Once in camp, the companies separated; the laborers took themselves
to the tents of their fellows; the bourgeois did the same. The tent in
which I found myself was not badly managed, for we succeeded in driving
out by argument of wine the two fellows, the native odor of whose feet
was aggravated by a long and happy neglect.
One or two days passed. They made us mount guard with the pickets, we
drank a great deal of eau-de-vie, and the drink-shops of Mourmelon were
full without let, when suddenly Canrobert {4} passed us in review along
the front line of battle. I see him now on his big horse, bent over the
saddle, his hair flying, his waxed mustaches in a ghastly face. A mutiny
was breaking out. Deprived of everything, and hardly convinced by that
marshal that we lacked nothing, we growled in chorus when he talked of
repressing our complaints by force: “Ran, plan, plan, a hundred thousand
men afoot, to Paris, to Paris!”
4 Canrobert, a brave and distinguished veteran, head of
the Sixth Corps of the Army of the Rhine.
Canrobert grew livid, and shouted, planting his horse in the midst of
us. “Hats off to a marshal of France!” Again a howl goes up from the
ranks; then turning bridle, followed in confusion by his staff officers,
he threatened us with his finger, whistling between his separated teeth.
“You shall pay dear for this, gentlemen from Paris!”
Two days after this episode, the icy water of the camp made me so
sick that there was urgent need of my entering the hospital. After the
doctor’s visit, I buckle on my knapsack, and under guard of a corporal,
here I am going limping along, dragging my legs and sweating under my
harness. The hospital is gorged with men; they send me back. I then
go to one of the nearest military hospitals; a bed stands empty; I am
admitted. I put down my knapsack at last, and with the expectation that
the major would forbid me to move, I went out for a walk in the little
garden which connected the set of buildings. Suddenly there issued from
the door a man with bristling beard and bulging eyes. He plants his
hands in the pockets of a long dirt-brown cloak, and shouts out from the
distance as soon as he sees me:
“Hey you, man! What are you doing over here?” I approach, I explain to
him the motive that brings me. He thrashes his arms about and bawls:
“Go in again! You have no right to walk about in this garden until they
give you your costume.”
I go back into the room, a nurse arrives and brings me a great military
coat, pantaloons, old shoes without heels, and a cap like a nightcap. I
look at myself, thus grotesquely dressed, in my little mirror. Good
Heavens, what a face and what an outfit! With my haggard eyes and my
sallow complexion, with my hair cut short, and my nose with the bumps
shining; with my long mouse-gray coat, my pants stained russet, my great
hedless shoes, my colossal cotton cap, I am prodigiously ugly. I could
not keep from laughing. I turn my head toward the side of my bed
neighbor, a tall boy of Jewish type, who is sketching my portrait in a
notebook. We become friends at once; I tell him to call me Eugène
Lejantel; he responds by telling me to call him Francis Emonot; we
recall to each other this and that painter; we enter into a discussion
of esthetics and forget our misfortune. Night arrives; they portion out
to us a dish of boiled meat dotted black with a few lentils, they pour
us out brimming cups of coco-clairet, and I undress, enchanted at
stretching myself out in a bed without keeping my clothes and my shoes
on.
The next morning I am awakened at about six o’clock by a great fracas at
the door and a clatter of voices. I sit up in bed, I rub my eyes, and
I see the gentleman of the night before, still dressed in his wrapper,
brown the color of cachou, who advances majestically, followed by a
train of nurses. It was the major. Scarcely inside, he rolls his dull
green eyes from right to left and from left to right, plunges his hands
in his pockets and bawls:
“Number One, show your leg--your dirty leg. Eh, it’s in a bad shape,
that leg, that sore runs like a fountain; lotion of bran and water,
lint, half-rations, a strong licorice tea. Number Two, show your
throat--your dirty throat. It’s getting worse and worse, that throat;
the tonsils will be cut out to-morrow.”
“But, doctor--”
“Eh, I am not asking anything from you, am I? Say one word and I’ll put
you on a diet.”
“But, at least--”
“Put that man on a diet. Write: diet, gargles, strong licorice tea.”
In that vein he passed all the sick in review, prescribing for all, the
syphilitics and the wounded, the fevered and the dysentery patients his
strong licorice tea. He stopped in front of me, stared into my face,
tore off my covering, punched my stomach with his fist, ordered
albuminated water for me, the inevitable tea; and went out snorting and
dragging his feet.
Life was difficult with the men who were about us. There were twenty-one
in our sleeping quarters. At my left slept my friend, the painter; on
my right, a great devil of a trumpeter, with face pocked like a sewing
thimble and yellow as a glass of bile. He combined two professions, that
of cobbler by day and a procurer of girls by night. He was, in other
respects, a comical fellow who frisked about on his hands, or on his
head, telling you in the most naïve way in the world the manner in which
he expedited at the toe of his boot the work of his menials, or intoned
in a touching voice sentimental songs:
“I have cherished in my sorrow--ow
But the friendship of a swallow--ow.”
I conquered his good graces by giving him twenty sous to buy a liter of
wine with, and we did well in not being on bad terms with him, for
the rest of our quarters--composed in part of attorneys of the Rue
Maubuée--were well disposed to pick a quarrel with us.
One night, among others, the 15th of August, Francis Emonot threatened
to box the ears of two men who had taken his towel. There was a
formidable hubbub in the dormitory. Insults rained, we were treated to
“roule-en-coule et de duchesses.” Being two against nineteen, we were
in a fair way of getting a regular drubbing, when the bugler interfered,
took aside the most desperate and coaxed them into giving up the stolen
object. To celebrate the reconciliation which followed this scene,
Francis and I contributed three francs each, and it was arranged that
the bugler with the aid of his comrades should try to slip out of the
hospital and bring back some meat and wine.
The light had disappeared from the major’s window, the druggist at last
extinguished his, we climb over the thicket, examine our surroundings,
caution the men who are gliding along the walls not to encounter the
sentinels on the way, mount on one another’s shoulders and jump off into
the field. An hour later they came back laden with victuals; they pass
them over and reenter the dormitory with us; we suppress the two night
lamps, light candle-ends stuck on the floor, and around my bed in our
shirts we form a circle. We had absorbed three or four liters of wine
and cut up the best part of a leg of mutton, when a great clattering of
shoes is heard; I blow out the candle stubbs, by the grace of my shoe,
and every one escapes under the beds. The door opens; the major appears,
heaves a formidable “Good Heavens!” stumbles in the darkness, goes out
and comes back with a lantern and the inevitable train of nurses. I
profit by the moment to disperse the remains of the feast; the major
crosses the dormitory at a quick step, swearing, threatening to take us
all into custody and to put us in stocks.
We are convulsed with laughter under our coverings; a trumpet-flourish
blazes from the other side of the dormitory. The major puts us all under
diet; then he goes out, warning us that we shall know in a few minutes
what metal he is made of.
Once gone, we vie with each other in doing our worst; flashes of
laughter rumble and crackle. The trumpeter does a handspring in the
dormitory, one of his friends joins him, a third jumps on his bed as
on a springboard and bounces up and down, his arms balancing, his shirt
flying; his neighbor breaks into a triumphant cancan; the major enters
abruptly, orders four men of the line he has brought with him to seize
the dancers, and announces to us that he is going to draw up a report
and send it to whom it may concern.
Calm is restored at last; the next day we get the nurses to buy us some
eatables. The days run on without further incident. We are beginning to
perish of ennui in this hospital, when, one day, at five o’clock, the
doctor bursts into the room and orders us to put on our campaign clothes
and to buckle on our knapsacks.
We learn ten minutes later that the Prussians are marching on Chalons.
A gloomy amazement reigns in the quarters. Until now we have had no
doubts as to the outcome of passing events. We knew about the too
celebrated victory of Sarrebrück, we do not expect the reverses which
overwhelm us. The major examines every man; not one is cured, all
had been too long gorged with licorice water and deprived of care.
Nevertheless, he returns to their corps the least sick, he orders others
to lie down completely dressed, knapsack in readiness. Francis and I are
among these last. The day passes, the night passes. Nothing. But I have
the colic continually and suffer. At last, at about nine o’clock in the
morning, appears a long train of mules with “cacolets,” {5} and led by
“tringlots.” {6}
5 Panier seats used in the French army to
transport the wounded.