Well, we did not keep our first division of dragoons as long as we
expected. They had passed part of their three weeks out of the
trenches at Nanteuil, and on the journey, so it seemed to us as
though they were hardly settled down when the order came for them
to return. They were here only a little over a week.
I had hardly got accustomed to seeing the Aspirant about the house,
either writing, with the cat on his knees, or reading, with Dick sitting
beside him, begging to have his head patted, when one evening he
came in, and said quietly: "Well, madame, we are leaving you in a
day or two. The order for the relève has come, but the day and hour
are not yet fixed."
But during the week he was here I got accustomed to seeing him sit
before the fire every evening after dinner for a little chat before
turning in. He was more ready to talk politics than war, and full of
curiosity about "your Mr. Wilson," as he called him. Now and then he
talked military matters, but it was technique, and the strategy of war,
not the events. He is an enthusiastic soldier, and to him, of course,
the cavalry is still "la plus belle arme de France." He loved to explain
the use of cavalry in modern warfare, of what it was yet to do in the
offensive, armed as it is today with the same weapons as the infantry,
carrying carbines, having its hand-grenade divisions, its mitrailleuses,
ready to go into action as cavalry, arriving like a flash au galop, over
ground where the infantry must move slowly, and with difficulty, and
ready at any time to dismount and fight on foot, to finish a pursuit
begun as cavalry. It all sounded very logical as he described it.
He had been under bombardment, been on dangerous scouting
expeditions, but never yet in a charge, which is, of course, his
ambitious dream. There was an expression of real regret in his voice
when he said one evening: "Hélas! I have not yet had the smallest
real opportunity to distinguish myself."