It was in the midst of this already very delicate situation that Mme.
Herail arrived to stay with her husband. He represented to her in
the most affectionate manner that she was breaking the orders of his
superiors, but she met his remonstrances with a storm of indignant
reproaches.
"Your superiors are not my superiors!" exclaimed Mme. Herail, "and I
owe them no obedience. Did one ever hear of such tyranny? Their orders
are an outrage on personal liberty and the rights of a wife. There
is no power in France that can make me leave my husband or keep my
children away from their father."
Finally, Mme. Herail burst into tears and her husband, instead of
pressing her to go, fell on her bosom and wept with her.
The colonel of the regiment, who learned that his orders and warnings
were being disregarded by Mme. Herail, called his officers together
again. This was a third warning to them. He did not wish to appear
to be striking especially at Captain Herail, for whom he had a high
regard, and he told them all that very severe punishment would be
inflicted on those who disobeyed the order. The disobedient, he said,
would be sent back from the front, which, under the circumstances,
would be a humiliating disgrace for a soldier.
Then he turned to Captain Herail and asked him to speak out "like a
soldier and without beating about the bush" and tell him why his wife
did not go away. Captain Herail endeavored to make an explanation, but
instead of saying that he had been struggling vainly to make her go
away, he tried, out of affection for his wife, to excuse her conduct
and to offer special reasons why she should remain.
The colonel then lost his patience, and inflicted fifteen days close
arrest on the captain, and made a report to the general of the brigade
that the captain should be sent back to the depot at Narbonne. The
general approved the recommendation and in addition said that the
captain should not receive the Cross of the Legion of Honor for
which he had been recommended. The colonel ordered Major Bouchez, the
immediate superior to Captain Herail, to keep the latter under arrest
in his rooms at 26, rue de la Sous-Prefecture, Compiegne, where he
lodged with Mme. Masson.