ?le de france, the land of plenty and of poetry—the most pleasant climate in the world. senlis and compiègne, a few miles away—jean jacques' ermenonville gracious legends spring from this soil. not far off gérard de nerval had sung of sylvia.
his playfulness was not assumed. we listened to him captivated. i tasted in his conversation a sort of funereal charm. i felt as if i were listening to socrates conversing with his disciples as he drank the hemlock.
the air was filled with whirring sounds. we had a vivid and fleeting vision of two aeroplanes, a french one and a taube, passing over our heads, struggling for height and speed, engaged in a duel to the death, both of them armed with machine-guns which crackled under the open sky.
they were just on the point of vanishing when suddenly the german one dipped. the pilot was no doubt hit. the wings folded and it dropped like a stone.
"a good omen!" guillaumin exclaimed.
twenty minutes afterwards we started.
