I was going out into the yard, with my three or four papers spread out in my hand, when I heard myself called. I stopped. It was Captain Ribet. "Newspapers are prohibited!" he said.
I was standing at attention. I gazed at him. Was he joking? In peace time, I knew they were not allowed. But to-day! Was it a pet fad of his? Or else were there special instructions?
His features relaxed. He continued:
"Will you lend me one?"
I handed him the whole bundle.
"Allow me ..." he said. "Just a glance."
He ran through the first page, and was just going to turn over.
I made bold to say:
"There's nothing so exhilarating as that reading, I consider, sir! I confess I was thinking of letting my men profit by it...." He cut me short:
"I understand, I understand you. You're a good sort, Dreher! Two or three of you have turned out to be extraordinarily useful! I was a little bit prejudiced against you young bourgeois. I thought you would be selfish, and not care a rap about your work or anything else. I was mistaken."
He added:
[Pg 411]
"I wish all your comrades were like you!"
I opened my mouth but he stopped me.
"I know what I'm talking about. I'm quite well aware of it. Look here, only this morning I had a talk with Descroix and Humel. I've warned them of one thing, and that is, that if during the first engagement their men flinch.... Ah! I'm not going to stand any nonsense! It'll be a case of summary justice, I can tell you!"
I put in a few words on Humel's behalf.
"Yes, he's getting himself in hand again, since he's had something to do with you others!"
Bless the man! Nothing escaped him. He continued:
"As for Playoust, nothing on earth will induce me to have him in my firing-line again. I'm going to arrange to have him sent to the ammunition-train, but I shall warn them to keep an eye on him there!"
I said nothing as I felt slightly embarrassed. It was certainly the first time that the company commander had lingered in tête-à-tête with one of his N.C. O's. Ravelli, who was a few yards off, must think I was getting a wigging. I tried to escape.
"Stop a minute," said Ribet, "if I'm not boring you...."
He smiled.
"And stand at ease, Dreher!"
I moved my left leg, and smiled in my turn.
Then he began to talk to me in an unexpectedly familiar tone—this man whom I had thought so proud, so incapable of confiding in any one. He told me his whole history, how when quite small he had always longed to be a soldier, how he had been kept back by an illness, and had failed for St. Cyr (I had always[Pg 412] thought he had been through it), why he had enlisted.... He loyally reported all his disappointments, and mortifications. It was the last trade in peace time. He appealed to me to corroborate this statement from the knowledge gained from my brother whom I had just lost. Oh, the slow advancement, the insufficient pay, the spirit of jealousy and tyranny...!
He made a speech for the prosecution. The greatest part of the army was a mass of laziness, lies, and intrigue. There were two ways of rising from the ranks: the military school, where hard work did not succeed except when combined with push (except in regard to successes with the fair sex), and the Colonies. He had got himself sent to the Soudan, as an ambitious young subaltern, but at the end of a few months his liver had become inflamed. Weeks of fever, and a long martyrdom at the hospital at Brazzaville had followed, and he had finally been sent back to France with the advice never to set foot in Africa again. It had meant that his life was wrecked—that he must grow old in the dreary atmosphere of little garrison towns.
His tone grew still more bitter when he described the utter boredom, the flat distractions, the lack of any intellectual milieu, and beyond that the moral subjection, the physical over-work. The machine was worn out before its time, one became fit for nothing.
I could not help asking him:
"Why ... can't you clear out in time?"
"Why? Because when once you're in it, you stay there. Made a captain after fifteen years' service, I waited ten more for—can you guess what? A trumpery bit of rubbish, the military cross!"
He continued:
[Pg 413]
"When I retired, I was used up, done! The time for aspiring to something higher was past, or at all events for the realisation of it. I was made a tax-collector. That was all that was left for me!"
Yes, theirs was an odd fate, I thought, the peace-time soldiers, who come out and mature, acquire lace and age, and end by disappearing without having realised that for which they imagined they were born.
I said in order to console him:
"But since you're fighting to-day...."
He drew himself up:
"Exactly. To-day I'm fighting. I am taking risks, I obey and command; I am, in fact, of some use. At my age, if I had been in the reserve, they'd have left me at the dep?t!"
He tossed his head.
"It's true. Taking everything into account, I don't think I regret anything."
His eyes shone.
Of some use! Yes, indeed, this company commander, who had three hundred men in his charge, and played his part conscientiously, had used and not abused the power placed in his hands. It was the eternal swing of the pendulum. Greatness after Servitude!
He went on with his confidences.
"You'll laugh at me! The things I was keenest about were the studies which form the crown of our art—strategy and tactics. To handle masses of men, and face those many-sided problems—the offensive, the pursuit, the retreat.... I worked a lot on my own account. There are some questions on which I don't think ... any one could catch me out."
He was working himself up.
[Pg 414]
Fancy holding the fate of a section in your hands! Or being commander-in-chief on a day when the victory he has prepared comes to pass.
At this point a little irony crept into my thoughts and chilled my admiration for him. What was to become of all these ambitions of a company commander in............