IV

Beni-Ounif was dull. There was nothing interesting there except

the _mise en scène_. It was pleasant to be dining with officers,

for they were the principal patrons of the hotel, with whom stars

and crosses were as common as watch-guards in New York; and it

was stimulating to see the ensigns of the Legion of Honor where

they were something more than the international compliment of a

ribbon twisted in a black buttonhole and had their heroic meaning,

a decoration on an officer’s breast. The crosses I saw stood

for acts of bravery on the field of battle. There were a few other

guests who came and went, a French hunter, a Belgian professor who

told me of the prehistoric cabinets he had seen farther south, an

officer’s remarkable collection, and explained to me the geology of

the Sahara in brief and interesting lectures. The town itself never

lost for me the vacant and makeshift frontier look that it had at

first sight; one could walk from end to end of it in a few minutes

and come out on the desert, which was monotony petrified. Nothing

happened except the arrival and departure of the daily train. Once

I met on the edge of the desert the _goum_, a compact small body of

native Arab cavalry attached to the French arms, a splendid squad of

fighting men; rather heavy and broad-shouldered they looked, wrapped

in burnoose and turban, mature men whose life was war, black-bearded,

large-eyed, grim—predatory faces; and they were in their proper

place, with the naked mountains round and the desert under their

horses’ feet—a martial scene of the old raiding race. I should

not like to see them at work, I thought; their trade is blood, and

they looked it—strong, hard, fierce—pitiless men. But usually

there was nothing uncommon to my eyes. Once in the café, where

we sat over our long glasses of the fortified liquors and tonic

drinks of which there is so great a variety in desert towns, some

one brought in a beautiful great dead eagle. It was as if he had

been killed in his eyrie to see him there on the desert among the

soldiers. We returned to our glasses and our talk: tales of Paris,

tales of Odessa in the Revolution, tales of long Algerian rides,

encounters, anecdotes of the road—what tales! And other men’s

tales, too—Anatole France, Pierre Loti, Maurice Le Blanc, Claude

Farrère, Pierre Louÿs—all my favorites, for my friend knew them

better than I did, and made me new acquaintances “in the realm

of gold” that I like best to travel. What happy talk! and the

time went by. I went out alone to see the full moon rise over the

solemn desert by the reddish hills in the chill air, and fill the

great sky with that white flood of radiance that seemed every night

more ethereal, more remote from mankind, more an eternal thing;

and at the hotel we would meet again to dine late, for my friend

being a private soldier, we waited till the officers were gone;

and then again the tales and the happy talk, and good night. That

was life at Beni-Ounif.

“Would I like to go to the theatre?” I repeated, for it was

an unexpected invitation. “You might not think so, but there is

a theatre at Beni-Ounif,” said my friend. So it appeared that

the Legion, among the multitude of things it did, occasionally

gave a performance of private theatricals for its own amusement,

and my friend himself was to play that night. It was a beautiful

evening with a cold wind. I made my way through the burly military

group wrapped in heavy blue cloaks, with here and there a burnoosed

spahi or tall tirailleur, and entering the small hall was given a

seat in the front row among a few ladies and very young children,

two or three civilians, my Belgian acquaintance being one, and half

a dozen officers with their swords and crosses. “The tricolor

goes well with the palm,” I said to myself, as I turned to look at

the prettily decorated, not overlighted room, where trophies of the

colors alternated with panels of palm-leaves on either side and at

the rear, giving to the scene a simple, artistic effect of lightness

and gayety with a touch of beauty, especially in the palms. It was

characteristically French in refinement, simple elegance, and color;

there was nothing elaborate, but it was a charming border to the

eye, and no framework could have been so fit for that compact mass

of soldiers as was this lightly woven canopy of French flags and

the desert palm on the bare walls of that rude hall. But it was

the men who held my eyes. The room was packed with soldiers of the

Legion; a few spahis and tirailleurs stood in the rear or at the

sides; there was no place left to stand even; and I looked full

on their serried faces. My first thought was that I had never seen

soldiers before. I never saw such faces—mature, grave, settled,

with the look of habitual self-possession of men who command and

obey; resolute mouths, immobile features; there was great sadness

in their eyes that seemed to look from some point far back, heavy

and weary; they had endured much—it was in their pose and bearing

and on their countenances; they had ceased to think of life and

death—one felt that; but no detail can give the human depth of the

impression I felt at the sight—faces into which life had fused

all its iron. And there was, too, in the whole mass the sense of

physical life, of hardship and hardihood, and of bodily power to do

and bear and withstand—the fruit of the desert air, long marches,

terrible campaigns in the sands. It was a sight I shall always

remember as, humanly, one of the most remarkable I ever looked on.

The Foreign Legion is commonly believed to be made up of broken men

who have in some way found themselves eliminated from society, thrown

out or left out or gone out of their own will, whether by misfortune,

error, disappointment, or any of the various chances of life, and who

have joined the Legion to lose themselves, or because they did not

know what else to do with their lives. They come from all European

nations and are a cosmopolitan body; and, no doubt, here and there

among them is a brilliant talent or a fine quality of daring gone

astray; but I imagine a very large proportion of them are simply

friendless men who at some moment of abandonment find themselves

without resources and without a career, and see in the Legion a

last resource. I believe there are great numbers of such friendless

men in our civilization. Among the thousands of the Legion there

must be, of course, every color of the human past; the losers in

life fail for many reasons, and in their defeat become, it may be,

incidentally or temporarily, antisocial, or even habitually so, as

fate hardens round them with years; but in a great number of cases,

I believe, society has defaulted in its moral obligations to them

before they defaulted in their moral obligations to their neighbors;

and, holding such views, it was perhaps natural that, so far from

finding the Legion a band of outcast adventurers and derelicts,

I found them very human. I did not read romance or virtue into

them. I know the hard conditions of their lives. If there be an

inch of hero in a man, he is hero enough for me. The story of the

French occupation of Algeria is largely the story of the Legion. For

almost a century it has been one of the most effective units of the

French army all over the world; and here in Algeria it has been not

only a fighting force of the first order, but also a pioneer force of

civilization. The legionaries have built the roads, established the

military and civil stations, accomplished the first public works,

drained and planted; they have laid the material foundations of

the new order; they have not only conquered, but civilized in the

material sense, and the labor in that land and climate has been

an enormous toil. The reclamation of Africa is a great work, sure

to be looked on hereafter as one of the glories of France in the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and I thought, as I turned and

the band began the overture, what a comment it was on society that

in this great work of the reclamation of Africa from barbarism and

blood and sodden misery so large a share was borne by this body of

friendless men for whom our civilization could find no use and cared

not for their fate. What a salvage of human power and capacity,

turned to great uses, was there here! and from moment to moment I

looked back on that body of much-enduring men with a keen recurring

sense of the infinite patience of mankind under the hard fates of

life, of the infinite honor and the infinite pity of it all.

To-night all was light gayety and pleasant jollity. The Legion

has one characteristic of a volunteer regiment—its men

can do everything, so various are the careers from which it is

recruited. Its music is famous, and the orchestra played excellently;

and as the first little play began, “Mentons Bleus,” the players

showed themselves good amateurs. The audience responded quickly

to the situations and the dialogue; there were brightened spirits

and much laughter, easy, quiet enjoyment and applause. The second

part was a series of songs, done by one performer after another,

each doing his stunt with verve and the comedy of the variety

stage; there was a full dozen of these light-hearted parts. In

the intermissions the men stayed in their seats, though about the

doorway there would be a little movement and changeful regrouping,

but it was an audience that sat in their places ready for more;

there was no smoking. The last number of the programme—a small,

pretty double sheet, like note-paper, done by some copying process

in pale blue, with a sword, rifle, and cap on the ground before two

palms lightly sketched in the lower corner of the title leaf—was

another one-act play, “Cher Maître,” and was received with

a spirit that seemed only to have been whetted by the previous

amusement; and when it was over the evening ended in a round of

generous applause and a smiling breaking up of the company after

their three hours’ enjoyment. It was pleasant to have been with

the Legion on such a night, and to have shared in its little village

_festa_, and I stood by the doorway and watched the men go by as

they passed out, till all were gone.

It was midnight. The radiant moon poured down that marvellous

white flood on the hollow of the desert where the little town lay

low and gleaming, very silent. But I could not rid my mind of the

soldiers’ lives. I thought of the torrid summer heats here in

garrison, of the burning marches yonder in the south, of the days

in sterile sands that make the sight of palm and garden a thing of

paradise—incredible fatigues, mortal exhaustion, monotony. One

cannot know the soldiers’ desert life without some experience;

but some impression of it may be gained from soldiers’ books, such

as one that is a favorite companion of mine, “Une Promenade dans

le Sahara,” by Charles Lagarde, a lieutenant in the Chasseurs

d’Afrique, a thoughtful book, full of artistic feeling, and

written with literary grace, the memorial of a soldier with the

heart of a poet, who served in South Algeria. In such books one

gets the environment, but not the life; one touch with the Legion is

worth them all. I fell to sleep for my last slumber at Beni-Ounif,

thinking of soldiers’ lives, friendless men—

“Somewhere dead far in the waste Soudan.”

V

It was a brilliant morning. I went to the edge of the desert and

looked off south with the wish to go on that all unknown horizons

wake, but which the desert horizon stirs, I think, with more longing

insistence, with a greater power of the vague, than any other; for

there it lies world-wide, mysterious, unpenetrated, and seems to open

a pathway through space itself, like the sea. All true travellers

know this feeling, the nostalgia for the “far country” that they

will never see; it is an emotion that is like a passion—mystical,

and belongs to the deep soul. The desert horizon, like the sea’s,

at every moment breeds this spell. But as I turned back, with the

sense of the chained foot, my disappointment was tempered by the

knowledge that I was to companion my friend, who had been ordered

to Tonkin; and I had timed my departure to go with his detachment

on its way north. As I went down to the train my Arab boy, with

the infinite hopefulness of such attachés, brought me a dead wolf,

if by chance I would like it; but I could not add it to my baggage,

whereat he was sorrowful, but was comforted. The station presented

a lively scene—many soldiers in their white duck trousers and

red caps; there was a band; the air was filled with good-bys and

laughing salutations; the car windows grew lined with leaning forms

and intent faces; the music struck up, high and gallant, and with

the last cries and shouts we were off on the line.

It was too short a ride, though the train climbed slowly up the

incline, while the desert grew a distant outlook and was shut from

view as we made into the winding valleys; and we mounted up through

the black defiles, the desolation of the shivered rock, the passes of

the toothed ranges, the blocking cliffs and columnar heights—all

the petrifaction and fantasy of that naked and severe land; but

I was less sensible of its enmity and melancholy than when I came

through it alone, though it was harsh and wild, a _terre perdue_. My

friend travelled with his comrades, but we had a long lunch in the

train before Aïn-Sefra, and a longer dinner when night began to

fall, with tales and talk. Tales of the mutiny of the _batallion

d’Afrique_—Othello tales these, fit for fearful ears; tales of

night surprises, Arabs crawling by inches for hours in the sands,

the sentinels killed without a sound, the first alarm bayonets

through the tents, and then the rouse, the square, the victory;

tales of the desert madness, the _cafard_. Stirring tales. Talk,

too, of home and friends left behind us in the world, of the dead

and the living, and of what might yet be for both of us. He told me

much of the Legion, for that interested me; but he never complained,

and if he caught some unspoken thought on my face from time to time,

“_C’est le métier_” he would say, and smile my sympathy

away. He was a youth after my own heart; but the night fell darker

and darker, and there would be an end. At the last station where

it was possible, he came back to me. It was good-by.