relating to the assistance to be furnished by the troops in making
inventories of church property"; and the second: "Supplementary
instructions for the lieutenant commanding the 1st and 2nd platoons of
the third squadron of the 32nd Cavalry, who is to sustain the action of
the police and gendarmerie during the operation of taking the inventory
of the church property at Hugueville-en-Plaine." The "general orders"
stated that both inventories would be taken on Friday, November 16, at
nine o'clock in the morning. The "supplementary instructions" added that
the duty of the officer despatched to Hugueville would consist in these
three points: "to form barriers across the different streets leading to
the church, according to the general scheme of the annexed sketch"; "to
support the action of the police and gendarmerie, in maintaining order,
dispersing the crowds, and looking to the evacuation of the church if
necessary"; and thirdly, "to enable the official recorder to perform his
duties."
Prepared as Landri should have been, by his reflections of the past week
and of that very afternoon, for the possibility of this event, he turned
pale as he read the words. He did not hesitate a second, however, but
replied:--
"Very good, captain; I will obey orders."
"Did you read it carefully?" said Despois, pointing to one sentence in
the first paper: "Six sappers supplied with the necessary tools to
perform, in the absence of civilian workmen, such work of demolition as
there may be occasion to do."--"In the absence of civilian workmen," he
repeated. "You will take the greatest pains, therefore, to assure
yourself that civilian workmen cannot be found; _cannot be found_," he
insisted.
Evidently he was anticipating the case of the lieutenant refusing to
execute the commissioner's orders, and was preparing to shield him, if
necessary, before the court-martial.
"I will make sure of it, captain." And, in a firm voice, "I hope that we
shall not come to that point, but if we do my sappers will do the work."
Not a muscle moved in the Catholic Despois' impassive face. If Landri
had not been acquainted with his real thought, he might have believed
that the peculiarly painful character of this expedition was a matter of
indifference to the old trooper, who began at once to give him detailed
orders concerning the equipment of the men. It was not until they rose,
after half an hour of professional conversation, that he let certain
words escape him which proved how his heart was beating under his
undecorated tunic. It was unhoped-for good fortune, that he was not
given the command of the detachment on this occasion. But as he was
incapable of selfish exultation, so he gave no thought to his own
interests. His expression had grown even more gloomy since the other had
made that declaration which left no room for doubt. As he accompanied
his visitor to the door, he detained him in front of a mediocre
engraving, the Last Cartridge. He was neither a collector with the taste
of an Altona, nor a connoisseur of art like a Bressieux, was poor
Captain Despois. He was something higher in the scale of human
culture,--a good soldier. All the martyrdom of the army, of the army
forced by shameless politicians into such tragedies of the conscience,
quivered in the tone in which, calling his lieutenant's attention to
that wretched lithograph of a scene of disaster, but of an heroic
disaster and face to face with the enemy, he repeated simply the famous
line:--
"Heureux ceux-là qui mouraient dans ces fêtes!"
[Footnote 4: If they persist, these cannibals,
In making heroes of us,
They'll soon learn that our bullets
Are for our own generals.]
VI
THE WILL
It was not quite eight o'clock the next morning when Landri and his
dragoons came in sight of Hugueville-en-Plaine, so named to distinguish
it from Hugueville-en-Montagne. It is a large village, three leagues
from Saint-Mihiel on the map and as the crow flies. The network of roads
in those ramparts of the Forest of Argonne stretches the twelve
kilometres to seventeen. An extensive wood bounds the village on the
east, so that the sixty men of the little detachment were able to
approach unseen.
It was another typical day of early autumn, with a pale blue sky, veiled
by transparent clouds, like the preceding Monday, when Valentine Olier's
lover stopped his automobile at the door of Saint-François-Xavier, to
pay a surreptitious visit to his friend. In his black overcoat, with his
helmet on his head, the officer, who had led his two platoons for the
last two hours through clumps of elms and aspens at first, and then, as
the ground rose higher and higher, through thickets of oak and beech,
recalled with poignant sadness that other day, so near--only four times
twenty-four hours--which seemed to him so far away! He had lived more in
those four days than in his twenty-nine years of childhood, adolescence
and youth.
The march was accomplished in a silence which demonstrated the troopers'
lack of enthusiasm for the expedition in which they were taking part.
Even the anarchistic Baudoin, still sheepish over the lesson of the day
before, had not tried to proselytize his comrades. They rode in fours,
closely wrapped, because of the nipping air of that rugged country, in
their ample blue cloaks, against which gleamed the barrels of their
carbines. The sappers were distinguishable by the axes hanging from the
saddle-bows. Another lieutenant brought up the rear. There was no sound
save that of the horses' shoes on the frozen ground and the clinking of
the sabres against the stirrups.
Those sounds would not have sufficed to announce their approach. The
people of Hugueville-en-Plaine and the neighboring villages had been
warned, no doubt, by the swift and inexplicable circulation of news in
the country districts, the most amazing example of which was the
contagious terror of the summer of 1789, which spread in a few days from
one end of France to the other. In the patois of the Centre it is still
spoken of as "the great _pourasse_."
"Aha!" said Landri, between his teeth, "we are expected."
In truth, some three hundred people were on the lookout at the entrance
to the main street, and they ran off at once toward the centre of the
village, shouting: "The dragoons! The dragoons!" They were only the
rearguard of a crowd assembled around the church on the square, a sketch
of which was annexed to the "supplementary instructions." There were
more than twelve hundred peasants there, men and women, who opposed a
living barrier to the horses. It took the troopers nearly fifteen
minutes to reach the square, forcing back the enthusiasts with the
cautious consideration which was expressly enjoined upon them. Their
greatest difficulty was to control their horses, excited as they were by
that great crowd singing with its thousand voices the well-known chant:
"Nous voulons Dieu!" Another quarter of an hour was required to execute
the same operation in front of the church and to establish the lines as
ordered.
About half-past eight the little square had the aspect of a veritable
halt in war-time. The horses were collected in the centre, held by the
troopers, each of whom had charge of two. The rest of the men formed
barriers at the ends of the streets. Behind them one could see the heads
of the peasants, close together and constantly moving. The steps leading
to the church, which stood on a sort of platform of earth, were still
filled with kneeling women, who had begun to recite, at the tops of
their voices, the litanies of the Blessed Virgin. There was something at
once heart-rending and grotesque, brutally ugly and no less idiotic, in
that display of military force to subdue the possible resistance of
those humble creatures who cast upon the peaceful air of the lovely
morning such pious appeals as "Refuge of sinners! Consoler of the
afflicted! Salvation of the infirm!" And the crowd replied, from the
lanes barred by dragoons: "Pray for us!"
"Upon my word they've given us a dirty job to do," said Vigouroux, the
other lieutenant, in an undertone to Landri, having joined him on the
square. After stationing their men, they were walking back and forth in
the space left clear. "It's a hard mouthful to swallow."
"All the same, it must be done," rejoined Landri.
"Is it you who say that, Claviers?" exclaimed Vigouroux in evident
amazement.
"A soldier knows only his orders," replied the other sharply.
"Oh, well! I'm not the one to blame you!" said Vigouroux. "It suits me,
as you know, to have you think that way."
They continued to walk side by side without further speech. In declaring
to his comrade, as he had done to his captain the evening before, his
determination to go on to the end, Landri was perfectly sincere. He was
keeping himself up to the mark by declarations which did not, however,
make it any the less true that he had had but a single thought that day
and that not of his orders! By virtue of a contradiction only too
natural in a heart so deeply wounded, the nearer he approached to the
moment when he might be called upon to take the decisive step after
which he would have broken either with the army or with M. de Claviers,
the image haunted him, ever more distinct and more touching, of that man
who had not ceased to love him as his son, and whom he loved so dearly!
That image was there, between Vigouroux and himself, gazing at him, and
saying with those limpid blue eyes the words of the victim to his
murderer: "And thou, too, my child!"
Landri did not yield to that entreaty, he was determined not to yield.
It was to banish it from his mind that he had spoken so to Vigouroux.
Moreover, it seemed that affairs were not likely to assume a very tragic
aspect, judging from the disposition of the crowd, evidently due to
orders from the curé. Those peasants were protestants, they were not
rebels.
But the affair assumed a very different aspect on the arrival of a
landau, preceded by gendarmes, from which three persons alighted: one in
a uniform embroidered with silver, another with a scarf across his
breast, the third in a frock coat. They were the sub-prefect, the
special commissioner, and the recording clerk.
No sooner had they set foot to the ground, than the responses of the
litany were succeeded by threatening cries of "Down with the robbers!"
which attracted from the house adjoining the church a fourth personage,
the curé of Hugueville himself. He was a handsome old man, bare-headed
despite the cold. Two other priests accompanied him. He came forward as
far as the porch of his church, the keys of which he could not, upon his
soul and his conscience, surrender. He was very pale. He, too, was
assuming a terrible responsibility. Blood might be shed. He raised his
aged arms which had so many times exhibited the monstrance to his flock,
and which at that moment implored rather than commanded respect for his
wishes. The gesture was instantly understood, so unbounded was his
authority, readily explained by the aspect alone of that ascetic
apostle. The insulting outcries were not repeated, and a vast silence
overspread the multitude, while the newcomers ascended the steps, among
the women who made way for them with visible terror.
Abbé Valentin--that was the curé's name--stepped forward, and there
ensued between the priest, whose face had lost its pallor, and the
officials, a conversation the words of which did not reach any of the
others. They noted its expressive pantomime: the curé shaking his
venerable head so that his white hair fluttered in the wind, as one who
meets urgent insistence with a categorical refusal, the sub-prefect
almost imploring, the commissioner threatening, the recording clerk
exhibiting papers. At last Abbé Valentin withdrew and the three civil
functionaries, having taken counsel together, descended the steps, while
the crowd, interpreting this retreat as a victory for the priest,
shouted his name and began the chant:--
"Je suis chrétien, voilà ma gloire!"
"I fancy that's settled," said Vigouroux, "and that we have no further
business here."
"On the contrary, it's just beginning," said Landri. "They have gone to
fetch the workmen."
A half-hour passed, during which the crowd ceased its singing to engage
in excited conversation. The constant repetition of the words, "a
locksmith," proved that the officer had guessed aright. At last the
three functionaries reappeared, followed by a man visibly livid with
fright; he was the public drummer of Hugueville, with his drum hanging
from his neck. A prolonged howl greeted him, then abruptly ceased, to be
succeeded by breathless curiosity. The commissioner, instead of
ascending the steps as before, passed through the cordon of soldiers and
went up to Landri.
"I have not found any workmen in Hugueville, lieutenant," he said, "to
break in the door. They have all left their workshops, to avoid doing
it. Their curé has made fanatics of them. I am going to ask you to give
me your assistance. Here is my requisition."
And he handed the lieutenant a paper which he ran through with his eyes.
The spectators of this tragic episode--one more incident in the
lamentable tale of the most criminal of religious wars--saw only the
helmet bending over the document, which the constantly increasing wind
seemed to try to tear from the hand that held it.
"I have brought the drummer to make the announcement," added the
commissioner.
"Very good," said Landri, in a voice choked with emotion, "let him do
so."
In the same hollow voice he ordered the six sappers to take their axes
and follow him. He began to mount the steps, while the three rolls of
the drum announced the imminence of the catastrophe. They were followed
by several minutes of painful anticipation. Landri, standing now on the
platform, had halted, and he said no word. As he ascended the steps, he
had looked up at the great clock over the portal of the church. It
marked almost nine o'clock. At that moment the Marquis de Claviers was
on Rue de Solferino. They were about to remove the bier of the man for
whom he wept as a friend, as a brother. Tears were streaming down his
noble face. His great heart was torn with grief.
That vision had arisen before the lieutenant with a distinctness which
brought him abruptly to a standstill. He, the son of the Judas, was on
the point of making that heart bleed from another wound!
"Well, lieutenant!" said the commissioner. "I believe the time has
come."
"No," replied Landri, rousing himself forcibly from his abstraction and
speaking now in a firm voice, "no, I refuse."
"You refuse?" said the sub-prefect, coming forward. "But have you duly
considered the consequences, monsieur--Article 234 of the Penal Code?"
"I refuse," reiterated the young man; and with a military salute to the
three officials, who were motionless with amazement, he ran rapidly down
the steps which he had climbed so slowly, followed by the sappers.
"To horse!" he cried, when he reached the foot; and in the next breath,
"By fours, march!" Five minutes later there was not a single dragoon on
the square, but an enthusiastic crowd followed on the heels of the
officials as they returned to their landau, with shouts of "Vive
l'armée! Vive le lieutenant!"
"I can't understand it at all," said the commissioner, as the carriage
moved away; "I'd have sworn that that officer would obey. As you saw, he
didn't argue, as they usually do, about the text of the requisition."
"I thought as you did," replied the recording clerk; "I said to myself:
'We sha'n't have to come to this port again,' and I was mighty glad. If
it hadn't been for the curé those beasts would have done us a bad
turn."
"Do you know what his name is?" queried the sub-prefect.
"Wait," said the commissioner, looking through his papers. "Lieutenant
de Claviers-Grandchamp."
"A noble!" cried the sub-prefect; "that explains everything. He was
evidently very desirous to obey orders, and then, at the last moment, he
balked. Why? I'll tell you; but first listen to a little story."--He was
an old _boulevardier_ and fond of telling stories.--
"Under the Empire there was a journalist of the opposition who wrote
very violent articles in a 'red' newspaper. One fine day some one
discovers that he writes, under a false name, others just as violent but
on the other side, in a government sheet. 'There's nothing left for me
but to disappear,' he groaned, and he talked about blowing out his
brains.--'Bah!' said one of his friends, 'you'll get clear of it by
changing your café.'--He was not wrong. Everything can be arranged in
life, so long as one can change his café. But the nobles, they can't do
it. There's the whole story of your lieutenant. He thought he wouldn't
be well received at the Jockey Club. That's what comes of having too
swell a café."
While the jovial-minded servants of a régime in which people have, in
truth, changed their cafés a good deal, were laughing carelessly at the
philosophic sub-prefect's outbreak, that short-lived tragedy, which
lacked not even the requisite irony, came to an end with the dispersion
of the actors. The protesting peasants rushed into the church, which was
opened at last, and the hoof-beats of the horses, mingled with the
jangling of the scabbards, died away in the yellowing woods that lie
between Hugueville and Saint-Mihiel.
The detachment rode more rapidly. The sun, shining clear at last, warmed
the air. It shone on the metal of the helmets and the gleaming flanks of
the horses, which tossed their heads impatiently, scenting the road to
the stables. Having given his orders, Landri had taken his place at the
head of the column, with so savage an expression that his men,
indifferent as they were to the moral crisis through which their leader
had passed, were impressed by it. Vigouroux in fact had more definite
reason than the commissioner for surprise at a volte-face which
absolutely gave the lie to the words they had exchanged a few moments
earlier. But upon him, too, his comrade's face made too deep an
impression for him to try to speak to him. He rode along in the rear,
secretly well pleased, in spite of himself, at the thought that
paragraph 9 of Article 2 of the fifth part of the Military Annual was
about to undergo a slight modification. He would advance one step on the
seniority list of lieutenants of cavalry. But the artless wish to have a
third _galon_ on one's cap a little sooner does not debar excellence of
heart, and he was quite sincere when he pressed Landri's hand in the
courtyard of the barracks, at the end of the march.
"I thank you, Claviers," he said. "If you hadn't remounted us, the
sub-prefect would have telegraphed. The command would have been turned
over to me, and I don't know whether I should have had your courage, on
which I congratulate you."
"One doesn't congratulate an officer on having broken his sword,"
retorted the other with a brusqueness which disconcerted Vigouroux.
"If that's how he feels," he thought, as he watched Landri walk away
from the barracks at the rapid pace of one who would be alone, "why did
he do what he did? He rarely goes to mass. He adores the profession. He
has no political opinions.--It's inconceivable! There must be a
petticoat underneath it all.--Aha! I have it. He seemed to be very much
in love down here with poor Olier's little wife, who's a finished bigot.
She wants to get married, parbleu! She's in Paris. She must have heard
of the thing from her friend Julie Despois, and have made a bargain with
my poor Claviers.--Decidedly, Lieutenant Vigouroux, the best thing for
us is not to care too much for pretty women."
With this aphorism of practical sagacity, this other, more inoffensive,
philosopher, bent his steps, no less hurriedly, toward the mess. He had
eight hours of horseback in his limbs, and he was of those fortunate
folk whom excitement makes hollow.
This judgment of an exceedingly honest but exceedingly commonplace youth
supplemented that of the jovial prefect. Thus it is that the painful
dramas of our lives are enacted before the unintelligent eyes of
half-informed witnesses. There are cases in which the sufferer prefers
that sort. They assure him of secrecy at least, and it was secrecy that
Landri craved, it was lack of comprehension. But who could have divined
the real explanation of a sudden change of purpose at which he was
himself confounded--that irresistible and passionate movement of the
heart toward the most generous of men.
And now, seated, crouching rather, on one of the easy chairs in his
apartment, he waited. As if he had already resigned, instead of making
the report to his captain, called for by the regulations, he had written
a note to the colonel in person to inform him of the manner in which his
mission had ended. In what shape would he be dealt with? Withdrawn from
active service, dismissed on half-pay, cashiered--so many synonyms to
his mind of a single phrase, with which he had replied so bitterly to
Vigouroux's warm and inopportune grasp of the hand: he had broken his
sword. He no longer belonged to the army except for the purpose of
undergoing the last rigors of a discipline which he had knowingly
violated.
They were announced to him in a letter which arrived almost immediately,
in reply to his, and which ordered him to consider himself strictly
under arrest, "until a decision should be reached on the subject of the
provisions of law concerning his case." Below this threatening line the
colonel had written his name, "Charbonnier." The ferocious curl of the
C, and the vigor of the concluding flourish proved that the plebeian
officer, entrusted by the hierarchy with the right to punish the
aristocratic officer, was hardly putting in practice the sage
recommendation of the regulation concerning internal government:
"Calmness on the part of the superior officer shows that in inflicting
punishment he is animated only by the good of the service and by a
realization of his duty."
What did Landri care for such a trifle? Having read this laconic and
imperious message, he looked at the clock on the mantel-piece, as he had
looked at the clock on the front of the church at Hugueville. The hands
pointed to one o'clock. His mind reverted to the melancholy ceremony,
the vision of which, suddenly evoked, had effected that abrupt change in
his resolution. It was all over long ago. Doubtless M. de Claviers had
returned to Grandchamp. The dead man was laid to rest in the grave which
the workmen would have filled by evening.
"This is my 'Here lies,' this paper," thought the young man, pushing
away the colonel's letter, "the 'Here lies' of the soldier." This
coincidence between the burial of his real father and the event that put
an end to his career as an officer, tore his heart. "At all events," he
added, "before I go before the court-martial, I shall have a little
solitude."
He looked about him, to allay his soreness of heart in the security of
his prison. How many hours he had passed in that salon-library in the
last three years, reading and writing--and dreaming of Valentine! He
took from his table drawer a case containing a portrait, the only one
that he had of her. It was a head only, which he had cut from a group
taken by an amateur in the country. To separate it from the others he
had had to cut off the wings of the broad garden hat she wore. But the
pure, intelligent glance, the half-smile, the pose, slightly inclined,
of the lovely head,--ah! it was all Valentine! He gazed long at those
features which he had seen alight with love, upon which his lips had
drunk burning kisses, and he said aloud:--
"I have sacrificed the other thing; I will not sacrifice her!"
As if to renew the solemn pledge that united them thenceforth, he
pressed his lips to the poor card whereon there shone a reflection of
that charm, unique in his eyes, and, seating himself at his desk, he
began a letter to Madame Olier which should describe the decisive
episode of the morning, or, rather, which should try to describe it. He
was constantly obliged to pause in order to choose among his thoughts.
How painful that careful surveillance of his words was to him! Complete
confidence is so natural, so necessary, with the person one loves! It is
the very breath of the heart.