Part 8

He cut me short.

“It doesn’t matter what your Christian name is. There was no Christian name on the list. You have seen the name Bouin: you’ve only got to carry out----”

“But, sir, the times I go on duty have been definitely fixed for the last two weeks. I haven’t noticed----”

The man jumped to his feet, and I saw he was short--almost ridiculously short. He came towards me angrily, sputtering into his moustache.

“A punishment has been ordered. Some one has got to take it; and it’s you who’ve got to do so. What is your profession?”

“A teacher of mathematics, and a volunteer.”

He added in a tense voice:

“It doesn’t follow that because you are not a conscript you’re going to be cock of the walk here. Besides, men of education like yourself ought to be an example to the others. Follow my advice, and do your four days, my boy.”

“But, _Monsieur l’officier_----”

“You do as I advise you. This is not the moment, when the enemy is hammering at the gates of the capital--this is not the moment, I repeat, to scatter germs of indiscipline.”

“But, sir, discipline----”

Lines appeared on his brow and round his mouth. Then he muttered in a tone that was at once arrogant, sad and sententious:

“Discipline!--why, you don’t know what it is! You can’t teach me anything about that. Do your four days.”

I understood from the gesture accompanying these words that I must depart. An unexpected reply escaped me.

“Sir,” I said, “I shall send in a complaint to the colonel.”

The dwarf brought down his fists on a pile of documents.

“Good! good! Another row! And we think we are going to win with such people! Get out of my sight, will you!”

I thought he groaned, and I found myself in the passage. Midway between the floor and the ceiling ran a water-pipe, making a babbling noise. It seemed to have been installed there in the silence since the days of Adam.

I went staggering back to my work.

The doctor of the third division at that time was a man named Briavoine. What a delightful and sympathetic person he was! He had such a jolly way of feeling convinced about everything he said. And how I loved to see him smile, with the wrinkles on his wide bare forehead and round his eyes!

M. Briavoine was in his office when I arrived; but on that day no smile lit up his face, which was frowning and majestic.

“No, no!” he was saying to those around him. “Dufrêne is a general, but I--I am mere Briavoine.”

A silence full of respect greeted this firm avowal. The reputation of M. Briavoine was more than European. He had distinguished himself in the delicate art of making childbirth a less difficult and painful process, and many princesses had benefited by his care.

I was so obsessed with my little affair that I began to wander over the room without any real or apparent aim; and, in doing so, I very clumsily knocked up against M. Briavoine.

“Be careful, my friend,” said this kind and courteous man.

The urbanity of M. Briavoine, the gentleness of his voice, his correct and exquisite gesture, soothed my violated self-respect. I retired gratefully and with modesty to a corner where papers were being classified. And I thought: “How very polite he is, from every point of view!...”

Gradually I regained my equanimity and took an interest in the conversation of the officers--an interest which soon became very keen.

They were expecting, that very day, a visit from the Chief of the Medical Staff of the Forces--General Dufrêne. The imperious and diligent visits which this weighty person paid to the armies were worthy of the highest praise, and were, too, occasions for keen criticism.

M. Briavoine took off his braided tunic: gold and silver stripes adorned the sleeves.

“Give me my overalls,” he said. “Monsieur Dufrêne wishes to be received by his subordinates in full-dress uniform; but the needs of our profession require a coat like this.”

A breath of rebellion disturbed the atmosphere. Those standing round M. Briavoine were understood to murmur their assent, in which there was at once something of bitterness, irony and defiance. Dressed in white, the great doctor looked at himself contentedly.

“I am going to receive Dufrêne,” he said, “as I am now, in overalls, without my _képi_; if he takes it into his head to object, he may find that though I may be a subordinate, I am a man who has a right to some independence. That I serve my country disinterestedly no one can dispute, and I am not going to be lorded over. What have I to gain? My work in civil life is worth all the honours that I could ever get here.”

These sensible views were hardly uttered before Professor Proby came in. He was a very tall man, with straw-coloured hair, and a look that expressed a seriousness bordering on stupidity. He used to bawl in talking, cutting up his sentences with all kinds of interjections and expletives which completely altered the sense of what he wanted to say. He plunged into a conversation with as much good manners as a buffalo.

“What! What are you telling me? But I don’t care a hang.... Him! Why he knows quite well that--what! I am Paul Proby! And I am a member of the Academy; and I....”

It was true: Professor Proby honoured the Academy with his contributions. He beat his foot on the ground, jingling his glittering spurs, and the rather showy parts of an accoutrement that had remained unused in a cupboard until the outbreak of war.

“Dufrêne! that man!” he said again. “I’ve always been on good terms with him. But one mustn’t ... how annoying it is ... that man!”

M. Briavoine, who had tact, thought the conversation was getting incoherent. With one turn of the rudder, he brought the ship back to its course.

“It’s not a question of personalities, but a question of principle. We are not, like our enemies, a race that has been brutally enslaved....”

This generalisation seemed to bring an atmosphere of philosophy into the sunlit room. Everybody began to listen attentively, and the spirit of revolt became measured and serious.

Since my interview with the orderly officer, one single word leaped and danced in my head. I repeated it mechanically. I dissected its syllables, obsessed and anxious.

Suddenly I felt that the word was going to be uttered; that it was ripe, fertile, bursting; that it was going to spring out of my head--escape--and alight, in turn, on every mouth that was speaking there.

“You cannot,” said M. Briavoine, “ask Frenchmen to accept without question an authority that has no bounds. I will even admit without any shame that our race is the least disciplined in the world.”

“Authority, like alcohol, is a poison which makes man mad,” said a spectacled young man with sharp looks.

“I thoroughly agree,” cried the doctor. “As for discipline....”

A sigh of satisfaction escaped me. It was done. The word had come out, and I saw it disporting itself outside of me with a feeling at once of deliverance and curiosity. I gazed at the celebrated doctor with a very real gratitude. My satisfaction was indeed so great that in spite of my low rank I vigorously nodded to show how completely I agreed with Dr. Briavoine. And approval being always acceptable from any one however insignificant, Dr. Briavoine gave me in passing one of those generous smiles of his that were half-hidden away in his beard.

“Discipline,” he was saying, “is not perhaps a French virtue. But, God be praised! we have others; and our critical spirit alone, so subtle, incisive and delicate, is worth all the heavy qualities of our enemies.”

Doctor Coupé had come in almost unseen in the midst of the general interest. Taken to task by his colleagues, this excellent old man looked like a late-season leaf which the storm was trying to tear away from a bough. For a few seconds he hesitated between his innate terror of authority and his love of mischief. The vehemence of the views, however, that prevailed left him no option; and the dry leaf sped away, swirling in the gale.

“We are ready to shed our blood, if we are called upon,” the doctor said, stating a principle; “but, in God’s name! they should ask us politely.”

“The very least! Manners!” muttered Professor Proby. “I am disciplined enough--on condition ... what?... We ask for some consideration.”

“You know what Dufrêne did, the day before yesterday?” ventured an important-looking person, who was trying by a clever adjustment of his collar and movement of his chin to keep his beard in a horizontal position, and who acquired in this way an air of extraordinary majesty. “Listen then....” And in the middle of a chorus of protestations and laughter he began to tell the latest little scandal invented by imaginations which are not content with the reading of the communiqués of those glorious and tragic days.

There were about a dozen doctors in the room. Four or five were indeed princes among doctors. The war had given me a unique opportunity of knowing these distinguished personalities, and I assure you I felt a not unnatural emotion in hearing them speak freely before me. My conversation of the morning with my orderly officer had very much upset me.

Mathematics impose on the mind stubborn habits of order. I am unfortunately a bachelor, but I have quite rational, serious views on the family and society, as you would expect from my tastes and my profession. I know that very learned mathematicians have been able to imagine triangles which did not have three sides, or parallel lines which ended in meeting in a point.... I cannot follow these masters on such a path: perhaps I am too old to follow such tracks. Anyhow, I am satisfied with what I do know. When looking at my library, and turning over the pages of my lecture note-books, I always experienced a pleasant sensation of order and discipline. Besides, the study of mathematics makes you logical. And what had happened to me that morning was not logical--in other words, was not just. And the thought that the demands of order required an illogical action even in the midst of the chaos of war, appeared to me the wildest incoherence.

You can then imagine the relief, even enthusiasm, I felt on hearing these eminent men justify my rebellious attitude. I listened to their words, marking them with approving nods of the head. I felt a keen, almost trembling enjoyment, mingled with pride and a kind of superstitious terror.

Gradually I became aware that the last emotion was becoming the dominant one. I feared I was relying too much on reason; without knowing my position, these gentlemen were too excited and earnest in their approval. This verbal exaltation of indiscipline made me feel an exquisite uneasiness, almost of pain. Forced to be quiet out of respect, I nevertheless mentally and repeatedly begged them to be calm: “Take care, gentlemen! Be calm, sirs!”

Such were my thoughts when, in the general uproar of voices, a bell was heard ringing: it was the visitors’ office bell. Immediately the room was strangely quiet.

“_Monsieur le principal!_” said a sergeant who had just appeared at the door; “the motor-car of the Chief of the Medical Staff is at the gate.”

“Good heavens!” said some one whom everybody called familiarly Father Coupé. Then automatically he adjusted his _képi_ on his head, and stepped towards the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Professor Proby in a voice that was arrogant yet without much self-assurance.

“I’m going to receive him at the entrance,” replied the old fellow.

“What! There are other people for that. We can wait for him here while we work.”

“You mustn’t think of it,” said M. Coupé. “The custom----”

“Why, I used to call that fellow Dufrêne, without the Mr., in civil life,” muttered Professor Proby. “And I contend that ... ha! the idea!”

“It’s a question of courtesy,” commented M. Briavoine. “Let’s go to the door. Give me my tunic.”

“Don’t you wish to keep on your overalls, my dear master?” said the young man with the sharp look.

“Of course. But I’m afraid of catching cold. Give me my _képi_ as well; I can’t walk across the garden with nothing on my head.”

M. Briavoine turned towards me.

“My friend,” he said, “look for the registers, and be so good as to come along with me.”

Then he repeated, putting on his hat:

“There is no point in catching cold.”

A warm ray of sunlight entered by the open window! I thought M. Briavoine had no reason to fear colds, and I took the registers.

The group of officers were now going down the wide stairs, in a tumult of voices and footsteps.

A feeling of uneasiness, it seemed to me, gave a slight chill to the conversation. As we arrived under the arches, I heard M. Briavoine saying to M. Coupé:

“It’s the first time, since the war, that I meet the Chief of the Medical Staff, General Dufrêne.”

He added, not without a certain gravity of tone:

“Vernier, go back and see if they have swept the subalterns’ room. Some cotton was lying about there just now.”

“Hang it!” mumbled Proby; “he must not come and interfere with us. And he’s going to be received like this! We’ll tell him--what!--we’ll tell him a thing or two.”

“We will tell him, right enough,” said M. Briavoine with decision. “We’ll tell him that the hospital is badly lighted; the gas-pipes and water-pipes are innumerable; that the food is not as it should be----”

“I shall not stick at anything,” interrupted Father Coupé: “I shall insist on the important improvements I want for my work.”

As we got to the steps of the entrance, Professor Proby became suddenly irascible, and, taking on one side one of the attendants who was wearing a white coat, said to him:

“You, there! Get yourself into uniform. It looks better.”

The motor-car of the Chief of the Medical Staff was coming to a stop in front of the door. It opened like a dry fruit, and shot out its contents on the pavement.

What an impressive personage! He was tall and, it seemed to me, of enormous proportions. A typically military face--no one could mistake it--deep features over which the fingers and the nails of the sculptor must have passed again and again; on the nose, too, the sculptor’s thumb must have been at work, pressing and moulding delicately the lumps of flesh; a bristling white moustache and imperial, of the kind specially reserved for soldiers advanced in age. He wore an old general’s uniform, which many give up with the greatest difficulty, like old ideas. Gold, jewellery, velvet, and silk facings adorned his body with such refulgence that the imagination could hardly conceive that, beneath this barbarous splendour, there were lungs, muscles, bones and a shrivelled skin covered with grey hair.

A look escaped from beneath his bushy eyebrows, which was at once violent, questioning, and suggestive of unutterable pride.

He came forward in grave silence.

I expected a scene; but from that moment what took place has remained mysteriously veiled in my memory.

In one single movement everybody there took up a certain position, and they made a correct military salute according to the rules taught so patiently in barracks to recruits from the country.

Faces imperceptibly became rigid. The light in one’s eyes became dull and fixed. Ten centuries of a habit imposed and accepted petrified tongues, muscles and minds.

Some thistleseed flew away with the breeze. As I saw it fluttering, white, woolly, without weight, I thought--I don’t know why--of that subtle, fine, delicate, critical spirit. It vanished in a gust of wind. A big insect loaded with pollen could be heard buzzing around.

I felt stupid! A long pause; then the white-moustached gentleman decided to let these words fall from his lips:

“Good-day, gentlemen!”

The visit began in the rooms which had been packed with the wounded from the Marne front. There young men were lying who had been face to face with War, and who had calmly recognised it as the old Devil of the Species. From that time they spoke of it just as they always will, now that three years of blood, suffering and torture have decimated, maimed and broken them.

But nobody bothered about their thoughts. Sheets were drawn back, bandages were undone, wounds were left open to the air. It was now a question of “cases” and of lesions.

A scientific discussion was commencing, to which I listened with an eager curiosity. As I have said, doctors were present who were princes in their profession. They came on the scene with minds, I thought, which were profoundly independent--even aggressive. And I looked forward to an interesting controversy.

M. Dufrêne was closely examining some one’s thigh, in which a dark, quivering hole had been made by a shell.

“What do you put in it, Proby?” he said.

Professor Proby began a detailed explanation of the way in which such wounds ought to be treated.

“It has been my habit,” he said, “for thirty years to put in some cotton wool--I lectured to the Academy of Medicine--what! And nothing gives me such good results, because----”

At that point the Medical Inspector-General struck the sick man’s little table drily with his pencil.

“Hurry up, Proby,” he said, in a calm, cutting voice.

Proby started a little, and mumbled again:

“For thirty years I have always used cotton wool----”

“Believe me, Proby, that’s enough. You will not put any of it in the wounds. You understand.”

M. Dufrêne turned his back and began examining the next wounded man.

I watched Professor Proby’s face. I was sure the honoured academician was going to burst in again. The much-expected scientific controversy was at last about to take place before my eyes, and ideas would cross to and fro like glittering swords. I waited, holding my breath.

In grave silence, the academician replied:

“Very good, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_!”

I looked at everybody in turn. It seemed to me that a glove had been thrown down, and that some one was going to pick it up with polite audacity. But everybody looked vague and attentive. Professor Proby went up to the Medical Inspector-General, and repeated mechanically:

“Very good, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_!”

The experience of thirty years’ practice vanished like a light that went out.

M. Dufrêne went from bed to bed, heavy and majestic. “You made a mistake in operating upon this man: you would have done better to wait,” he said. Sometimes he approved: “Here is a result which justifies our theories.” Most often his criticism was unrestrained: “Why didn’t you use my apparatus--the Dufrêne apparatus? I wish to see it used here.”

Then murmurs of assent and promises were heard. To everything Proby replied invariably, “_Oui, Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

Doctor Coupé got red and confused in trying to express appreciations of the Inspector’s methods that seemed like excuses for his own.

I was watching M. Briavoine: he was nodding his head unceasingly, and murmured in a dignified way:

“Obviously, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.... Of course, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

These words were always being repeated by everybody. They were repeated as a refrain to almost every syllable and pronounced with a mumbling mechanical promptitude, so that every sentence, and every reply, seemed to end with this ritualistic rhythm: “_Mossinspecteurjral_.”

M. Dufrêne, more and more, gave expression to a kind of triumphant lyric. He spoke of himself, of his works, with a growing volubility and frequency. I thought he was disposed to qualify as “quite French,” or “national,” and sometimes as “a work of genius,” methods and ideas which were strictly his own. But this attempt to objectify things had a very slight connection with modesty.

At one moment this towering personality came towards me without seeing me with such vehemence that I nimbly got out of the way, as I would before a train. I uttered hasty words, which were:

“I beg your pardon, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

I had never, in the obscure life of a teacher, had the good fortune to be in the presence of a military man of high rank and hear him speak. I had only imagined, or come across in my reading, the virile outline of the real old soldier. As I looked at this doctor in his military boots and listened to his comments, I repeated to myself: “At last! the real thing!” I was overwhelmed, crushed, but in spite of that I was able to enjoy a feeling of security and confidence, and I always ended by thinking: “The sheer impudence of it! Still, it takes some doing to carry it off like that with such fellows as those doctors.”

The Medical Inspector-General had seized a fountain pen and was covering the walls with prescriptions. He explained in emphatic sentences what decisions ought to have been made and what action must be taken. After each diagnosis, those who attended him chanted the liturgic refrain: “_Oui, Mossinspecteurjral._”

“You must,” he was saying, “remember that you are soldiers before everything. In putting on the uniform, you have put on responsibilities. The independence of science has to yield before the necessity of a uniform method. Personal experience has to give way to discipline.”

With this simple injunction, personal experience yielded to the sway of discipline. In one voice the least disciplined race in the world replied:

“Of course, that is quite understood, _Monsieur le médecin inspecteur-général_.”

The spectacled young man was standing near me, his arms rigidly at attention and eyes front. I heard him whisper a strange thing to his neighbour:

“Times have changed: every dog has his day.”

But his neighbour made a slight gesture of impatience, and the young man took up again his stiff attitude of respect.

His remark was quite out of place, I thought. Yet it got me out of my trance, and I began to reflect painfully on the incredible phenomenon which was then occurring before my eyes.

And it was now entering upon a critical phase. The inspector was examining the room where wounds were dressed.

“This room,” he said, “is large and well arranged. It was altered according to instructions I made in 1895 when I was reorganising this hospital. In fact, the whole place seems fairly satisfactory. Have you any complaints to make, Coupé?”

Doctor Coupé blushed, was rather upset, and ended by saying:

“Nothing at all, _Mossinspecteurjral_.”

M. Briavoine, when asked in his turn, appeared to ponder, and then replied that everything was as he wished.

Professor Proby, recovering from his coma, hastened to stammer:

“Ha! here everything is all right, _Mossinspecteurjral_.”

I remembered something M. Briavoine had said. I seemed to see him again buttoning his linen coat and saying, “What have I to gain?” Then I looked, greatly astonished, at his attentive face and respectful bearing. In the same way I observed his colleagues and, thinking of these men who had nothing to gain from their effacement and who had given way so completely, so hopelessly, I experienced a great admiration for them, and I had an insight into the meaning of discipline. But the perceptions of the intellect are often betrayed by other less noble impulses, for at the very same moment I could hardly restrain an inclination to laugh.

M. Dufrêne had stopped in the middle of a dormitory. Fifty wounded men were lying there: some talked in low voices, others groaned from time to time, and others again were delirious. The Inspector-General clapped his hands: at once the silence was complete. The least disciplined race in the world stopped moaning; they ceased from their delirium.

“Soldiers!” he said in a formidable voice, “the Government of the Republic has sent me to you to see how you are looked after. See how the Government of the Republic cares for you.”

From one end of the room to the other heads were raised, necks were stretched, and all those who had any breath left in them replied together:

“Thank you, General.”

M. Dufrêne was going out. Behind him, the least disciplined race in the world followed in good order down a staircase leading to the gardens.

I followed too, bringing up the rear.