Part 12

All at once, seeing a pastrycook’s window, with a grand display of buns and tarts beneath the lamps, with one impulse, without stopping to parley, we hurl ourselves, all six, into the _Conditorei_. Georg invokes all the devils of hell, but follows us. “Mange,” says Détry to him, forcing him to sit down at a table loaded with custard tartlets and éclairs. And we, who have been craving for sweet things for months, begin to devour all that comes to our hands. Trembling with concupiscence, I go to the counter, I take the mistress by the hand, and, my mouth full, say to her: “Madame, you will be an angel if you can get me two pounds of butter!” She does not sell butter, but a mother is never able to resist the cry of a child, and she lets me have her own butter. “I can buy some more,” she says with a smile. I open the show-cases: “Hullo, Suchard! How much this pile?” She names the price. “There you are.” Then I spy some little sponge-cakes coated with sugar. In a trice I have filled my haversack, which I carry beneath my coat. Big-bellied as a Bavarian, I am unable to rebutton.

“_Vorwärts!_” cries Georg, stuffed with good things. We pay our shot. Leaving the pastrycook’s we overwhelm our gaoler with prayers: “Do let us go to the ham and beef shop, to the tobacconist.…”—“It’s absolutely impossible,” he cries. In reality, he dreads losing his commission! He marches on at a terrible rate, kicking out of the way, driving out of the way with the butt end of his musket, the escorting rabble of children. It is only two young girls of really charming appearance, ten or twelve years of age, who walked by my side on the way to the cemetery and to whom I said, “I have sisters of your age who are like you,” that continue to accompany me, notwithstanding the roughness of the _Bursch_. We talk like old friends. They leave us at the wicket of the cavalry barracks, with a parting “_Grüss Gott, Herr Franzose!_”

My companions are still arguing with Georg. “It won’t take a minute to buy a dozen packets of tobacco and a string of sausages!” The innocents! They reason with Georg. Durupt especially, who is eloquent in the Teutonic tongue, surpasses himself. “To be at the source of all good things and not to drink from it! To pass stupidly by!”—“_Ne, ne_,” the _Bursch_ growls continually. Now we are traversing badly lighted streets. We make our way through the suburbs, and beyond the station we reach the dull country on the outskirts of the town.

“Old fellow,” says Détry to Durupt, “we are greatly indebted to you. With all your German, you have not been smart enough to get us the smallest of sausages, a single pipefull of tobacco! It is obvious, O Durupt the Just, that you do not know the only language in which it is possible to persuade Georg!”

We are about to reach a tavern. Détry, who does not know a word of German, lays a hand on the orderly’s shoulder. Abstracting Georg’s hat, he puts it on his own head and decorates the Bavarian with the French képi. Georg beams! Then Détry shakes him vigorously by the hand, saying: “Tiens, mon poteau! voilà pour graisser ta sale patte.”[25] Georg does not understand French, but he understands very well that he has two marks in his hand. Arm in arm, the two comrades lead the way. In front of the inn, Détry loudly calls, “_Bier, Bier!_” The innkeeper comes forth, wearing a military uniform. All smiles, he invites us to enter. We place two mugs in the hands of Georg and lay before him a plate of steaming sausages. In this rig, with his rifle and fixed bayonet against his shoulder, he is irresistible. I make the tour of the _Wirtschaft_ and discover a number of plates charged with slices of cold meats ready for a battalion which is about to pass on its way to the Russian front. “How much, _gnädige Frau_?”—“Fifty pfennig a plate.”

What a dinner we ate! It was not a varied menu, but quantity made up for everything. The joy of it! You who have never been hungry, you who have never been rationed, cannot understand how it is that there is no delight in the world greater than that of finding oneself, after three months’ imprisonment, in front of plates filled with sausage, salad of ox muzzle, and gherkins. The _Wirt_ had a swarm of children. We treated the children. We overwhelmed them with pfennig. We paid the most polite compliments to the _gnädige Frau Wirtin_.

Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein, Bei einer Frau Wirtin da kehrten sie ein.…

We were intoxicated, not with beer, but with the feeling of plenty. We ordered cigars. “Have you boxes of cigars?”—“Here you are.”—“How much?”—“And this cluster of sausages? Can I buy them? How much?” We made a clean sweep. Georg continued to eat and to drink, amid a rain of friendly smiles and pats on the back. All of us being thoroughly replete, we resumed our journey. There was a thick fog. Two companies of the Bavarian battalion in full marching kit, on the way to entrain, met us. They went by, walking heavily, without a word. We were singing.

Détry made Georg repeat some French phrases:

“Mademoiselle, voulez-vous tanser?”

“Non, môssieu, _ch_’ai mal au pied.”

Master and pupil kicked up their legs in unison. We held our sides with laughter. To tell the truth, this unwonted good cheer had turned our heads a little.

Détry was pelting Durupt with gibes. “Old Aristides the Just, you will never know how to manage men. Georg is like all the Bavarians in our guard—he thinks first of all of his own skin, and next he likes to enjoy himself. Don’t you talk to me about German honour and German virtue. These fellows are very fond of sonorous phrases, but they can’t resist a modest tip!” No doubt Détry was exaggerating a little.

Georg is no longer gay. Closed, alas, his Fort Orff campaign, his campaign of junketings and sensual enjoyments. Now he is to have a taste of real war. Poor Georg, if only his imaginary wound of Dieuze could suffice. Certainly he loves German “glory,” German “virtue.” Certainly he loves his king. But he loves just as much to be cock of the walk in the villages, with the aid of French money! He loves the fatherland and military displays. But he loves also to feed well and to lie warm. He is fond of so many things that he always chooses the nearest and the easiest, and his actions are invariably dictated by opportunity.

Now he is to go to the firing-line. In a few days he will be rotting in the trenches, his boots sticking fast in the clay. Despite the best will in the world, he may be laid low by a bullet before he has found a favourable opportunity of getting himself safely taken prisoner by the French. His name will then appear in the lists among those of the heroes who have fallen on the field of honour. Such is life!

But how will my dear little Brissot manage in future to procure chocolate and Baltic herrings?

OUR GAOLER

_November 13, 1914._

On Sunday, Baron von Stengel went to the Palatinate to buy horses for the artillery. He returned yesterday evening, after an absence of five days, looking a little thinner, his eyes weeping from a cold in the head. The weather in the transrhenish province had been wintry. The railway service was irregular, so he was compelled to make use of an open motor. During the first snows he had to drive about the country visiting horse-dealers. He is seventy years of age.

He has just been walking up and down with us, and recounting to us the incidents of this unexpected journey. “I tired myself out to no advantage,” he said. “Horses are becoming rare with us, almost as rare as louis d’or. You have Algeria, Boulonnais, the region round Tarbes, and the splendid horse-breeding centre of Huysne. We have nothing of the kind. The question of remounts is becoming serious. It has been difficult to buy even a few horses in the Palatinate. Sorry screws, and dear at that! The peasants asked from two to three thousand marks for horses worth eight hundred at the outside.”

* * * * *

Our commandant is very tall and upright, with a finely cut jaw, and a round flat beard like the knights in the days of Maximilian of Austria. His manners are above criticism. His natural dignity is relieved by a genial expression of countenance.

He has the equable temper and regulated life of a sage. Precise but never punctilious, he fulfils here the duties of postmaster, money-changer, censor of correspondence, headmaster, major-domo—and does it all without irritability and without giving the impression that he is lowering himself in any way. In his bold, firm, regular, almost heraldic handwriting, he registers the arrival and departure of letters; he enters in the account-book payments we make for haberdashery; he keeps memoranda of the interminable series of money-orders. He works deliberately, making neat rows of figures, using a ruler whenever he wishes to draw a line, and taking great care not to ink his long white fingers or to make blots on the large folios of ministerial paper. There is not a speck of dust on his writing-table; everything is neatly laid out in squares, as in a French garden. Behind him, on the top of the closed wash-hand stand, a lemon, cut in two exactly equal halves, a loaf of ration bread, cut with precision, and a glass of fresh water, combine to form a picture as definite and sober as a scene of still life by Chardin. The casemate is well-lighted, vast, and in keeping with its tenant. A narrow iron bedstead, a trunk, a clothes-hanger upon which are seen a _Mütze_, a long grey cape, and a sword; two deal tables standing end to end, one for himself and the other for d’Arnoult, his secretary; a small dressing-table, three chairs—this comprises all the furniture. In this formal, cold, geometrical environment sits the huge man (much too large for his table, so that his arms and legs are cramped), writing all day.

Humble work, well within the capacity of any honest “swivel-officer” of the reserve. But Baron von Stengel, bending his long back to it, infusing it with his air of refinement, stamps it with an almost hieratic character. It is possible that he would prefer to be in command of a park of artillery upon the Warthe or upon the Ypres canal. Perhaps he envies his two sons, captains in the army of Lorraine, who have just announced to him almost simultaneously the receipt of the iron cross. But this much is certain, that it is not without sadness that he recalls the last war.

He thinks of the 1870 campaign, which, as _Oberleutnant_, he spent at Ulm, employed, as to-day, in guarding prisoners. He thinks of his young colleagues of those days, of the interminable conversations when they were all intoxicated with the glorious news that streamed in, the news of Wörth, Borny, Gravelotte, Metz, and Sedan. He recalls the ardency of those years, and the cheerful noise of his steps as he walked beside the Danube in the beautiful night-time. He remembers seeing in the river the reflection of the cathedral spire, graceful and ornate, a silent witness of the ancient German glories then renascent—victory, love.

He was an old man when the new call to arms came. Nevertheless he offered his services to King Louis; though a septuagenarian, he begged to be allowed to help. Hence he is at Fort Orff. To one who watches him at work, censoring our letters, doing our little banking business, fulfilling the thousand and one trifling duties of his office, it is obvious that he is performing a rite, the great rite of patriotism.

Although hungry men are seldom just, I have never heard any of the prisoners utter a single ill-natured word about the commandant. As he walks with slow gait along the parapet, every one salutes him with manifest goodwill. White-headed, wearing an ample grey cloak falling in straight folds, he looks like a patriarch of ancient days visiting his faithful tribe. He wields authority so naturally, and is so free from hauteur, that no one dreams of murmuring. He has worked the miracle of uniting in a sentiment of respect for his personality all the inhabitants of this little France of Fort Orff, this miniature of great France, the factious and ungovernable nation, the nation of eternal discontent. He is so obviously straightforward and humane that the most savage of our prisoners would protest if any one, suddenly seized by an evil whimsy, should desire to make this good old man of the great century responsible for our short commons.

The major in command at headquarters in Ingolstadt, on the other hand, who must be a jingo of the most pronounced type, is prodigal of petty vexations. He forbids tobacco, chocolate, and sugar, “articles of luxury.” He forbids the foundation of a canteen; he forbids the receipt of more than ten marks at a time, and the writing of more than one letter every ten days; he forbids pen and ink; he forbids access to the escarp and to the summit of the slopes, doubtless considering the view too beautiful for prisoners of war. He issues orders that the sentinels shall fire without challenge upon any who break his rules, and it was owing to this that Georg, being taken for a Frenchman, was shot at one evening in the gloaming. Every day a new _Verboten_ is issued.

Amid this maze of prohibitions, our life would be a torture but for Baron von Stengel. Discreet and tactful as he is, those among us who come into close contact with him know with how much disgust, with how much suppressed annoyance, he receives these vexatious orders. He carries them out, being too good a soldier to disobey. But, too good a soldier to misuse soldiers, too much of a gentleman to treat as galley-slaves combatants seamed with wounds, holy priests, red cross men who have received their baptism of fire, he often carries out his orders in a way which is tantamount to a generous evasion.

He is an adept in the art of humanizing his agents, the _Feldwebel_ and the soldiers of the Bavarian guard. Unfortunately these are changed every week, and every week therefore he has to begin this civilizing task anew. The men come to us white hot from reading the newspapers, in savage mood—“duty, duty.” For two days the fort is an inferno. Then everything returns to order—not German order, but our own. Their zeal is mitigated when they take note of the way in which the commandant treats us. Our hail-fellow-well-met air, our good-humoured cheek, do the rest. The soldiers are tamed. Soon they cease to guard us; they contemplate us, and take part in our life. There they stand, with fixed bayonets, somewhat nonplussed and puzzled, almost timid, abashed as it were, hardly knowing, when we dig them in the ribs, whether we are fond of them or are making fun of them. At bottom they feel themselves to be our inferiors, less lively and less intelligent. They all have much the same idea as fat Max, the canteen keeper, who secretly breaks the pumps whenever a fresh levy is being made, in order to render himself more indispensable here than at the front. In view of the activity of our comrades, their carvings in wood and in stone, the tin rings they make, the horsehair watch-chains, the stools, tables, and cupboards which they knock together out of bits of planking filched from the workyards at Ingolstadt, this mighty beer-drinker is unable to control his astonishment. He waves his great arms, exclaiming:

“These Frenchmen, what workers! I’ve always maintained, _Herr Gott Sakrament_, that every one of them has a devil in his inside.”

M. von Stengel is of much the same way of thinking as Max.

Little as he seems to notice, wishing, as he does, to avoid having to allot punishment, hardly anything happens in the fort without his being aware of it. Nothing licit or illicit escapes his keen gaze, and what he does not see he divines. Nevertheless, with the roguish indulgence of a grand seigneur, he is careful to avoid any display of anger. I am confident that he derives a good deal of secret enjoyment from the contemplation of the network of customs, subterfuges, and evasions, whose threads are interwoven behind the iron grating of German regulations. He watches with amusement the supple boldness with which prudent advances are made, the care with which direct conflict with authority is avoided, and the ingenuity with which the regulations are taken in the flank, circumvented, or ignored. He admires the stratagems by means of which this miniature France, prisoned in a foreign fortress, is enabled to reintegrate the life of the homeland. He does not fail to recognize that these breaches of discipline serve, even more clearly than the ingenuity with which the breaches are effected, to manifest the hardihood of his prisoners, and to prove their possession of an individuality at once gentle and intractable.

This German, at any rate, does not regard the French as “monkeys.” He is not misled by their superficial levity, their suppleness, their apparent scepticism—shining armour with which they protect their ego, a vivacious and rebellious ego, which resists everything, which always gets even, is ever elastic, artful, or frank, as circumstances prescribe, but immalleable, incapable of being passive, obstinately itself. The commandant is impressed with the fact that the Frenchman is what he is and remains what he is, jealous of his privacy, greatly prizing his own humour, tastes, and ideas. It may be that M. von Stengel considers that we are excessively individualized, that whilst we often seem to treat grave matters as trifles, the least onslaught upon our intimate personality arouses in us an excess of fury, a revolt which may go so far as to compromise the collective interest. But it is certain that he knows us and accepts us as we are. He imposes no constraint, and has no desire to refashion us after the Teuton model. It is even possible that he regards with secret approval the delicate compost of national merits and peculiarities. In any case, in his relations with us he is extremely careful to do everything he can to blunt the sharp, harassing, and painful angles of Germanic discipline.

Nevertheless this man, so sensible, moderate, and well-bred, does not possess a perfectly unified character. One recognizes in him both the German and the natural man. The former enunciates cynical maxims to the latter, insisting, for example, upon the value of war for war’s sake. The latter listens, but shies at the idea. It is as if, while enjoying the refined sweetness of a French morning, he should suddenly be disturbed by the horrid bellowing of all the war-horns of the Huns. The dicta of this brutal philosophy rack his ears. But, being good-mannered, he hearkens. His brother seems to him a thick-skinned fellow, coarse-blooded, grim, and savage-hearted. However, he makes no protest. His brother reiterates his statements, repeats his massive assertions loudly and unceasingly, and insists upon agreement. He has to pay for being well-mannered, for hating scenes, for disliking to give pain. From very kindness of heart, from love of peace, from very sensitiveness, he assumes a barbaric mask. The good brother! It goes much against the grain, but he gives an apparent assent.

It is thanks to a series of such sacrifices, invariably one-sided, that the German and the natural man seem, in Baron von Stengel, to live on harmonious terms.

His natural man is good and just. Making no parade of humanitarian convictions, he practises humaneness.

It is touching to watch this grand old man, lofty of stature, with a solid prognathous chin, irreproachably dressed, when he stops to speak to a soldier suffering from despondency. “Fous êtes triste?” he asks in his slow and broken French, gently pulling the man by the ear. The prisoner does not misunderstand; he knows that though the major can read French he is unable to speak it, and that in this laconic phrase he desires to condense an entire friendly conversation.

A few days ago, having learned that a loaf of bread priced at thirty pfennig had been sold at one mark fifty pfennig to a prisoner by a soldier of the guard, he was greatly enraged, and in the presence of Durupt, who was helping him to write up the register of money orders, he exclaimed, “There is but one price for bread, and I shall proceed with the utmost rigour against anyone, be he French or German, who asks a higher price. It is disgraceful to rob prisoners in this way!” The joke is that officially we are not supposed to buy anything at all.

The day before yesterday there was a fall of sleet. The men were loitering up and down the corridors. In front of the _Kommandantur_ there was a great clatter of hobnailed shoes, and the noise was reinforced by light songs, laughter, and chatter. The commandant was reading our eleven hundred letters. Two days earlier he had sent them to Ingolstadt. Headquarters, cantankerous as usual, had returned them, under some pretext, to be re-read. This was something calculated to put the gentlest of men out of humour. Scrupulously obedient to orders, he was now for the second time reading these poor papers, badly written in pencil, insipid, and all exactly alike. On the other side of the door, the procession of prisoners passed and repassed unceasingly. The clatter of nails on the cement got on his nerves. “Oh, the noise, the noise!” he said, as if speaking to himself. D’Arnoult was there and rose from his seat, intending to ask the comrades to be a little quieter. The commandant stopped him, saying, “No, monsieur d’Arnoult, do not go out. _Mein Zimmer ist doch nur eine Kanzlei_—after all, my room is only an office!” And once more he immersed himself in his reading.

Withal, in the major’s innermost being, the natural man invariably acts and governs. The other, the German, merely utters professions of faith.

Out walking, just now, we had paused for a moment, dazzled by the beauty of the evening. We were on the strip of greyish-white pasture which arches along the edge of the pine wood, and looked like the woolly back of a sheep. Before us, seemingly at our very feet, the Danubian plain, with its gentle undulations, stretched away through the iridescent haze. The sun had just set. A breeze was blowing from the west, chasing before it golden mist-wreaths. The branches and faded foliage of the oaks, dry and nipped by the frost, rustled in the chill wind; the pine needles, interlaced with gossamer, reddened by many sunsets, whispered and murmured. We were a silent company, Baron von Stengel, Major Langlois, MM. Jeandidier, Cavaillé, Lœbre, Romant, Bouvat, my friend Laloux, and myself. The vastness of the prospect, the silence of the fields, the fading of the light, the shivering of the undergrowth in the twilight, the strange sensation of being suddenly plunged into the heart of winter—all these influences combined to keep us mute.

What a waste of time! I thought. Already three months in prison. Three months lost beyond recall. And the baron had just said to me, “England is intractable. I hardly think you will get away before next autumn.” More than a year lived through for nothing, suffered for nothing. A whole year cut out from the short span of our days. I was prey to a cold, hard sadness. Then, my thoughts turned to you.… All at once a song rose from the road. The recruits quartered at Hepperg were returning to quarters, marching with that slow and heavy German pace which will never be a match for our French step.

They were singing the famous

Nun ade, wir müssen Abschied nehmen.…

with which all the _Feldgrau_, before going to the front, have made the quiet Bavarian taverns ring, sitting over their great tankards, each holding the beloved one’s hand. I was familiar with the strains. The little sergeant of whom I have previously written to you had made his men sing it to me one evening in the guardroom, and had copied out the text for me: