As soon as I had finished my studies my parents deemed it useful to my
career to cause me to appear before a table covered with green cloth
and surmounted by the living busts of some old gentlemen who interested
themselves in knowing whether I had learned enough of the dead languages
to entitle me to the degree of Bachelor.
The test was satisfactory. A dinner to which all my relations, far
and near, were invited, celebrated my success, affected my future, and
ultimately fixed me in the law. Well, I passed my examination and got
rid of the money provided for my first year’s expenses with a blond girl
who, at times, pretended to be fond of me.
I frequented the Latin Quarter assiduously and there I learned many
things; among others to take an interest in those students who blew
their political opinions into the foam of their beer, every night, then
to acquire a taste for the works of George Sand and of Heine, of Edgard
Quinet, and of Henri Murger.
The psychophysical moment of silliness was upon me.
That lasted about a year; gradually I ripened. The electoral struggles
of the closing days of the Empire left me cold; I was the son neither of
a Senator nor a proscript and I had but to outlive, no matter what the
régime, the traditions of mediocrity and wretchedness long since adopted
by my family. The law pleased me but little. I thought that the _Code_
had been purposely maldirected in order to furnish certain people with
an opportunity to wrangle, to the utmost limit, over the smallest
words; even today it seems to me that a phrase clearly worded can not
reasonably bear such diverse interpretation.
I was sounding my depths, searching for some state of being that I might
embrace without too much disgust, when the late Emperor found one for
me; he made me a soldier through the maladroitness of his policy.
The war with Prussia broke out. To tell the truth I did not understand
the motives that made that butchery of armies necessary. I felt neither
the need of killing others nor of being killed by them. However that
may be, enrolled in the _Garde mobile_ of the Seine, I received orders,
after having gone in search of an outfit, to visit the barber and to be
at the barracks in the Rue Lourcine at seven o’clock in the evening.
I was at the place punctually. After roll-call part of the regiment
swarmed out of the barrack gates and emptied into the street. Then the
sidewalks raised a shout and the gutters ran.
Crowding one against another, workmen in blouses, workmen in tatters,
soldiers strapped and gaitered, without arms, they scanned to the clink
of glasses the Marseillaise over which they shouted themselves hoarse
with their voices out of time. Heads geared with képis {1} of incredible
height and ornamented with vizors fit for blind men and with tin
cockades of red, white and blue, muffled in blue-black jackets with
madder-red collars and cuffs, breached in blue linen pantaloons with a
red stripe down the side, the militia of the Seine kept howling at the
moon before going forth to conquer Prussia. That was a deafening uproar
at the wine shops, a hubbub of glasses, cans and shrieks, cut into here
and there by the rattling of a window shaken by the wind. Suddenly the
roll of the drum muffled all that clamor; a new column poured out of the
barracks; there was carousing and tippling indescribable. Those soldiers
who were drinking in the wine shops shot now out into the streets,
followed by their parents and friends who disputed the honor of carrying
their knapsacks; the ranks were broken; it was a confusion of soldiers
and citizens; mothers wept, fathers, more contained, sputtered wine,
children frisked for joy and shrieked patriotic songs at the top of
their shrill voices.