But this is scarcely a "recollection" of mine.
* * * * *
At twelve I was deeply in love with a little girl of my own age. Our
servants were friends, and it was in occasional meetings of these girls
in the public gardens of my little native town that my chief chance of
making love to Marie lay. Looking back on this little episode in my
life, I am inclined to think that it afforded much amusement to our
attendants. My love was too deep for words; I never declared my flame
aloud. But, oh, what a fluttering went on under my small waistcoat
every time I had the ineffable pleasure of a nod from her, and what
volumes of love I put into my bow as I lifted my cap and returned her
salute! We made our first communion on the same day. I was a pupil of
the organist, and it was arranged that I should play a short piece
during the Offertory on that occasion. I had readily acquiesced in the
proposal. Here was my chance of declaring myself; through the medium of
the music I could tell her all my lips refused to utter. She must be
moved, she surely would understand.
Whether she did or not, I never had the bliss of knowing. Shortly after
that memorable day, my parents removed from the country to Paris. The
thought of seeing her no more nearly broke my heart, and when the
stage-coach reached the top of the last hill from which the town could
be seen, my pent-up feelings gave way and a flood of tears came to my
relief.
The last time I visited those haunts of my childhood, I heard that
"little Marie" was the mamma of eight children. God bless that mamma
and her dear little brood!
* * * * *
At fifteen I was passionately fond of music, and declared to my father
that I had made up my mind to be an artiste.
My father was a man of great common sense and few words: he
administered to me a sound thrashing, which had the desired effect of
restoring my attentions to Cicero and Thucydides.
It did not, however, altogether cure me of a certain yearning after
literary glory.
For many months I devoted the leisure, left me by Greek version and
Latin verse, to the production of a drama in five acts and twelve
tableaux.
For that matter I was no exception to the rule. Every French school-boy
has written, is writing, or will write a play.
* * * * *
My drama was a highly moral one of the sensational class.
Blood-curdling, horrible, terrible, savage, weird, human, fiendish,
fascinating, irresistible--it was all that. I showed how, even in this
world, crime, treachery, and falsehood, though triumphant for a time,
must in the long run have their day of reckoning. Never did a modern
Drury Lane audience see virtue more triumphant and vice more utterly
confounded than the Parisians would have in my play, if only the
theatrical directors had not been so stupid as to refuse my
_chef-d'oeuvre_.
For it was refused, inconceivable as it seemed to me at the time.
The directors of French theatres are accustomed to send criticisms of
the plays which "they regret to be unable to accept."
The criticism I received from the director of the Ambigu Theatre was, I
thought, highly encouraging.
"My play," it appeared, "showed no experience of the stage; but it was
full of well-conceived scenes and happy _mots_, and was written in
excellent French. Horrors, however, were too piled up, and I seemed to
have forgotten that spectators should be allowed time to take breath
and wipe away their tears."
I was finally advised not to kill all my _dramatis personae_ in my next
dramatic production, as it was customary for one of them to come
forward and announce the name of the author at the end of the first
performance.
Although this little bit of advice appeared to me not altogether free
from satire, there was in the letter more praise than I had expected,
and I felt proud and happy. The letter was passed round in the
class-room, commented upon in the playground, and I was so excited that
I can perfectly well remember how I forgot to learn my repetition that
day, and how I got forty lines of the _Ars Poetica_ to write out five
times.
What a take-down, this imposition upon a budding dramatic author!
* * * * *
Examinations to prepare compelled me for some time to postpone all idea
of astonishing the Paris playgoers with a "new and original" drama.
I took my B.A. at the end of that year, and my B.Sc. at the end of the
following one. Three years later I was leaving the military school with
the rank of sub-lieutenant.
My uniform was lovely; and if I had only had as much gold in my pockets
as on my shoulders, sleeves, and breast, I think I ought to have been
the happiest being on earth.
The proudest day of a young French officer's life is the day on which
he goes out in the street for the first time with all his ironmongery
on, his moustache curled up, his cap on his right ear, his sabre in his
left hand. The soldiers he meets salute him, the ladies seem to smile
approvingly upon him; he feels like the conquering hero of the day; all
is bright before him; battles only suggest to him victories and
promotions.
On the first day, his mother generally asks to accompany him, and takes
his arm. Which is the prouder of the two? the young warrior, full of
confidence and hope, or the dear old lady who looks at the passers-by
with an air that says: "This is my son, ladies and gentlemen. As for
you, young ladies, he can't have all of you, you know."
Poor young officer! dear old mother! They little knew, in 1869, that in
a few months one would be lying in a military hospital on a bed of
torture, and the other would be wondering for five mortal months
whether her dear and only child was dead, or prisoner in some German
fortress.
* * * * *
On the 19th of July, 1870, my regiment left Versailles for the Eastern
frontier.
As in these pages I simply intend to say how I came to make the
acquaintance of English school-boys, it would be out of place, if not
somewhat pretentious, to make use of my recollections of the
Franco-Prussian War.
Yet I cannot pass over two episodes of those troublous times.
* * * * *
I was twelve years of age when I struck up a friendship with a young
Pole, named Gajeski, who was in the same class with me. We became
inseparable chums. Year after year we got promoted at the same time. We
took our degrees on the same days, entered the military school in the
same year, and received our commissions in the same regiment.
We took a small _appartement de garcon_ at Versailles, and I shall
never forget the delightful evenings we spent together while in
garrison there. He was a splendid violinist, and I was a little of a
pianist.
Short, fair, and almost beardless, Gajeski was called the "Petit
Lieutenant" by the soldiers, who all idolized him.
At the battle of Woerth, after holding our ground from nine in the
morning till five in the evening, against masses of Prussian troops six
times as numerous as our own, we were ordered to charge the enemy, with
some other cavalry regiments, in order to protect the retreat of the
bulk of the army.
A glance at the hill opposite convinced us that we were ordered to go
to certain death.
My dear friend grasped my hand, as he said with a sad smile: "We shall
be lucky if we get our bones out of this, old fellow."
Down the hill we went like the wind, through a shower of bullets and
_mitraille_. Two minutes later, about two-thirds of the regiment
reached the opposite ascent. We were immediately engaged in a desperate
hand-to-hand fight. A scene of hellish confusion it was. But there,
amidst the awful din of battle, I heard Gajeski's death-cry, as he fell
from his horse three or four yards from me, and I saw a horrible gash
on his fair young head.
The poor boy had paid France for the hospitality she had extended to
his father.
I fought like a madman, seeing nothing but that dear mutilated face
before my eyes. I say "like a madman," for it was not through courage
or bravery. In a _melee_ you fight like a madman--like a savage.
I had no brother, but he had been more than a brother to me. I had had
no other companion or friend, but he was a friend of a thousand.
Poor fellow!
* * * * *
I had been in captivity in a stronghold on the Rhine for five months,
when the preliminaries of peace were signed between France and Germany
in January, 1871, and the French prisoners were sent back to their
country.
About five hundred of us were embarked at Hamburg on board one of the
steamers of the Compagnie Transatlantique, and landed at Cherbourg.
Finding myself near home, I immediately asked the general in command of
the district for a few days' leave, to go and see my mother.
Since the day I had been taken prisoner at Sedan (2d of September,
1870), I had not received a single letter from her, as communications
were cut off between the east and the west of France; and I learned
later on that she had not received any of the numerous letters I had
written to her from Germany.
This part of Normandy had been fortunate enough to escape the horrors
of war, but, for months, the inhabitants had had to lodge soldiers and
militia-men.
At five o'clock on a cold February morning, clothed, or rather covered,
in my dirty, half-ragged uniform, I rang the bell at my mother's house.
Our old servant appeared at the attic window, and inquired what I
wanted.
"Open the door," I cried; "I am dying of cold."
"We can't lodge you here," she replied; "we have as many soldiers as we
can accommodate--there is no room for you. Go to the Town Hall, they
will tell you we are full."
"_Sapristi_, my good Fanchette," I shouted, "don't you know me? How is
mother?"
"Ah! It is Monsieur!" she screamed. And she rushed down, filling the
house with her cries: "Madame, madame, it is Monsieur; yes, I have seen
him, he has spoken to me, it is Monsieur."
A minute after I was in my mother's arms.
Was it a dream?
She looked at me wildly, touching my head to make sure I was at her
side, in reality, alive; when she realized the truth she burst into
tears, and remained speechless for some time. Such scenes are more
easily imagined than described, and I would rather leave it to the
reader to supply all the exclamations and interrogations that followed.
* * * * *
I could only spend two days at home, as my regiment was being organized
in Paris, and I had to join it.
On the 18th of March, 1871, the people of Paris, in possession of all
the armament that had been placed in their hands to defend the French
capital against the Prussians, proclaimed the Commune, and, probably
out of a habit just lately got into by the French army, we retreated to
Versailles, leaving Paris at the mercy of the Revolutionists.
This is not the place to account for this revolution.
An explanation of it, which always struck me as somewhat forcible, is
the one given by a Communist prisoner to a captain, a friend of mine,
who was at the time acting as _juge d'instruction_ to one of the
Versailles courts-martial.
"Why did you join the Commune?" he asked a young and
intelligent-looking fellow who had been taken prisoner behind some
barricade.
"Well, captain, I can hardly tell you. We were very excited in Paris;
in fact, off our heads with rage at having been unable to save Paris.
We had a considerable number of cannon and ammunition, which we were
not allowed to use against the Prussians. We felt like a sportsman who,
after a whole day's wandering through the country, has not had an
opportunity of discharging his gun at any game, and who, out of spite,
shoots his dog, just to be able to say on returning home that he had
killed something."
* * * * *
On the 14th of April, 1871, my regiment received the order to attack
the Neuilly bridge, a formidable position held by the Communists.
What the Prussians had not done some compatriot of mine succeeded in
doing. I fell severely wounded.
After my spending five months in the Versailles military hospital, and
three more at home in convalescence, the army surgeons declared that I
should no longer be able to use my right arm for military purposes, and
I was granted a lieutenant's pension, which would have been just
sufficient to keep me in segars if I had been a smoker.
But of this I do not complain. Poor France! she had enough to pay!
* * * * *
At the end of the year of grace, 1871, my position was very much like
that of my beloved country: all seemed lost, _fors l'honneur_.
Through my friends, however, I was soon offered a choice between two
"social positions."
The first was a colonel's commission in the Egyptian army (it seemed
that the state of my right arm was no objection).
I was to draw a very good salary. My friends in Cairo, however, warned
me that salaries were not always paid very regularly, but sometimes
allowed to run on till cash came into the Treasury. It was during the
good times of Ismail Pacha. This made me a little suspicious that my
salary might run on so fast that I should not be able to catch it.
The other post offered me was that of London correspondent to an
important Parisian newspaper.
* * * * *
I had had enough of military "glory" by this time. Yet the prospect of
an adventurous life is always more or less fascinating at twenty-three
years of age.
Being the only child of a good widowed mother, I thought I would take
her valuable advice on the subject.
I am fortunate in having a mother full of common sense. With her French
provincial ideas, she was rather startled to hear that a disabled
lieutenant could all at once become an active colonel. She thought that
somehow the promotion was too rapid.