He looked at me quite indignantly as he replied: "Madame forgets that
there are Aspirants no older than I whose names are already
inscribed on the roll of honor."
You see an elderly lady, unused to a soldier's point of view, may be
very sympathetic, and yet blunder as a comforter.
The relève passed off quietly. It was all in the routine of the soldiers'
lives. They did not even know that it was picturesque. It was late last
Friday night that an orderly brought the news that the order had come
to move on the morning of the eleventh--three days later,--and it was
not until the night of the fifteenth that we were again settled down to
quiet.
The squad we had here moved in two divisions. Early Monday
morning--the eleventh--the horses were being saddled, and at ten
o'clock they began to move. One half of them were in full equipment.
The other half acted as an escort as far as Meaux, from which place
they led back the riderless horses.
The officers explained it all to me. The division starting that day for the
trenches dismounted at Meaux, and took a train for the station
nearest to the Forêt de Laigue. There they had their hot soup and
waited for night, to march into the trenches under cover of the
darkness. They told me that it was not a long march, but it was a hard
one, as it was up hill, over wet and clayey ground, where it was
difficult not to slip back as fast as they advanced.
On arriving at the trenches they would find the men they were to
relieve ready to march out, to slip and slide down the hill to the
railway, where they would have their morning coffee, and await the
train for Meaux, where they were due at noon next day--barring
delays.
So, on the afternoon of the twelfth, the men who had acted as escort
the day before led the horses to Meaux, and just before four o'clock
the whole body arrived on the hill.
This time I saw men right out of the trenches. They were a sorry sight,
in spite of their high spirits. The clayey yellow mud of three weeks'
exposure in the trenches was plastered on them so thick that I
wondered how they managed to mount their horses. I never saw a
dirtier crowd. Their faces even looked stiff.
They simply tumbled off their horses, left the escort to stable them,
and made a dash for the bath-house, which is at the foot of the hill, at
Joncheroy. If they can't get bathed, disinfected, and changed before
dark, they have to sleep their first night in the straw with the horses,
as they are unfit, in more ways than I like to tell you, to go into
anyone's house until that is done, and they are not allowed.
These new arrivals had twenty-four hours' rest, and then, on
Thursday, they acted as escort to the second division, and with that
division went the Aspirant, and the men they relieved arrived Friday
afternoon, and now we are settled down for three weeks.
Before the Aspirant left he introduced into the house the senior
lieutenant, whom he had been replacing in the command on my hill, a
man a little over thirty--a business man in private life and altogether
charming, very cultivated, a book-lover and an art connoisseur. He is
a nephew of Lêpine, so many years préfet de police at Paris, and a
cousin of Senator Reynault, who was killed in his aeroplane at Toule,
famous not only as a brave patriot, but as a volunteer for three
reasons exempt from active service--a senator, a doctor, and past
the age.
I begin to believe, on the testimony of my personal experiences, that
all the officers in the cavalry are perfect gentlemen. The lieutenant
settled into his place at once. He puts the coal on the fire at night. He
plays with the animals. He locks up, and is as quiet as a mouse and
as busy as a bee.
This is all my news, except that I am hoping to go to Paris for
Christmas, and to go by the way of Voulangis. It is all very uncertain.
My permission has not come yet.
It is over a year since we were shut in. My friends in Paris call me
their permissionaire, when I go to town. In the few shops where I am
known everyone laughs when I make my rare appearances and
greets me with: "Ah, so they've let you out again!" as if it were a huge
joke, and I assure you that it does seem like that to me.
The soldiers in the trenches get eight days' permission every four
months. I don't seem to get much more,--if as much.