Now that he was no longer inclined to the saddle and liked to keep his
room, General Cartier de Chalmot had reduced his division to cards
in small cardboard boxes, which he placed every morning on his desk,
and which he arranged every evening on the white deal shelves above
his iron bedstead. He marshalled his cards day by day with scrupulous
exactitude, in an order which filled him with satisfaction. Every card
represented a man. The symbol by which he henceforth thought of his
officers, non-commissioned officers and men, satisfied his craving
for method and suited his natural bent of mind. Cartier de Chalmot
had always been noted as an excellent officer. General Parroy, under
whom he had served, said of him: “In Captain de Chalmot the capacity
for obedience is exactly balanced by the power of command. A rare and
priceless quality of the true military spirit.”
Cartier de Chalmot had always been scrupulous in the performance of
his duty. Being upright, diffident, and an excellent penman, he had
at last hit upon a system which fitted in with his abilities, and, in
command of his division of cards, he applied his method with the utmost
vigour.
On this particular day, having risen according to his custom at five
o’clock in the morning, he had passed from his tub to his work-table;
and, whilst the sun was mounting with solemn slowness above the elms
of the Archbishop’s palace, the general was organising manœuvres by
manipulating the boxes of cards that symbolised reality, and that were
actually identical with reality to an intelligence which, like his, was
excessively reverent towards everything symbolic.
For more than three hours he had been poring over his cards with a
mind and face as wan and melancholy as the cards themselves, when his
servant announced the Abbé de Lalonde. Then he took off his glasses,
wiped his work-reddened eyes, rose, and half smiling, turned towards
the door a countenance which had once been handsome and which in old
age remained quite simple in its lineaments. He stretched out to the
visitor who entered a large hand the palm of which had scarcely any
lines, and said good-day to the priest in a gruff, yet hesitating
voice, which revealed at the same time the diffidence of the man and
the infallibility of the commander.
“My dear abbé, how are you? I am very glad to see you.”
And he pushed forward to him one of the two horsehair chairs which,
with the desk and the bed, comprised all the furniture of this clean,
bright, empty room.
The abbé sat down. He was a wonderfully active little old man. In his
face of weather-worn, crumbling brick, there were set, like two jewels,
the blue eyes of a child.
They looked at one another for a moment, understandingly, without
saying a word. They were two old friends, two comrades-in-arms.
Formerly a chaplain in the Army, Abbé de Lalonde was now chaplain to
the Dames du Salut. As military chaplain, he had been attached to the
regiment of guards of which Cartier de Chalmot had been colonel in
1870, and which, forming part of the division …, had been shut up in
Metz with Bazaine’s army.
The memory of these homeric, yet lamentable, weeks came back to the
minds of these two friends every time they saw one another, and every
time they made the same remarks.
This time the chaplain began:
“Do you remember, general, when we were in Metz, running short of
medicine, of fodder, running short of salt? …”
Abbé de Lalonde was the least sensual of men. He had hardly felt the
want of salt for himself, but he had suffered much at not being able to
give the men salt as he gave them tobacco, in little packets carefully
wrapped up. And he remembered this cruel privation.
“Ah! general, the salt ran short!”
General Cartier de Chalmot replied:
“They made up for it, to a certain extent, by mixing gunpowder with the
food.”
“All the same,” answered the chaplain, “war is a terrible thing.”
Thus spoke this innocent friend of soldiers in the sincerity of his
heart. But the general did not acquiesce in this condemnation of war.
“Pardon me, my dear abbé! War is, of course, a cruel necessity, but
one which provides for officers and men an opportunity of showing the
highest qualities. Without war, we should still be ignorant of how far
the courage and endurance of men can go.”
And, very seriously, he added:
“The Bible proves the lawfulness of war, and you know better than I how
in it God is called Sabaoth—that is, the God of armies.”
The abbé smiled with an expression of frank roguishness, displaying the
three very white teeth which were all that remained to him.
“Pooh! I don’t know Hebrew, not I. … And God has so many more beautiful
names that I can dispense with calling him by that one. … Alas!
general, what a splendid army perished under the command of that
unhappy marshal! …”
At these words, General Cartier de Chalmot began to say what he had
already said a hundred times:
“Bazaine! … Listen to me. Neglect of the regulations touching fortified
towns, culpable hesitation in giving orders, mental reservations
before the enemy. And before the enemy one ought to have no mental
reservations … Capitulation in open country. … He deserved his fate.
And then a scapegoat was needed.”
“For my part,” answered the chaplain, “I should beware of ever saying a
single word which might injure the memory of this unfortunate marshal.
I cannot judge his actions. And it is certainly not my business to
noise abroad even his indubitable shortcomings. For he granted me a
favour for which I shall feel grateful as long as I live.”
“A favour?” demanded the general. “He? To you?”
“Oh! a favour so noble, so beautiful! He granted me a pardon for a poor
soldier, a dragoon condemned to death for insubordination. In memory
of this favour, every year I say a mass for the repose of the soul of
ex-Marshal Bazaine.”
But General Cartier de Chalmot would not let himself be turned from the
point.
“Capitulation in open country! … Just imagine it. … He deserved his
fate.”
And, in order to hearten himself up, the general spoke of Canrobert,
and of the splendid stand of the ... brigade at Saint-Privat.
And the chaplain related anecdotes of a diverting kind, with an
edifying climax.
“Ah! Saint-Privat, general! On the eve of the battle, a great rascal of
a carabineer came to look for me. I see him still, all blackened, in a
sheepskin. He cries to me: ‘To-morrow’s going to be warm work. I may
leave my bones to rot there. Confess me, monsieur le curé, and quickly!
I must go and groom my little mare.’ I say to him: ‘I don’t want to
delay you, friend. Still, you must tell me your sins. What are your
sins?’ In astonishment he looks at me and replies: ‘Why, all!’ ‘What,
all?’ ‘Yes, all. I have committed all the sins.’ I shake my head.
‘All, my friend—that is a good many! … Tell me, hast thou beaten thy
mother?’ At this question, my gentleman grows excited, waves his great
arms, swears like a Pagan, and exclaims: ‘Monsieur le curé, you are
mocking me!’ I reply to him: ‘Calm yourself, friend. You see now that
you have not committed all the sins.’ …”
Thus the chaplain cheerily narrated pious regimental anecdotes.
And then he deduced the moral from them. Good Christians made good
soldiers. It was a mistake to banish religion from the Army.
General Cartier de Chalmot approved of these maxims.
“I have always said so, my dear abbé. In destroying mystical beliefs
you ruin the military spirit. By what right do you exact of a man the
sacrifice of his life if you take away from him the hope of another
existence?”
And the chaplain answered, with a smile full of kindliness, innocence
and joy:
“You will see that there will be a return to religion. They are already
going back to it on all sides. Men are not as bad as they appear and
God is infinitely good.”
Then at last he revealed the object of his visit.
“I come, general, to ask a great favour of you.”
General Cartier de Chalmot became attentive; his face, already sad,
grew sadder still. He loved and respected this old chaplain, and would
have wished to give him pleasure. But the very idea of granting a
favour was alarming to his strict uprightness.
“Yes, general, I come to ask you to work for the good of the Church.
You know Abbé Lantaigne, head of the high seminary in our town. He is
a priest renowned for his piety and learning, a great theologian.”
“I have met Abbé Lantaigne several times. He made a favourable
impression on me. But …”
“Oh! general, if you had heard his lectures as I have done, you
would be amazed at his learning. Yet I was able to appreciate but a
trifling part of it. Thirty years of my life I have spent in reminding
poor soldiers stretched on a hospital bed of the goodness of God.
I have slipped in a good word along with a screw of tobacco. For
another twenty-five years I have been confessing holy maidens, full
of sanctity, of course, but less charming in character than were my
soldiers. I have never had the time to read the Fathers; I have neither
enough brain nor enough theology to appreciate M. l’abbé Lantaigne
at his true worth, for he is a walking encyclopedia. But at least I
can assure you, general, that he speaks as he acts, and he acts as he
speaks.”
And the old chaplain, winking his eye roguishly, added:
“All ecclesiastics, unfortunately, are not of this kind.”
“Nor are all soldiers,” said the general, smiling a very wan smile.
And the two men exchanged a sympathetic glance, in their common hatred
of intrigue and falsity.
Abbé de Lalonde, who was, however, capable of a little guile, wound up
his eulogy of Abbé Lantaigne with this touch:
“He is an excellent priest, and if he had been a soldier he would have
made an excellent soldier.”
But the general demanded brusquely:
“Well! what can I do for him?”
“Help him to slip on the violet stockings, which he has richly
deserved, general. He is an admitted candidate for the vacant bishopric
of Tourcoing. I beg you to support him with the Minister of Justice and
Religion, whom, I am told, you know personally.”
The general shook his head. In fact, he had never asked anything of
the Government. Cartier de Chalmot, as a royalist and a Christian,
regarded the Republic with a disapproval that was complete, silent
and whole-hearted. Reading no newspapers and talking with no one, he
undervalued on principle a civil power of whose doings he knew nothing.
He obeyed and held his tongue. He was admired in the châteaux of the
neighbourhood for his melancholy resignation, inspired by the sentiment
of duty, strengthened by a profound scorn for everything which was not
military, intensified by a growing difficulty in thought and speech
rendered obvious and affecting by the progress of an affection of the
liver.
It was well known that General Cartier de Chalmot remained a faithful
royalist in the depths of his heart. It was not so well known that one
day in the year 1893 his heart had received one of those shocks which
can only be compared with what Christians describe as the workings
of grace, and which bring with the force of a thunderbolt deep and
unlooked-for peace to a man’s innermost being. This event took place
at five o’clock in the evening of the 4th of June in the drawing-rooms
of the prefecture. There, among the flowers that Madame Worms-Clavelin
had herself arranged, President Carnot, on his way through the town,
had received the officers of the garrison. General Cartier de Chalmot,
being present with his staff, saw the President for the first time,
and instantly, for no apparent reason, on no explicable grounds, was
pierced through and through by a terrible admiration. In a second,
before the gentle gravity and honest inflexibility of the head of the
State, all his prejudices fell away. He forgot that this sovereign
was a civilian. He revered and loved him. He suddenly felt himself
bound with ties of sympathy and respect to this man, sad and sallow
like himself, but august and serene like a ruler. He uttered with a
soldierly stutter the official compliment which he had learnt by heart.
The President answered him: “I thank you in the name of the Republic
and of our country which you loyally serve.” At this, all the devotion
to an absent prince which General Cartier de Chalmot had stored up for
twenty-five years welled forth from his heart towards the President,
whose quiet face remained surprisingly immobile, and who spoke in a
melancholy voice with no movement of cheek or lips, on which his black
beard set a seal. On this waxen face, in these slow, honest eyes, on
this feeble breast, across which blazed the broad red ribbon of his
order, in the whole figure of this suffering automaton, the general
perceived both the dignity of the leader, and the affliction of the
ill-fated man who has never laughed. With his admiration there was
mingled a strain of tenderness.
A year later he heard of the tragic end of this President for whose
safety he would willingly have died, and whom he henceforth pictured in
his thoughts as dark and stiff, like the flag rolled round its staff in
the barracks and covered with its case.
From that time he had ignored the civil rulers of France. He cared
to know nothing save of his military superiors, whom he obeyed with
melancholy punctiliousness. Pained at the idea of answering the
venerable Abbé de Lalonde by a refusal, he bethought himself for a
moment, and then gave his reasons.
“A matter of principle. I never ask anything of the government. You
agree with me, don’t you? … For from the moment that one lays down a
rule for oneself …”
The chaplain looked at him with an expression of sadness that seemed
as though thrown over his happy old face.
“Oh! how could I agree with you, general—I who beg of everybody? I am
a hardened beggar. For God and the poor, I have pleaded with all the
powers of the day, with King Louis Philippe’s ministers, with those of
the provisional government, with Napoleon III.’s ministers, with those
of the _Ordre Moral_ and those of the present Republic. They have all
helped me to do some good. And since you know the Minister of Religion
…”
At this moment a shrill voice called in the passage:
“Poulot! Poulot!”
And a stout lady in a morning wrapper, her white hair crowned with
hair-curlers, entered the room with a rush. It was Madame Cartier de
Chalmot, who was calling the general to déjeuner.
She had already shaken her husband with imperious tenderness, and
exclaimed once more: “Poulot!” before she became aware of the presence
of the old priest crushed up against the door.
She apologised for her untidy dress. She had had so much to do
this morning! Three daughters, two sons, an orphan nephew and her
husband—seven children to look after!
“Ah! madame,” said the abbé, “it is God himself who has sent you! You
will be my providence.”
“Your providence, monsieur l’abbé!”
In her grey dressing-gown her figure revealed the ample dignity of
classic motherhood. On her beaming moustachioed face shone a matronly
pride; her large gestures expressed at once the briskness of a
housewife habituated to work and the ease of a woman accustomed to
official deference. The general disappeared behind her. She was his
household goddess and his guardian angel, this Pauline who carried on
her brave, energetic shoulders all the burden of this poverty-stricken,
ostentatious house, who played the part of seamstress to the family,
as well as cook, dressmaker, chambermaid, governess, apothecary, and
even milliner with a frankly gaudy taste, and yet showed at big dinners
and receptions an imperturbable good breeding, a commanding profile,
and shoulders that were still beautiful. It was commonly said in the
division that if the general became Minister of War, his wife would do
the honours of the hôtel in the Boulevard Saint-Germain[F] in capital
fashion.
[F] Where the French War Office is situated.
The energy of the general’s wife spread freely over into the outer
world and flourished vigorously in pious and charitable works.
Madame Cartier de Chalmot was lady patroness of three crêches and a
dozen charities recommended by the Cardinal-Archbishop. Monseigneur
Charlot showed a special predilection for this lady, and said to her
sometimes, with his man-of-the-world smile: “You are a general in
the army of Christian charity.” And, being a professor of orthodoxy,
Monseigneur Charlot never failed to add: “And there is no charity
outside the Christian charity; for the Church alone is in a position to
solve the social problems whose difficulties perplex the minds of all
and cause special anxiety to our paternal heart.”
This was just what Madame Cartier de Chalmot thought. She was lavishly,
glaringly pious, and not free from the rather loud magnificence that
was aptly accented by the sound of her voice and the flowers in her
hats. Her faith, voluminous and decorative like the bosom which
enshrined it, made a splendid show in drawing-rooms. By the breadth of
her religious sentiments she had done much harm to her husband. But
neither of them paid any heed to this. The general also believed in the
Christian creed, although this would not have prevented him from having
the Cardinal-Archbishop arrested on a written order from the Minister
of War. Yet he was regarded with suspicion by the democracy. And the
_préfet_, M. Worms-Clavelin himself, though little of a fanatic,
regarded General Cartier de Chalmot as a dangerous man. This was his
wife’s fault. She was ambitious, but the soul of honour and incapable
of betraying her God.
“How can I be your providence, monsieur l’abbé?”
And when she heard that the point at issue was the raising to the
bishopric of Tourcoing of Abbé Lantaigne, a man of such noble,
steadfast piety, she caught fire and showed her courage.
“Those are the bishops we want. M. Lantaigne ought to be nominated.”
The old chaplain began to make use of this happy valiancy.
“Then, madame, induce the general to write to the Minister of Religion,
who turns out to be his friend.”
She shook the crown of curlers on her head vigorously.
“No, monsieur l’abbé. My husband will not write. It is useless to
persist. He thinks that a soldier ought never to ask for anything. He
is right. My father was of this opinion. You knew him, monsieur l’abbé,
and you know that he was a fine man and a good soldier.”
The old Army chaplain smote his forehead.
“Colonel de Balny! Yes, of course, I knew him. He was a hero and a
Christian.”
General Cartier de Chalmot interposed:
“My father-in-law, Colonel de Balny, was chiefly commendable for
having mastered in their entirety the regulations of 1829 on cavalry
manœuvres. These regulations were so complicated that few officers
mastered them in their completeness. They were afterwards withdrawn,
and Colonel de Balny conceived such a disgust at this that it hastened
his end. New regulations were imposed, possessing the unquestionable
advantage of simplification. Yet I question whether the old state of
things was not preferable. You must exact much from a cavalryman in
order to get a little out of him. It is the same with the foot-soldier.”
And the general began anxiously to manipulate his division of cards
drawn up in the boxes.
Madame Cartier de Chalmot had heard these same words very often. She
always made the same reply to them. Once more this time she said:
“Poulot! how can you say that papa died of chagrin, when he fell down
in an apoplectic fit at a review?”
The old chaplain, by a crafty wile, brought the conversation back to
the subject which interested him.
“Ah! madame, your excellent father, Colonel de Balny, would have
certainly appreciated the character of M. Lantaigne, and he would have
offered up prayers that this priest might be raised to a bishopric.”
“I also, monsieur l’abbé, will offer up prayers for that,” answered the
general’s wife. “My husband cannot, ought not to make any application.
But if you think that my intervention will be useful, I will drop a
word to Monseigneur. He doesn’t terrify me at all, our Archbishop.”
“Doubtless a word from your mouth …” murmured the old man. “... The ear
of Monseigneur Chariot will be open to it.”
The general’s wife announced that she would be seeing the Archbishop
at the inauguration of the Pain de Saint Antoine, of which she was
president, and that there …
She interrupted herself:
“The cutlets! … Excuse me, monsieur l’abbé …”
She rushed out on to the landing and shouted orders to the cook from
the staircase. Then she reappeared in the room.
“And there I shall draw him aside, and beg him to speak to the nuncio
in favour of M. Lantaigne. Is that the right way to go to work?”
The old chaplain made as if to take her hands, yet without actually
doing so.
“That’s just the way, madame. I am sure that the good Saint Anthony
of Padua will be with you and will help you to persuade Monseigneur
Charlot. He is a great saint. I mean Saint Anthony. … Ladies ought not
to believe that he devotes himself exclusively to finding the jewels
which they have lost. In heaven he has something better to do. To beg
him for bread for the poor, that is assuredly far worthier. You have
realised that, dear madame. The Pain de Saint Antoine is a fine work. I
must inform myself more fully about it. But I shall take good care not
to breathe a word of it to my good sisters.”
He was referring to the Dames du Salut, to whom he was chaplain.
“They have already too many undertakings. They are excellent sisters,
but too much absorbed in trifling duties, and far too petty, the poor
ladies.”
He sighed, recalling the time when he was a regimental chaplain, the
tragic days of the war, when he accompanied the wounded stretched out
on an ambulance litter and gave them a drop of brandy. For it was by
doles of tobacco and spirits that he was in the habit of carrying
on his apostolic labours. He again gave way to his love of talking
about the fighting round Metz and told some anecdotes. He had several
concerning a certain sapper, a native of Lorraine called Larmoise, a
man full of resources.
“I did not tell you, general, how this great devil of a sapper used to
bring me a bag of potatoes every morning. One day I asked him where
he picked them up. Says he: ‘In the enemy’s lines.’ ‘You villain,’
I say to him. Thereupon he explains to me how he has found some
fellow-countrymen among the German guards. ‘Fellow-countrymen?’ ‘Yes,
fellow-countrymen, fellows from home. We are only separated by the
frontier. We embraced one another, we talked about our relatives and
friends. And they said to me: ”You can take as many potatoes as you
like.”’”
And the chaplain added:
“This simple incident made me feel better than any reasoning how cruel
and unjust war is.”
“Yes,” said the general, “these annoying intimacies occasionally occur
at the points of contact of two armies. They must be sternly repressed,
having due regard, of course, to the circumstances.”