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COPYRIGHT, 1917, BY 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 Published March, 1917 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
THE WAR, MADAME ... 
 
 DAMBOUILLET, Maintenon, Saint- 
 1 N Cyr! I fidget in my seat. In an 
 hour we shall be in Paris, that I never 
 expected to see again before the ^ar's 
 end; Paris, whose name gives me a 
 fever now that I am drawing near! 
 
 Sent back from the front five weeks 
 ago, and out of hospital for barely one, 
 I might have stayed on in barracks for 
 some time. The garrison town wasn't 
 such a bore after all. I had a friend 
 there, also books. My family came to 
 see me. And I made a bit of a face 
 when the captain told me yesterday: 
 
 "Vernier, you are leaving us to-mor- 
 row morning. The chief is making out 
 an order for your transportation/' 
 
 Instantly I thought of the names of 
 the other corporals whose turn it was to 
 [3] 
 
 769783 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 go. And I protested timidly. My big 
 captain, good fellow that he is, answered: 
 
 "As you like. But, you see, I'm 
 leaving myself three days from now. I 
 should have enjoyed seeing you out 
 there. Besides, they are asking me 
 for two men to convoy the parcel- 
 post. I thought it would mean a good 
 chance of your getting back to the 
 front and I was giving you Bossard 
 for company. If you managed well, 
 you could spend over half a day in 
 Paris and pick up Bossard at Bour- 
 get." 
 
 "But, captain, all my family are in 
 Sologne. So Paris, at this time. . . ." 
 
 And it is true that I had long ago 
 persuaded myself, thanks to saying it 
 over and over again, that Paris tempted 
 me not at all. To see again the places 
 of which I had such happy memories of 
 life, love, and ambition to see them 
 [4] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 silent, straitened, empty, sad; to find 
 my room locked and shuttered, all cam- 
 phor and rolled-up carpets no, I could 
 do without all that. 
 
 But the instant a possibility of re- 
 turning presented itself my pulses tin- 
 gled. And when my captain said, 
 "Have your way! You can wait for 
 the detachment," I very nearly yelled: 
 
 "No, no, no! Don't change any- 
 thing, captain! It's all right I'm 
 going!" 
 
 Crazy with joy, I raced up two flights 
 of stairs, crossed the bedroom in one 
 bound, dropped my outfit on the bed, 
 and woke up Jontin with the cry: 
 
 "Brute! Idiot! I'm going to Paris!" 
 
 So now, behind my open newspaper, 
 I tremble with impatience under the 
 outward calm which I have put on as a 
 mask, a mask that burns my face. Four- 
 hundred-and-twentieth day of the war, 
 [5] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 announces the provincial newspaper 
 which, to cheat my impatience, I study 
 so religiously in my corner of the day 
 coach. How tiresome these papers are ! 
 The war's development stretches over 
 too much space for any one event to 
 declare itself in its true meaning, and 
 over too much time for the progress of a 
 single day to have any perceptible value. 
 But we are running into Versailles. 
 
 Half an hour from now, and 
 
 The even-tempered autumn country- 
 side passes by my car- windows. The 
 telegraph wires waltz to the rude rhythm 
 of their poles. My railway-wagon stinks 
 of stale cigars, and I am happy as a 
 boy. A second-class compartment is, 
 for a corporal like me, a haven indeed. 
 I can cast on my neighbors a frowning 
 look, such as straightway paralyzes any 
 notion they may have had of engaging 
 me in talk; I can cross my legs, can read 
 [6] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 at ease, and can follow the ploughed 
 ground with the eyes of a man who 
 loves it well but keeps his distance. . . . 
 I am most irregularly provided with a 
 pass signed by my captain, good for 
 twenty-four hours' liberty, and I have 
 left to the good Bossard (who is not a 
 Parisian) the job of convoying all by 
 himself baggage-car Px50712 which he 
 will attend to perfectly well. He ought 
 to come back slowly with a load of 
 merchandise, and I will catch up with 
 him this evening. Like a blind zig- 
 zagging insect that the wind has been 
 blowing hither and yon for the last year, 
 I mean to spend the whole afternoon 
 wandering at will through certain streets, 
 passing before windows that are, in 
 memory, very beautiful to me; spots of 
 gold that, from the pavements of wide 
 modern avenues, one sees from under 
 plane-trees. I know well enough what 
 [7 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 awaits me. Many a curtain will be 
 drawn before the windows I have loved. 
 I shall find it a mournful Paris. But I 
 am going to enter the city as one enters 
 the room of a very beautiful woman who 
 has been very ill. 
 
 How gray Paris is ! This Gare Mont- 
 parnasse, a sombre background at part- 
 ing, is positively doleful when one 
 arrives. I have scarcely touched the 
 platform but I recall the staircase, of a 
 piece with the pavement, the exit into 
 a crowd, the triangular Place, and this 
 rue de Rennes, stiff and stupid, which 
 separates two charming quarters and 
 makes one think of neither. I make my 
 mind up to pass quickly and unseeing 
 through all this drabness. But a police- 
 man bars the way and points to a group 
 of permissionnaires who, like me, are 
 just off the train. 
 
 " Not so fast, soldier!" 
 [8] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 And we are all taken toward an 
 officer who will vise our passes. Is any- 
 thing going to happen to me? No, 
 everything turns out all right. I am 
 free. 
 
 Yet this freedom of mine is not lib- 
 erty. I was a soldier without thinking 
 about it. Now that for a few hours I 
 cease to be a soldier, I remember that 
 I am one. So I descend the stairs very 
 slowly, very cautiously. 
 
 And here are the remembered houses 
 and the dun sidewalks. Each of the 
 few cabs and taxis is disputed by half a 
 dozen clients, and I don't want to be 
 disappointed. . . . The subway, there, 
 reaches out to me the invitation of its 
 stony staircase. And I plunge into the 
 train which will take me, without let- 
 ting me see anything, out of a quarter 
 that bores me. 
 
 I wind my way through all these peo- 
 [9] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 pie without trouble or astonishment. 
 Often I said to myself at the front: 
 "When I return I shall be stupid." It 
 seems to me that I am quite the con- 
 trary more live, fresher, more supple, 
 with more stored-up energies. It costs 
 no effort to adjust myself; I am less be- 
 wildered in Paris, at the end of a full 
 year's absence, than I was one day, 
 after two and a half months of war, in 
 the Baths of Mourmelon. There, when 
 I had closed my bathroom door, the 
 sensation of being all alone suddenly 
 seemed to me so new and so delicious 
 that it went to my head. I stripped off 
 my clothes as one lays down a burden. 
 Stark naked, I took dance steps and, 
 when I caught my own reflection in the 
 glass, I said to myself, amazed: "It's 
 me!" 
 
 But in Paris I am not bewildered. 
 I took this subway yesterday. I knew 
 [ 10] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 this smell in advance, and these lights, 
 and these people worming their way in 
 and out, and the hateful clangor of the 
 side doors. I had forgotten nothing 
 nothing, that is, but the charm of the 
 women. Lord, but the women are 
 pretty! This one, and that one, and 
 that one three of them already in 
 this one car! I had forgotten that so 
 much art could be put into a cloak, so 
 much wit into a hat. 
 
 On the day of mobilization I was 
 walking with a friend. We came face 
 to face with a decidedly pretty woman. 
 In the look that she threw our way, 
 there was the timid offer and the 
 resigned sorrow of those whose for- 
 tunes crumble to dust, the sense of a 
 disgrace which every instant brings 
 nearer. And it contrasted painfully, 
 this pitiful look of a cast-off animal, 
 with the showy, provocative luxury of 
 [11] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 her dress. I turned toward my friend 
 and read my own thought in his eyes: 
 " Women have lost a lot of their im- 
 portance!" I return and they have 
 regained that importance of theirs. 
 
 Near me a talkative old gentleman is 
 speaking: 
 
 "Now that Paris is dark at night, 
 you must go to see Notre-Dame by 
 moonlight. You will see it as you have 
 never seen it before and as you will 
 never see it again." 
 
 Fine people, fine hearts, fine souls! 
 Dear city where the chance passer-by 
 thinks thoughts like these ! 
 
 All the same, this subway bores me. 
 I am wasting minutes that are too 
 precious. Besides, too many people are 
 staring. It makes me self-conscious; 
 my helmet grows heavy and heavier. 
 But I escape, and emerge above ground 
 near old Saint-Germain-des-Pres. 
 [ 12] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 I have this afternoon to myself, and 
 even a bit of the evening. Shall I plan 
 how to spend that time? All my 
 family are in Sologne, and I certainly 
 am not going to inhale the camphor and 
 dust of their city apartment. As to my 
 own apartment, I decided long ago to 
 stay away from it at whatever effort. 
 Better avoid sentimentalizing; besides, 
 would it be so sentimental? Might 
 it not be sickening, rather? When I 
 think of that sophisticated nest of mine 
 it seems to me I feel a vague uneasiness. 
 I must have changed in a year's time, 
 for the thought of finding again, in my 
 furniture and on my walls, the soul that 
 I once took such pains to express there, 
 bores me beyond all words. Since then 
 I have exteriorized a Maurice Vernier 
 much wiser than the old one, and know- 
 ing in other matters than the choice of 
 hangings and the placing of knick- 
 [ 13] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 knacks. Furthermore, I can see all my 
 possessions again with a far-away def- 
 initeness, as if I were looking at them 
 through the small end of my opera- 
 glasses. Distance has diminished every- 
 thing without eliminating the slightest 
 detail. I see my mottled cushions and 
 that furniture of sickly ebony that I 
 was once so proud of. No, I really 
 haven't any wish to parade all by my- 
 self through those compartments whence 
 I made last year so ridiculous a depart- 
 ure, with my hair clipped close, my feet 
 shod in enormous laced boots, immense 
 goggles straddling my nose, and a gold- 
 rimmed eye-glass slipped in my pocket 
 "for town wear." 
 
 As for the men I know, the ones who 
 are still alive are scattered. And it 
 seems to me that if I go and look up 
 my other friends they will only be 
 farther away than ever. Never mind, I 
 [ 14] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 will just sample the city at random. If 
 chance makes me pass before a friendly 
 door, well, I can decide the next step 
 then. I don't want to arrange any- 
 thing in advance. If obscure motives 
 direct the steps I take, may they remain 
 unknown to me and may I, up to the 
 last possible minute, rest in ignorance of 
 my preferences. 
 
 All except my first hour. I know per- 
 fectly well that I want to lunch, and to 
 lunch as well as I can in some restau- 
 rant that I like. I shall find it some- 
 where near the Madeleine, and I'm 
 going there on foot. Let me be off. 
 
 Paris, that I had been told was so 
 lugubrious, is scarcely sad even. Above 
 all, it is charming. Cleared of its ex- 
 cessive turbulence of vehicles, it adds 
 to the splendor of being Paris a kind of 
 provincial gravity which becomes it 
 better than it does the Province. Every- 
 [ 15 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 thing here is calm, and without sound. 
 Paris has no longer its air of giving 
 strangers an exhausting fete, but rather 
 that of collecting itself, of refashioning 
 its own interior life. The rue Mazarine, 
 quite empty and glistening between 
 long black walls, is dominated, at one 
 end, by the dome of the Institute; it 
 has the air of some street in Venice. 
 The Seine, which I love none too well 
 because it too perfectly dramatizes the 
 Paris of my first youth idleness, fine 
 arts, Latin Quarter the Seine, thread- 
 bare as the classics, gives me an unan- 
 ticipated thrill. Good morning, old pal ! 
 Here I am back. ... I halt in the 
 courtyard of the Louvre. Heavens, 
 there's no mistake about it being good 
 to look at ! What order, what concert, 
 what rhythm! I am flooded in the 
 harmony of it. I bathe myself, piously, 
 in this silent music. Comical, this be- 
 [ 16] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 ginning all over thoughts which, through 
 my new eyes, awaken to new life. Am 
 I going to discover the old Paris? I 
 break away and reach the street again. 
 Here it is. But there is no disenchant- 
 ment. These passers-by must have been 
 picked for me. All these men have the 
 air of thinking. All these women have 
 eyes that one loves. 
 
 How perfect they are ! Debonair and 
 distant in all their furs, they make 
 you forget the flesh of them. Women 
 you meet elsewhere shame you when 
 they agitate your senses. But the 
 sensuality these women excite is purely 
 cerebral; a subtle play of spiritualized 
 desires. A kind of aristocracy subtil- 
 izes their sex, adds to the mystery of it. 
 One is a sixteen-year-old in their com- 
 pany. Little princesses, I adore you. 
 
 And now I blush for my trench 
 clothes that I have been airing so 
 [17] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 boldly; blush for the living war-story 
 that I am. In the first days of Louis 
 XIV's immortal campaign of Alsace 
 (as the histories call it) Madame de 
 Sevigne said: 
 
 "Nowadays it is the latest fashion to 
 be wounded." 
 
 But this time it has been the style for 
 over a year and my war-cross has missed 
 the cue. I must seem to be something 
 of a farmer, so far behind the times ! 
 
 The well-known restaurant that I 
 enter will be closed to me at two 
 o'clock. I am informed of this in the 
 tone courtiers use when they tell the 
 sons of kings not to stick their fingers 
 in their noses. I shall have to lunch in 
 something of a hurry. People are 
 looking my way. I busy myself in 
 taking off my helmet with a natural 
 air, and give the lunch-card such at- 
 tention as seems to detach itself grudg- 
 [ 18] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 ingly from far loftier preoccupations, 
 while handing the helmet to a 'bus boy. 
 And yet I supposed I had become, once 
 more, an unaffected sort of person ! 
 
 I dare to risk a glance about me when 
 I have laid on my plate the empty shell 
 of my twelfth oyster. Bless me! the 
 people all about are lunching two by 
 two without worrying one bit about me 
 and my oysters. To the assurance 
 which I regain, there would be joined a 
 shade of bitterness if plenty of officers, 
 of a most fetching elegance, were not 
 sitting at the other tables. A young 
 colonel, near by, wears a marvel of a 
 uniform. In the little town I left only 
 this morning such an encounter would 
 have phased me no end. Not here; be- 
 tween this swagger colonel and the 
 bumpish corporal that I am, all distance 
 is obliterated. There reigns, in this 
 place of refuge, a delicious equality. 
 [ 19 1 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 Our eyes meet. Blithely I give him the 
 military salute, and he returns it with 
 a grace in which I read a knowing re- 
 spect for the number of my regiment 
 and my humble woollen stripes. I 
 might even ask him for a light had I 
 need of one. 
 
 They serve me rapidly and well, and 
 with excellent dishes. I enjoy the food, 
 but its quality nowise astonishes me. 
 Maybe my notion of lunching alone 
 like this is stupid, but I'm satisfied 
 with the way it's working out, and have 
 earned this happy hour. Droll that I 
 should be here, I who to-morrow will be 
 out there again. . . . And you might 
 bring me a Henry Clay, waiter ! 
 
 I pass out of the restaurant quite at 
 peace with all the world, and nothing to 
 ask for but some one to talk to. The 
 air of the street is mild, and soft-tired 
 vehicles polish the asphalt. This is the 
 [20] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 Paris that I knew when, from my bed, 
 and still drowsy, I listened to the di- 
 minuendo of rhythmic hoof-beats, or 
 the purring flight of a smooth-running 
 auto. The rarefied sounds and cotton- 
 wool air of this afternoon give one a 
 sense of morning languor. Ah! those 
 windows ! 
 
 Have I not disobeyed myself? Do I 
 truly owe it to chance that I am here? 
 The four windows I am looking at, 
 those windows on the third floor of the 
 modern apartment-house in this rue 
 Tronchet that I like because it is so 
 convenient and yet so retired, were once 
 the centre of all my thoughts and in- 
 terests. I pause, head high, and mur- 
 mur to myself: "My youth !" 
 
 My youth ! On reflection, this theme 
 
 does not deserve the 'cello concert I 
 
 was on the point of playing on the 
 
 strings of memory. I seem to hear 
 
 [21 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 Alfred snort these two words hand on 
 heart to mock at my romanticism. 
 
 Alfred, working man of Paris, is my 
 sole confidant at the front. He has 
 taught me how to be simple, and to 
 distrust words that are vague. These 
 long months of war have, thanks to 
 him, stocked me with a brand-new 
 mind where my thoughts play at ease, 
 free of all rubber-stamps and ready- 
 made phrases. Alas ! in this new brain 
 of mine Truth makes a first appear- 
 ance. 
 
 Alfred has a great deal of shame in 
 respect to his sentiments but no shame 
 at all of the flesh. Thus he is the an- 
 tithesis to my old friends. If, to tell 
 him the story of which these windows 
 were once witnesses, I imitated this 
 delicacy of his, I should have nothing 
 left to tell him. . . . Alfred, you see 
 me; you are my judge. You are right. 
 [22] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 This adventure was the saddest you can 
 imagine. I played a poor-spirited part 
 in it, and one that lacked realism. And 
 yet I want to go up-stairs, Alfred, to 
 see the young woman who lives there. 
 I want just for one moment to enjoy 
 the cosey warmth of a fine apartment, 
 and this one is so charming! You can 
 hardly realize how much I used to care 
 for these things. Come, I'm going 
 up. Perhaps she won't be home any- 
 way. 
 
 She is at home. After going through 
 all the needful motions, motions into 
 which my body still falls mechanically, 
 after the buttons have been pushed and 
 the doors opened, here I am in her 
 presence. She is wearing a divine gown, 
 circumspect and audacious all at once; 
 a gown in which her taste and the mode 
 are allies. 
 
 "You seem to have put on weight/' 
 [23] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 she says. " And you have the war-cross. 
 That's splendid, you know. Cest tres 
 chic, mon ami!" 
 
 There used to be some jolly canvases 
 of Vuillard's and some fine spring pieces 
 by Boggio in this room. In their place, 
 in each of the empty frames, I spy only 
 the picture-wire. 
 
 "But, Fabienne," I say in my sur- 
 prise, "how long have you been col- 
 lecting picture-frames?" 
 
 "My dear, all my pictures are at 
 Bordeaux. I followed the government 
 there during the exile like everybody 
 else and I had the pictures rolled, 
 with the paint side out, according to 
 the advice they gave me, and took them 
 with me in the motor. When we all 
 returned things still looked a bit thick, 
 so I took the precaution of leaving the 
 pictures in storage at Bordeaux." 
 
 "A needless precaution, Fabienne. 
 [24] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 But what next? It's positively cold in 
 your apartment I" 
 
 " Don't speak of it, my friend. The 
 heater is broken, and it's a German one. 
 I've had to send for a new fixture all 
 the way to Berlin." 
 
 I start as I echo: 
 
 "To Berlin, Fabienne!" 
 
 "Why, yes, my dear," says she; "that 
 is, by way of Basle. But, of course, all 
 this takes centuries." 
 
 And she adds as our conversation 
 dies away: 
 
 "You know, my friend, that I am 
 iir, very ill!" 
 
 Under the thin skin her blood races 
 pure and facile. There is no mistake 
 about the youthfulness of that flesh; 
 the clearness of those eyes, the supple 
 and perfect play of the body. And yet 
 my eyes very politely cloud at her words. 
 
 "Yes," she pursues, "I have cerebral 
 [25 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 anaemia. It is this war, and changed 
 habits my car requisitioned and all! 
 I, who never took a step!" 
 
 I murmur, without irony, the name of 
 a specialist. 
 
 "My dear, I've consulted every one 
 who is still here. Nowadays, if you stop 
 to think, I've plenty of time. It seems 
 that it is a really serious case. But they 
 can't take care of me till after the war. 
 They all agree on that." 
 
 By a very deep inclination of my head 
 I try to denote compassion for so many 
 sufferings. And now she speaks the 
 requisite words of interest as to my 
 thirteen months of service, and so pre- 
 cisely the right ones tfiat they are most 
 convincing. For every one of my stories 
 she has a parallel, and every experience 
 I narrate to her suggests a new resem- 
 blance with some one of her friends, so 
 that my pride grows weary. . . . 
 [26 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 "But, Fabienne, tell me about your- 
 self, talk to me about Paris. What are 
 you all doing?" 
 
 "Well," she sighs, "it is stupid here, 
 my poor friend, as you probably re- 
 alize. The newspapers are frightful. 
 One reads about deaths day after day. 
 They are sending the actors, even, to 
 the trenches! They say young Vernet 
 got killed very smartly indeed. Of 
 course, you know that Durieux is all 
 shot to pieces? He told me all about 
 his sufferings; that man is a martyr! 
 These things don't exactly cheer one 
 up, you know. And, of course, you can't 
 go out. at all. The most that ever hap- 
 pens is a dinner sometimes, just between 
 friends, in morning frocks. For that 
 matter, nobody could dress up if they 
 wanted to. The cutters have been 
 mobilized. You ought to see the waist 
 and hips they give me nowadays! At 
 [27] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 the theatre, it is revivals old stuff that 
 one can't get much excited about. And 
 it is so dark at night ! The chauffeurs 
 run into the curb. You hear of nothing 
 but accidents. It's safer to wait till 
 the war is over. All the same, I went to 
 hear Chenal. She is still singing the 
 Marseillaise, and it's a furor! You 
 must confess that she's perfect in it. 
 I'd like to hear Delna try it. Chenal 
 puts all the poetry into it; Delna would 
 be more brutal, more realistic possibly 
 truer. If you're interested, I'll write to 
 tell you which one I prefer, after I've 
 heard Delna. Then there are the 
 knitting-teas. Generally they are from 
 five to seven, and we all work for you 
 soldiers. And, of course, we have our 
 godsons. Naturally, I'm godmother 
 for some one. I'd like to have had an 
 airman, but all the women want air- 
 men. It was a telephone-operator that 
 [28] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 I drew, as a matter of fact. But when 
 will it all be over? Have you seen my 
 picture in my nurse's uniform ?" 
 
 While she talks on I am thinking: 
 "Little one, I should like to answer you 
 in the language of Alfred. Is it con- 
 ceivable that, transposed by your poor 
 little brain, the huge upheaval which is 
 shaking this old world of ours can be 
 reduced to such silly twaddle? Natu- 
 rally you are not an intellectual, but you 
 aren't a silly, either, and you understand 
 whatever is explained to you. ... I 
 have even succeeded in making you 
 wince a bit, in times gone by, by 
 means of words that were rather subtle. 
 You are a woman, and so, I will concede, 
 the things that are going on are beyond 
 your understanding. But your remain- 
 ing exactly the same through it all 
 really, it turns my stomach! I have 
 just come back to Paris. I didn't want 
 [29] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 to see all its limitations the very first 
 minute. And you've brought them all to 
 life ! Apparently you don't realize what 
 a hell there is an hour's motor ride from 
 here, in places we've visited together, 
 and where I've just come from, and am 
 going to return to. Men, my dear, are 
 made like this: they die, but they want 
 your admiration; they suffer, but want 
 your pity. It is our solace, out there, to 
 think that behind us Paris holds its 
 breath, and waits. . . . Moreover, we 
 often tell ourselves that if we have not 
 yet been loved as well as we could have 
 wished, it is because we haven't, so far 
 anyway, done anything extraordinary. 
 But it seems to us as if now, raised so 
 high above what we used to be, we must 
 be surprising you a little ! Oh, we aren't 
 proud out there; there are too many 
 of us doing the same things for that! 
 All the same, I've said to myself three or 
 [30] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . > . 
 
 four times already: 'What if my girls 
 could see me now!' Ah, little one, as- 
 sisting at this great drama as if it were 
 being played for you in some foreign 
 tongue, and conscious only of the length 
 and boredom of it, I am tempted to 
 translate it for you ! I have in my head 
 some pictures of it that would make you 
 faint, some recollections that would 
 craze you ! I have seen the torn bodies 
 of my comrades smoking in the air at 
 my side. I have charged, death in my 
 mouth, with this one thought: Some- 
 thing has got to break, either them 
 or me, their mass or my flesh! On, 
 then! In God's name, blast their 
 eyes and at them! Stick their bellies 
 and smash their jaws! I'd like to tell 
 you about all that in your little sa- 
 lon." 
 
 Instead, I rise and smile foolishly: 
 "Good-by, Fabienne, a bientot." 
 [31 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 She, too, rises, politely protesting: 
 
 "What? So soon? Oh you Ye din- 
 ing out." 
 
 I allege the great number of errands 
 I have to attend to. 
 
 "Well, then, you'll come back," she 
 insists. "You told me you'd come to 
 Paris all by yourself." 
 
 This time I say "No" pointblank. 
 She looks at me a little surprised and, 
 pouting, adds: 
 
 "Oh, well! . . . But, do you know, 
 you haven't changed much. ..." 
 
 And here I am in the street again, 
 where pass, in the long, undyed cloaks 
 that are the fashion nowadays, Fabiennes 
 whom I do not know. What are they 
 thinking about? Have they husbands 
 or brothers at the front? Are they on 
 the way to meet somebody? No one 
 can say, now or ever; for theirs are the 
 [32] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 grave and wheedling eyes of the happy 
 wife or fashionable mistress, and that 
 busy air of theirs makes them twice as 
 mysterious as they would be without 
 it. Have they men to love them ' 
 and what men? The street is full of 
 men! Why are there so many? This 
 one who is walking at my side is of my 
 age, but he is not a soldier. His civilian 
 clothes ought to make him itch, all the 
 same ! I want him to see my war-cross. 
 And the fellow by the kiosk, who spends 
 so much time reading the theatre-bills I 
 For that matter, all the theatres are 
 open. They are playing reviews. And 
 people go. What frame of mind reigns 
 here, then? Why were there so many 
 people at my restaurant just now? 
 They were gay at some of the tables. 
 Some of them even laughed very nois- 
 ily. What are all these people thinking 
 about ? Apparen tly they have adj usted 
 [33] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 themselves to the war; they have made 
 a habit of it. ... 
 
 In the little town I have come from 
 the comic films drew enormous crowds 
 to the moving pictures. And in the 
 evening, at the Alcazar, we applauded 
 singers made up like women, their 
 lapels ornamented with camellias as 
 big as a cabbage. They sang patriotic 
 ballads and camp-songs. And the ci- 
 vilians one saw here and there were ex- 
 tremely quiet. I laughed at all these 
 jumping-jacks, even at the fat man all 
 in azure who, lately nominated as an 
 officer of the quartermaster's staff with 
 some kind of job in connection with 
 uniforming the troops, told me very in- 
 genuously: "Now I can ask to go to the 
 front without the least risk, and that 
 will be very useful to me. I publish a 
 Republican newspaper. We mustn't 
 forget the elections. And if I drew a 
 [34] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 little shell-wound in the buttocks, where 
 it wouldn't disfigure me, why, that would 
 positively give me a halo." Yes, out 
 there, poor souls like that made me 
 laugh with all my heart. But that 
 folks should be unchanged here at Paris, 
 that breaks my heart ! I don't want it 
 to be like this. It was Paris I thought 
 of when my weariness was too much or 
 when death was too close. Paris! the 
 word electrified me. And Paris, the 
 while, had kept her harlot's heart! 
 Perhaps we are only ridiculous after all, 
 mud-caked, lousy, bearded, beguiled, 
 with the spectre of this second winter 
 campaign before us, the campaign we 
 were sure, last year, we were incapable 
 of repeating "You can't stand this 
 racket twice" and for which we are 
 setting out again, docile, resigned, can- 
 did. Who is fooling us? Whose dupes 
 are we? Ah, I feel myself a coward.. 
 [35] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 It is cold. The Germans are stronger 
 than we. I ought to have died at Vir- 
 ton. 
 
 Two young women in the deep mourn- 
 ing of widows are face to face with me. 
 They are talking very loud and their 
 dull black shows off their faces of 
 enamel and milk. I see, under their 
 floating veils, the powdered cheeks, the 
 made-up eyelashes, the too vivid red of 
 their lips. . . . 
 
 We are a weary nation that was cap- 
 able, when put to the test, of buoyancy, 
 of^a burst of vigor. But after twelve 
 months of it we fall back again. We 
 can't hold the pose for a year. People 
 have become again what they were be- 
 fore. And many of them grow fat on 
 this war! Truly, our age is without 
 beauty. The breath of the passing 
 tempest has but revealed the real mo- 
 tives which move us, shown up the in- 
 [36] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 anity of marriage and of love, and made 
 both life and death uglier than before. 
 
 And I, I am going back to it. And 
 no end in sight ! Are the English doing 
 their part? ... I am afraid. Too 
 often have I passed untouched through 
 the hail of bullets, too many times the 
 marmites have killed my neighbors only. 
 I am Fate's debtor, and Fate will not 
 forget me always. I know it, I feel it: 
 I shall be killed ! And the crowds will 
 go on walking past these shop-windows. 
 
 Three o'clock. I still have five hours 
 to myself. What am I going to do with 
 them? I can't stay by myself all those 
 five hours ! 
 
 I move slowly (for I am not sur that 
 I like the idea) toward the house in 
 the rue de Rome where my old friend 
 Madame Baumer lives. This part of 
 town disgusts me. How can any one 
 settle down close to a railroad-station? 
 [37] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 Who wants to live in a vestibule? 
 These up-hill streets are tiresome ! 
 
 Madame must be at home, the con- 
 cierge (who recognizes me) agrees. Miss 
 Suzanne is at her hospital, that she 
 visits every day. There is good news 
 from Mr. Jean. I go up. 
 
 Madame Baumer is fond of me as 
 her son's oldest friend and the friend 
 who talks about him the best. She 
 adores Jean, but her lively sensibility 
 permits her to read too clearly in him 
 certain manly reactions which shock 
 her feminine nature. Hence occasional 
 spats. I, who am not her child, conceal 
 from her better than he the things it is 
 well for a man to hide, and, very close 
 to her and very close to him, I am an 
 easy bond of union. And we are great 
 friends. Come! we will talk about 
 Jean. 
 
 The door-bell emits so resonant a 
 [38 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME ... 
 
 ring in this close air that it vibrates 
 unendingly, as if the sound of it couldn't 
 escape. ... I wait. They always did 
 have a horrid habit of being slow to 
 answer the bell here. Will they keep 
 me waiting in the parlor, too? The 
 silence sings around me. At last Ma- 
 dame Baumer enters. She has aged. 
 
 "Good day, madame." 
 
 Naturally I, who have come to see 
 her, who have been waiting for her at 
 this door, have spoken this good day 
 quite as a matter of course. She, on 
 the other hand, shows in her reply how 
 upset she is. 
 
 "You!" she exclaims. "It is you, 
 Maurice!" 
 
 She stretches out two nervous hands. 
 And here we are, face to face, both si- 
 lent, till we can get into tune with one 
 another: she, disconcerted by my calm 
 and surprised that, after such great 
 [39] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 happenings, I am here, just the same as 
 ever; I, embarrassed at having put her 
 *out. And, as we know very well that 
 we are going first of all to say to one an- 
 other the banal phrases necessary for 
 picking up the thread of things, we 
 wilfully prolong this silence which is 
 friendly to the emotion our words will 
 destroy. Finally, smiling, I murmur: 
 
 "Yes, here we are again. How are 
 you?" 
 
 "How do you come to be here?" 
 she inquires. "Is it for long? Where 
 do you come from?" 
 
 On my part I, too, recite the indis- 
 pensable string of questions: 
 
 "How is Jean? What is Suzanne 
 doing?" 
 
 And now we who were mute talk both 
 
 at once of a thousand subjects that 
 
 crowd one another, trip one another up, 
 
 and submerge us. All that we had to 
 
 [40] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 tell one another that was so important, 
 so grave, is now between the two of us 
 like a parcel of tangled silk threads 
 where all shades are jumbled together, 
 the precious ones with the rest, till it 
 is nothing but a disorder that is many- 
 colored yet flat, with no one color stand- 
 ing out above the rest. Stories that we 
 have never told any one precipitate 
 themselves toward the life of speech 
 with an ardor so fiery that they knock 
 each other down, dent each other, and 
 are totally lost, and often they receive, 
 from these first shocks, scars that eter- 
 nally disfigure them. 
 
 This tale of my long campaign, that I 
 have just spoiled so in the telling, can 
 I ever make it live again in its boyish 
 vigor, its awkward and unsophisticated 
 sincerity ? How many bungled verities ! 
 I have nothing more to say now, and I 
 shuffle my heavy, hobnailed boots on 
 [41 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 the carpet, in something like bad hu- 
 mor. 
 
 I accept the suggestion of tea that 
 Madame Baumer lightly offers, just as if 
 afternoon tea were still a natural act for 
 me. I haven't any appetite or desire for 
 it, but am happy to have the diversion. 
 The chambermaid, whose name comes 
 back to me the minute I see her, rolls 
 in the tea-wagon, already spread. I 
 salute there, as old friends, the toasted 
 biscuit of yore, a brand to which this 
 household has been faithful for a life- 
 time. I recognize also this chocolate- 
 pot that, you remember, I used to think 
 was ugly, madame, and that I still do 
 think ugly. How like old times every- 
 thing is! Present and past are united 
 as easily by this terrible year as our 
 hands above this plate. 
 
 My attention, lost for an instant in 
 the motionless folds of the big por- 
 [42] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 tieres, returns to Madame Baumer. 
 Her eyes shine, as if with moisture. 
 What is wrong ? She turns her head 
 and opens her eyelids wide to give two 
 pearls of water which well from the 
 shelter of her eyelashes a chance to be 
 absorbed again. But the pearls are 
 inflating very fast and, already too 
 heavy, start rolling down those pale, 
 worn cheeks. And Madame Baumer is 
 looking at me. 
 
 "You see, Maurice," says she, "we 
 have our afternoon tea. It is served 
 like this every day. I live in cotton- 
 wool while you all are out there ! What 
 would I have thought, a year ago, if 
 some one had told me that I could eat, 
 sleep, gossip, and look to a thousand 
 domestic trifles, letting myself be dis- 
 tracted and forget, while Jean was in 
 danger, and while I knew it ! We talk, 
 and eat cake, and perhaps at this very 
 [ 43 1 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 instant. . . . And I can live like this ! 
 Live! Oh, sometimes it is too much for 
 me! I should like " 
 
 "Madame!" 
 
 Her tears are flowing faster. And it 
 makes me positively happy to feel for 
 the first time that at Paris, too, there 
 is a war. 
 
 She has straightened her thin shoul- 
 ders and commences again: 
 
 "Yes, it is too much for me some- 
 times, and drives me frantic. If you 
 knew how frightful it is, all this routine 
 of a house that runs on just exactly the 
 same! I have nightmares occasionally. 
 I see cavalry charging. . . . And when 
 I awake there is the bath waiting, and 
 breakfast, and my dresses, and the 
 letters that people write who are tired 
 of hoping and calculating and predict- 
 ing and have gone back to talking about 
 themselves. Where is Jean all this 
 [44] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 time? What is he doing? And you 
 who are here to-day, where will you be 
 to-morrow, Maurice?" 
 
 I cover up a happy smile. 
 
 "Madame, these are romantics. The 
 cakes, the hot tea and the horrors of 
 war! Look at me. What would Jean 
 think if he could hear you? Why, 
 Lieutenant Baumer, madame, is at this 
 moment enjoying his tea, too, in his 
 Canha, and very comfortably, and drink- 
 ing two cups to our one. As he has a 
 first-class pastry-cook as orderly, his 
 cakes are first cousins to yours. That 
 for your antithesis! Come! Come! 
 Trust him a little ! Listen, I'm going to 
 explain it all to you. I shut my eyes. 
 I can see him. To-day, precisely, he is 
 in the first-line trenches. Don't put on 
 that tragic look ! He is sitting, without 
 a care, in the shelter that he has as 
 section chief, under his roof of sticks 
 [45] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 and dirt. He is dressed like a private 
 in a moon-blue, hooded cloak and that 
 admirable modern helmet which comes 
 down to us, all the same, from such 
 far-away traditions that light Bur- 
 gundian casque, so strong and quasi- 
 religious, which gives our men out there, 
 when there is a group of them, the look 
 of a celestial army; strange head-gear, 
 I agree, for the head of a puny Pa- 
 risian, but splendid when our soldiers 
 wear it, and marvellously symbolic of 
 our rustic but gentle France with her 
 peasant strength. It is by this casque 
 and this blue that they will enter into 
 their legend. . . . Your Jean looks 
 well in his helmet and horizon-blue. 
 To a button of his cloak he has hung his 
 gas-mask, in a cloth bag. From time 
 to time he draws his revolver and amuses 
 himself by aiming at a rat. On the 
 table his orderly, Foil, has set the tea 
 [46] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 and butter biscuit. He munches one, 
 while, lying on the bed with its iron 
 springs and straw mattress, Tissot, his 
 inseparable friend that he has no doubt 
 told you about twenty years old, and 
 an under-lieutenant because he is a Supe- 
 rior Normal School man reads to him 
 from one of the books of poetry his can- 
 teen is always full of. Outside, natu- 
 rally, a cyclone of 77-centimetre shells. 
 . . . But why do you object to that 
 cyclone of 77's? Jean is there ex- 
 pressly to observe the effects of them. 
 Two French monoplanes escape from a 
 swarm of little white puffs. . . . Elvire, 
 aux yeux baisses, reads Tissot in his girl 
 voice, and Jean, who adores these verses 
 and listens to them rapturously, says 
 softly, 'Tissot, how you do, cackle!' just 
 to hide his pleasure. 
 
 "No doubt I shall see Jean. His 
 regiment and mine are in the same bri- 
 [47] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 gade, and, though there have been some 
 famous shifts in our sector these days, I 
 count on not being far from him. Do 
 you want me to tell him that you cried? 
 Come, don't listen to that imagination 
 of yours. It's a chatterbox, and it fibs 
 to you. Jean is in high spirits when he 
 is at the front fighting always gives 
 one high spirits; in the first place, it is 
 action, and then there are a lot of you. 
 Why, it is in the toughest moments 
 that you feel the craziest gayety I When 
 the campaign had just begun I was 
 awfully scared. I can still see myself 
 lying in a beet-field, in the sun, wearing 
 the old red breeches, that seem now to 
 date from another age. Little stifled 
 rustlings, that sounded as if they might 
 be field-mice and things hurrying down 
 into their holes in the ground, punctured 
 the ground at my side, behind me, far, 
 near, everywhere. And the sweat 
 [48] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 streamed from my body, from my face, 
 from my eyes watering the whole 
 field. I was waiting for the bullet 
 that would come and find lodgment in 
 the ground, after passing through my 
 skull or my back. My imagination 
 traced in advance the lightning route of 
 its passage. Oh, I was very badly in- 
 formed. I lacked practice so! But 
 somebody was creeping up to me close. 
 I recognized the tall lieutenant whom I 
 liked because he was so graceful. He 
 called me, at the top of his lungs on ac- 
 count of the hubbub: 'Vernier!' He 
 actually knew my name! 'My lieuten- 
 ant?' 'Here, my wallet it's in the left 
 pocket of my jacket/ 'Yes, my lieu- 
 tenant. And mine is in the left pocket 
 of my capote/ 'I see. Look sharp; 
 we're going to make a push/ The soil 
 was chipped off by a shell at our very 
 sides. 'Fiji . . . piji . . . piji. . . /' 
 [49] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 chuckled the swarming rifle-balls. But 
 too late; the lieutenant and I had come 
 to an understanding ! Ah, but wasn't I 
 happy all of a sudden ! Happy doesn't 
 half express it. All my blood was danc- 
 ing a fandango of joy through my veins. 
 You see, I had found a pal, a fellow of 
 my own sort, who would understand. 
 What did anything else matter? The 
 sun blinded our eyes with its midsummer 
 glare. Puffs of blackish smoke burst 
 without darkening an azure sky like 
 the skies in fairyland. On the left, a 
 chateau was burning on its hilltop 
 burning methodically, like the good 
 castle it was. The rabbits were beating 
 it from the invasion of their fields. 
 The row the batteries made was so 
 tremendous that it became really ridicu- 
 lous. What in the name of common 
 sense would it have mattered if Vernier, 
 Maurice, had died there? 
 [50] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 11 And I leaped forward. Whilst I 
 was running, drunk with faintness and 
 delight, I began singing at the top of my 
 voice that motif of 'Scheherazade' that 
 has run in our heads ever since the last 
 Ballet Russe, exaggerating still further 
 the furious, wild air of it: 'Si do re, do re! 
 fa mi re, do re! . . . do si do re do.' At 
 the climax of it, when there came a 
 shell, sliding on I know not what aerial 
 rails, and wrecked the atmosphere above 
 me, I paused a few seconds, nose deep in 
 my beet-roots, shrivelled myself up as 
 small as possible under my knapsack, 
 and waited for the explosion to bring 
 death or relief. Then, when it was all 
 over, I picked up my tune again, tipsy 
 with joy : l La sol la do si, la si sol! ' I was 
 never in such high spirits in all my life." 
 
 Madame Baumer shook her head. 
 
 "You are a kind friend. But I knew 
 that already. One only has to read your 
 [51 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 letters to know you all, children that 
 you are. No doubt, your hearts are the 
 salt of the earth, and you live gayly in 
 the face of death, without a care. But 
 death is there all the same, and at the 
 very minute I am talking to you is 
 robbing me of my child, perhaps. Oh, 
 if you only knew the anguish I suffer a 
 hundred times a day, and how it wakes 
 me up at night, stone-cold; if you knew 
 how it makes me shiver when the bell 
 rings, or the postman comes, and I 
 think: 'This time it will be bad news!' 
 For that's the way it would happen; 
 some one would ring the door-bell and 
 Lucie would come with a letter, or to 
 say there was a caller " 
 
 But I break in upon her voice, half- 
 drowned in tears: 
 
 "What a neurasthenic you're becom- 
 ing! We don't think so much as all 
 that, we others ! Action purges us of all 
 [52 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 those toxic poisons that come from re- 
 flecting too much. Why do you believe 
 in the probability of an outcome that 
 no one of us believes is possible even? 
 We, why, we are too proud to think 
 that we can be wounded. You would 
 do well to cultivate this same pride, 
 that gets the better of bad luck. Take 
 my word for it, we take all the proper 
 precautions, but it is from superstition 
 and an instinctive need of obeying the 
 rules of the game rather than from fear 
 of any accident. When some comrade 
 falls near me I know, I am positively 
 certain, that if I had been in his place 
 no such thing would have happened 
 tome. Don't you see? Each of us has 
 absolute confidence in the powers which 
 will that he shall live. The big shells 
 are meant for other folks. One says to 
 himself: 'I ! I whom they are expect- 
 ing at home; I who am here with this 
 [53 1 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 hand of mine; I who march in the mid- 
 dle of so many men without ever getting 
 myself mixed up with them; I whose 
 coat just like the other coats remains 
 all the same my coat; I who feel every- 
 thing, who see everything, who, when 
 we are hungry, am hungrier than the 
 rest, and when we are thirsty, am thirs- 
 tier; I who suffer more and enjoy 
 things more; I who have only to shut 
 my eyes to stop the life of the whole 
 world; I who am perhaps the cause of 
 this war (for isn't it to punish me for 
 having shirked my second year's mili- 
 tary service that Fate has wanted to 
 make me a soldier again?); I, finally, 
 Vernier, I, Maurice, raison d'etre of 
 the universe how could it come about 
 that / should die? If the others are 
 killed, that is to even things up with 
 my good luck ! And that is what every 
 one of us thinks. It is so strong, one's 
 [54] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 sureness of surviving, that you can't 
 help jollying him a little, this Death 
 who won't get you, who is afraid of you. 
 Death may strike close beside you and 
 spatter you with blood, but you feel 
 yourself far from Death, so far that 
 you haven't even any sense of physical 
 repulsion. Shall I confess it? This 
 Death who has touched so many com- 
 rades near me, so many friends some- 
 times I feel an intellectual curiosity 
 about him, as if it were some one whom 
 I shall never meet, even, unless I stir my 
 stumps. Is that a little perverse? 
 Standing on the plain some day, if a 
 bullet grazed me, it wouldn't be, I'm 
 certain, the instinct of safety that would 
 make me drop, but a sort of fatherly 
 appeal from my reason, something like 
 this: 'Come, now, you big fool; get off 
 of that; you're going to finish by getting 
 yourself killed!' 
 
 [55] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 " Since we cannot die, why on earth 
 do our mothers persist in being afraid 
 of our dying ?" 
 
 "Oh, Maurice/' says Madame Bau- 
 mer, " what fine speeches you make, and 
 how you do get wound up!" 
 
 "But if we do get hit, all the 
 same, and have a second time to see 
 how wrong we were, and how pre- 
 sumptuous that does not make us the 
 least bit sore. You take the blow, 
 you are surprised, and you accept 
 the adventure because they would be 
 only too happy they, over there, the 
 enemy, Fate, all the elements that 
 knock you out if they knew that you 
 were groaning or raging. An immense 
 resignation, made up of a lot of pride 
 and a lot of humility, that is what fills 
 the eyes of our men in moments like 
 these: the pride of the individual whose 
 brave soul defies blind forces, and a 
 [56] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 sense of the futility of our poor human 
 race, with which higher powers make 
 their sport. Death, out there, is never 
 tragical, madame! I still hear little 
 Bossard under the hail of machine 
 guns shouting: 'We're falling like flies. 
 Mustn't stay here. Forward!' and 
 starting to sing as he takes his first leap: 
 'Aupres de ma blonde 1 and falling back 
 with a thud, jesting in a weaker voice: 
 4 Badoum ! Versailles. . . . End of the 
 line!' ' 
 
 Madame Baumer hides her eyes. 
 
 " Don't," she urges. "It's fright- 
 ful!" 
 
 I repeat stubbornly: 
 
 "No, death is never tragic. That is 
 what you must be told. Death for one- 
 self, death for others, we accept it 
 either way without a protest. Two 
 days after that battle where I sang 
 'Scheherazade' we had a reunion all 
 [57 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 shaved, and washed, and freshened up 
 at a bully dinner in the village hotel. 
 And though lots of our friends were 
 missing, we behaved like schoolboys on 
 vacation. We teased little Jannetaz, 
 who, at the regimental cantine, always 
 asks for three helps of jam and drinks 
 his tea lukewarm and weak, and four 
 pieces of sugar in it: a sort of girl who 
 blushes every time you speak his name 
 above a whisper, but who, under fire, 
 when the sergeants had all been killed 
 off, commanded his section and led the 
 boys way forward, when they were 
 about ready to give it up. And big 
 Foulon drew from his pocket a wallet of 
 black watered silk with gold trimmings, 
 soaked all through with sweat, and 
 showed me, between puffs on his pipe, 
 and with an affected indifference, photo- 
 graphs of a young woman, a curtain, 
 a big lamp, the light silk of a lamp 
 [58] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 shade, the orderly disorder of a table 
 all the while watching my reaction. 
 'Oh, Foulon, I liked those dresses, too! 
 How I loved the ladies and their fine 
 furniture!' It was a party that in- 
 cluded some sublime wines that a good 
 many of us, being youngsters, didn't 
 appreciate very well, but drank up very 
 well indeed. We raised our glasses to 
 the memory of comrades fallen the day 
 before, and even this act was a gay one. 
 Hunger, thirst, exhaustion had given us 
 back simple souls. We had rediscovered 
 the antique conception of death. Three 
 days before we had had a jolly dinner 
 with the men who had just been killed; 
 we had caught a glimpse of them in 
 the marching column, above the heads 
 of the soldiers, and then had lost them 
 from sight again when we all deployed 
 on the skirmish-line. And if they hadn't 
 come back to us, that seemed to us so 
 [59] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 simple, so necessary from the point of 
 view of our new life, that we were not 
 even moved by it. Our toast was like 
 the easy hand-shake of good-by you 
 give to some one you are glad to have 
 seen again, but from whom you separate 
 without regret, although you are making 
 no new rendezvous because, you see, 
 your life is already so full ! You wave 
 your hand, and pass on, and speak with- 
 out turning: 'Good-by. I was glad to 
 see you. But I must be off.' We re- 
 called their last adventures. We laughed 
 a good deal. We sketched humorous 
 portraits of them. We did not think 
 about their cold and bloody bodies of 
 that day, but of their clear minds of 
 the day before, and it was their living 
 image that our memories laid out for 
 burial. 
 
 "Listen. I've just remembered a de- 
 tail that will show you how happy-go- 
 [60] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 lucky we were on the morrow of that 
 day when so many bodies fell, on the 
 eve of such grave battles. As we were 
 forcing ourselves a bit to empty the 
 last bottles, Foulon, who was prowling 
 all over the place, suddenly jumped up 
 on the table, waving a derby hat and 
 uttering a thousand oh's and ah's as if 
 he had discovered the most amazing 
 thing in the universe: 'Gentlemen, I 
 have picked a melon I'* Oh, the re- 
 ception we gave him! We fought for 
 that hat. Foulon shoved us all back, 
 promising every one a turn at it. It 
 was a very decent hat. Each of us 
 tried it on, coquettishly, and looked hard 
 into the mirror to rediscover his old 
 self, his physiognomy of peace times: 
 a time five or six weeks past, but it 
 seemed like ages. We laughed till we 
 were out of breath at the surprises our 
 * In French, the derby hat is called a ' melon.' 
 [61 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 comrades gave us under that hat, which 
 insidiously revealed their taste, type, 
 and character; bringing to the surface 
 individualities lost under the uniform; 
 re-establishing social classes. And this 
 child's play lasted till one of us, 
 tired of laughing, buckled on his bay- 
 onet and said: 'So long, fellows. I am 
 going on guard as corporal, and we 
 are the rear-guard relief; weVe got 
 something else to do besides rough- 
 house/ ' 
 
 "Yes, Maurice," says Madame 
 Baumer, "you jest at death. You 
 show it to us as something accepted, 
 something gentle, something almost de- 
 sirable. Are you telling us the truth? 
 I'm by no means sure. You have such 
 a sincere way! But the wounds, 
 Maurice? The horror of torn and tor- 
 tured flesh. 
 
 "Yes, I know. And yet, in the sta- 
 [62] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 tions, when train-loads of the wounded 
 go by, men exhausted from hemorrhages, 
 fever, and travel, women go to the cars 
 and hand up wine and fruit. They give 
 the men pencils, too, and post-cards so 
 that they can write and send news to 
 their families. But often men are too 
 weak to write and the women do it for 
 them. Do you know what these un- 
 fortunates always, invariably, dictate 
 these men whose flesh is bleeding under 
 their bandages? An address, and then: 
 'Everything is all right/ ' 
 
 Madame Baumer listens and re- 
 flects. 
 
 4 'You are heroes, " she says. 
 
 I pout. In talking to her I was far 
 from all that. I was thinking about my 
 depleted company, my comrades, my 
 war. This word of hers jerks me back 
 to Paris. And I sigh: 
 
 "Alas! And now you're talking like 
 [63] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 a newspaper! For us words like 'hero' 
 have no meaning. Yes, yes, I know, 
 they call us Valiant soldiers' and 'sub- 
 lime blesses/ They never separate ad- 
 jective and noun. It is too much like 
 * distinguished economist/ And, you 
 know, we aren't heroic. Modern war 
 demands, most of the time, that passive 
 form of energy which is called resig- 
 nation. We make, when it is asked of 
 us, our little effort but we don't go into 
 any of its motives: grandeur of race, 
 beauty of action, superlative curiosity, 
 or supermanhood. We obey obscure 
 laws and derive no pride therefrom be- 
 cause in France one is never very proud 
 of having merely obeyed. When you 
 march and make an advance you find 
 it a bit stupid in folks that they should 
 insist on translating such precise words, 
 words that are so full of meaning, 
 by the words 'bound' and 'gallantly 
 [64] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 storm/ We have become simple men 
 once more/' 
 
 " Agreed, Maurice but much too 
 modest!" 
 
 "Not at all! The biggest boasters 
 will tell you the same thing. You re- 
 member a big fellow, a schoolmate of 
 Jean's, who came here two or three 
 times, and about whom we used to tell 
 you grotesque yarns? He was a kind of 
 bad actor: morbidly anxious to aston- 
 ish people; fake duelist, fake traveller, 
 fake author, fake lover, fake millionaire 
 the make-believe hero of a thousand 
 tall stories. He was our laughing-stock 
 all the years we were boys together. 
 Well, he has just been brevetted cap- 
 tain, at twenty-seven, on the front. 
 He has been decorated. I have seen the 
 text of his citation. It is bully. I've 
 seen him since, as a matter of fact, and 
 he didn't even mention it/' 
 [65 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 While I prattle on the sun is setting 
 ever so benignly. Madame Baumer, 
 silken and tenuous, grows more frail 
 than ever in this even light. I don't 
 see the black of her gown so distinctly, 
 and all the life of her body is concen- 
 trated in her slim face and hands. Her 
 eyes are deeper, larger. 
 
 "I am thinking about all that you 
 are, whatever the names we call you by. 
 And I am thinking of what we are, we 
 others who are weak, we for whom you 
 are dying in hosts, with so sure and so 
 light a heart. Of what gold and what 
 clay do you suppose the souls of men 
 are moulded? People here have no ap- 
 pearance, even, of understanding. They 
 are diverting themselves, they haunt 
 the pleasure-resorts. The theatres are 
 always crammed. If you stop to think, 
 it is a public scandal!" 
 
 " Nonsense I" I say. "They are op- 
 [66] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 timists. And aren't good spirits the 
 element most necessary to endurance? 
 Sad people are conquered in advance. 
 If one has preserved one's good spirits, 
 the way of showing sound health is to 
 keep them up; if one's spirits have 
 sunk, it's good policy to bring them 
 back to life again." 
 
 "But, Maurice, the least sense of 
 shame " 
 
 "A crowd has no sense of shame. 
 Besides, didn't you say that people 
 didn't even seem to realize things? 
 Madame, they don't realize. In Cham- 
 pagne there are men who have spent 
 a year there who haven't seen what 
 the country is like. They have never 
 dared raise their heads above ground 
 in the daytime. Of the plain in front 
 of them they know only as much as 
 they can see through the narrow mirror 
 of a periscope. The French people see 
 [67] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 the Great War as the soldiers see Cham- 
 pagne. 
 
 "Will you listen to one more remi- 
 niscence? During the September hikes, 
 when we had been marching for days 
 and days (we'd lost track of them !), it 
 seemed to us as if our fatigue had gone 
 way beyond the limits of human en- 
 durance. Of all those atrocious hours, 
 I can only recall one night when, walk- 
 ing in my track like a pack-horse and 
 after having believed a thousand times 
 already that I had gone my limit, I 
 fixed my eyes on a lantern hung on 
 some wagon several yards ahead of me 
 as if that could drag me forward! 
 For quite a distance I had no further 
 sensations. That lantern filled my brain 
 full, and held all that was left to me of 
 consciousness. I felt sure that I should 
 fall if that light failed me, that I should 
 die there in the black night from physical 
 [68] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 and moral weariness. It alone bound 
 me to life. And all of 'a sudden it 
 went out. I saw death much better in 
 that moment than I had seen it in the 
 heaviest bombardments. I felt it. It 
 touched me. My recollections, my love- 
 affairs, the world, all my interior uni- 
 verse, fell down the bottomless pit. 
 But just then I saw the lantern again. 
 A cavalryman, passing between it and 
 me, had for a second only cut off its 
 light. And I walked on to the halting- 
 place. 
 
 " Since then, madame, I have heard 
 lots of stories of the battle of the Marne. 
 I shall read a great many more. But 
 for me Joffre's Order of the Day, the 
 pursuit, Von Kluck's mistake, Foch's 
 sublime decision, the great German re- 
 treat, and the saving of Paris are only 
 history or legend. Of the greatest vic- 
 tory in the world I, who lived through 
 [69] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 it all, saw nothing at all, and remember 
 nothing, except the flame of a penny 
 candle fastened by a wagoner to a 
 rusty hook on his truck. It is like that 
 with lots of people good people, too 
 they reduce the biggest sort of events 
 to the size of a rushlight. We mustn't 
 lay it up against them." 
 
 " Yes, we must!" protests Madame 
 Baumer with rising energy. "The mob 
 is really too base! No doubt it can't 
 understand everything. But what the 
 women anyway know is that their sons 
 and their husbands are dying. And 
 meantime, Maurice, they open their 
 doors to any one who knocks. The 
 women have been unspeakable. ... I 
 ought not to have told you this." 
 
 Her voice trembles with indigna- 
 tion. 
 
 "Well, madame, that proves that 
 marriage is, in many cases, only a 
 [70] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 wholly artificial bond. But the war 
 separates only the couples who were 
 brought together by some silly chance. 
 Absence is the occasion, not the cause. 
 Perhaps it actually performs a useful 
 and hygienic service in giving to coun- 
 terfeit wives a liberty that they would 
 have taken for themselves piecemeal. 
 On the other hand, it has strengthened 
 the unions which stood for something 
 real, and reveals the true married coup- 
 les as the only truly pure and truly 
 strong ones. 
 
 "You know, perhaps, that in France 
 it is a new fad for most ordinary people, 
 the habit of caring for their bodies. 
 You open your eyes at that? But it's 
 a fact ! The parvenus of cleanliness are 
 legion, and betray themselves by the 
 way they talk about their bathrooms 
 promiscuously and by the scorn they 
 take the trouble of expressing for people 
 [71 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 who haven't got them. Now, cleanli- 
 ness is costly at the front. It costs men 
 who are all tired out the two or three 
 mile walk it takes to find water. Some- 
 times it even costs the risk of getting 
 killed on the way. And so you can 
 easily tell which men are really fas- 
 tidious, and that sort of fastidiousness 
 is, out there, a luxury reserved to a 
 small minority. Make no mistake, 
 madame, true love is also a great lux- 
 ury. But in this case absence and 
 danger raise its value. How many 
 wives or husbands, whose tenderness 
 has been swallowed up by the monotony 
 of their day-by-day existence, or who 
 have been kept from expressing their 
 love by a miserable sort of bashfulness, 
 have been suddenly revealed to one an- 
 other! Have you ever thought of the 
 place that tenderness has taken on, 
 this year, in letters? Of course, among 
 [72] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 so many surprises there are some un- 
 lucky ones. They tell a story in my 
 sector about a husband named Au- 
 guste who, in the mud of his trench, 
 received this line from his wife: 'Dear 
 Julien, Excuse me for sending thee only 
 twenty francs, but I have to send ten francs 
 to my husband, who has been surprised at 
 not getting any remittances' But how 
 many sublime letters have been scrawled, 
 and how much unpretending beauty 
 there has been in them ! A poor peas- 
 ant woman, who was using herself up 
 by doing the hardest kind of farm- 
 work, said to me: 'When I send a little 
 money to my man I never ask him to 
 write me the news, because the letter 
 might get lost, and, as he's very stingy, 
 I prefer not to make him miserable.' 
 Ah, madame, what beautiful love- 
 letters that man owes to his wife ! Here, 
 I have one here, a letter that some sol- 
 [73 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 dier lost. Do you want me to read it 
 to you?" 
 
 From my papers I draw out a big 
 faded sheet. Madame Baumer makes a 
 movement of protest. 
 
 " I picked it up at the rear. Oh, there 
 are lots of other letters just like it! 
 Here it is: 
 
 " ' My Jean, I'm sending you a knitted 
 jersey, a change of underclothes, some 
 chocolate, and a pencil. The cold 
 weather is here. The lapwings are 
 singing in the new meadow and in the 
 alders. You would enjoy hearing them. 
 Outin has written a letter to his wife, 
 and she showed it to me after mass. 
 He says: "So long. We shall be home 
 to drink the new wine." Francois 
 writes: "I shall be back for Christmas." 
 And Julien du Patras says: "I'll be 
 back to eat some pancakes." You alone, 
 my Jean, don't say anything like that. 
 [74] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 You only say that you are happy and 
 that sometimes you sing. Is that the 
 truth? I'm praying that you aren't 
 lying to me! Tell me who are your 
 closest friends, by whose side you sleep, 
 and with whom you eat, whether you 
 do little things for one another, whether 
 they, too, get packages from home, 
 what there is in your knapsack to make 
 it so heavy, and whether you are still 
 fighting. You'll say that I am mighty 
 curious ! Everything is all right here, 
 except that the children have caught a 
 little cold. Mary-Josephine is as tall as 
 the table now. She helps me wash the 
 dishes. I put Louis into trousers this 
 week. You can imagine how pleased 
 he is! Now I'm going to talk about 
 myself. The potatoes are sold. I have 
 a good lot of chickens twenty-two 
 pullets and a fine rooster; a regular 
 treasure. As to our work, we've nearly 
 [75 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 finished sowing, your mother and I. 
 They took all our mares, ours and Uncle 
 Peter's. But we'll manage all the same. 
 I bring the cow in to the barn every 
 evening and put her out in the meadow 
 every morning. I should be glad to do 
 some harrowing; the crop is a good one, 
 but there is a lot of stubble in the buck- 
 wheat in the Taillee field. I shall 
 commence with that. I am trying to 
 do everything I can, just as you used 
 to. 
 
 I stop reading. Madame Baumer is 
 in a brown study; pensive, she softly 
 repeats that little sentence where a 
 wife's humble tenderness is summed up 
 so simply: "I am trying to do every- 
 thing I can, just as you used to." 
 
 "Yes," I go on, "one notices the 
 
 people who are having a good time, and 
 
 the other ones don't show up. Perhaps 
 
 we ought to have looked for the hidden 
 
 [ 76] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 beauty of this war, that we've hunted 
 for in vain in the mud and the chem- 
 istry of battle-fields, down at the bottom 
 of the postman's bag. Oh, if we could 
 only know the whole story ! How many 
 hearts that we thought were cold have 
 burst the envelope that was stifling all 
 their fire!" 
 
 "Maurice," says Madame Baumer, 
 once more serene, "take care you're 
 going to become confidential!" 
 
 And she raises her eyebrows, amused 
 and a bit worried. 
 
 "Why not?" I ask. "Listen: The 
 3d of August, the day I left for 
 the front, I hadn't yet bought myself 
 the indispensable woollen socks and 
 campaign medicine-kit tincture of io- 
 dine, paregoric, and permanganate of 
 potassium that are recommended to 
 soldiers. I went out with my father, 
 who wanted to see something of the 
 [77] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 streets and to get in touch with the 
 newspapers. You remember the gossip 
 that day about the departure of Baron 
 von Schoen and England's attitude. I 
 did most of the talking. You know 
 father; always reserved, with his head 
 full of things he keeps to himself. I 
 was quite excited. He, calmer than 
 usual even. We were going up the 
 Boulevard Saint-Germain I beating 
 the sidewalk with my cane. At the 
 corner of the rue du Bac father halted 
 and said good-by. 'Now, my boy, I'm 
 going to say good-by to you.' We were 
 uncomfortable on that sidewalk. All 
 the passers-by bumped into us. Father, 
 bothered by the crowd, was very clumsy 
 about it. He stretched out his hand 
 a new thing for him to do to me. All the 
 same, I offered him my forehead, that a 
 warm breath and a beard skimmed rather 
 awkwardly. I took his slender hand, a 
 [78] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 hand unknown to mine, and how can 
 I explain it? I who had always been 
 a little afraid of him, felt, this time, that 
 it was he who was timid. His hand was 
 so frail. It hesitated a little, and well, 
 it annoyed me to have noticed that. I 
 made haste to clasp it, and then, at once, 
 it returned the clasp. Oh, madame, I 
 am a brute 1 Never, never had I real- 
 ized that father loved me like that!" 
 
 Madame Baumer took my hands. 
 
 "My little Maurice! You are cry- 
 ing !" 
 
 I cough to pull myself together and 
 look hard at the walls and ceiling to 
 substitute that picture for the picture 
 I see again so clearly: the Paris street 
 corner where, in the thick of a moving 
 crowd, I learned that my father loved 
 me; and then his slender black figure, 
 his back that was going away . . . 
 going away. . . . 
 
 [79] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 It is for me to break a silence of which 
 I am the rather silly cause. 
 
 "Dear madame, it is very late. It 
 is pretty, the curtain of blue sky that 
 is slowly darkening outside your win- 
 dows. ... I must be leaving you. 
 No, no! I don't want you to kiss 
 me. I want to go just as I used to go, 
 notwithstanding I have such a fine 
 helmet. I kiss your hands.. Good-by. 
 Your tea was excellent. You want to 
 kiss me all the same? Very well, I'll 
 deliver this kiss to Jean. What a 
 wretched soldier I am! A real soldier 
 would have made you laugh, and now 
 your eyes are wet!" 
 
 "No! You have cheered me up. 
 You were nice. I shall have more cour- 
 age now." 
 
 I feel jolly and, of a sudden, very 
 proud of myself. I go on, weakening 
 a little: 
 
 [80] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 "My comrades would have done 
 better than I. I wish you could hear 
 the laughter with which they fill their 
 shelters, their huts, and the village 
 inns. Only yesterday, in a station 
 lunch-room, while a lot of them were 
 roaring together near me, I drew closer. 
 It was a convalescent soldier who was 
 describing his little end of some battle 
 to a group of men on leave. What a 
 story ! I 'd love to repeat it to you. But 
 it would take another voice than mine, 
 and that slanginess which lends old 
 words a flavor, that accent which colors 
 them, and that rude leitmotiv which 
 gives them rhythm and quickens one's 
 interest. This good chap was a cyclist 
 who, last September, being the despatch- 
 rider of his regiment, accidentally fell in 
 with a Boche company. 
 
 " 'When I saw 'em,' he said, 'I was 
 flabbergasted. I guess you know whether 
 [81 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 I changed my direction and put on some 
 steam ! Fiji . . . / piji . . . ! The bees 
 were buzzing as fast as me! I beat it 
 'crosscountry; piji . . . / The suckers! 
 There were a hundred and fifty of 'em 
 at least firing at me. I looked at the 
 ground under my feet. I says to myself: 
 "This is the time they get you! I see 
 my finish!" Talk about rabbit-holes! 
 I didn't have more'n twenty yards to 
 do to strike a lane that was kind of 
 sunk down below the fields. But twenty 
 yards can seem a long ways at times! 
 I'm getting there all right, when bang! I 
 catch one in the left hip. You'd have 
 taken it for a hit with a club. I keep 
 on pedalling. Oh, the suckers! A 
 worse one than the other smack in 
 the right hip where it cuts my sciatic. 
 That time, hang it all! it bowls me 
 over. I try to get up again nothing 
 doing! My foot just goes like this and 
 [82] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 that. It wouldn't have anything to do 
 with the job, that foot of mine! The 
 suckers ! I undo my knapsack and take 
 my box of monkey-meat you know, 
 the reserve stores you're forbidden to 
 touch and then I have some meal. 
 I've a noggin of rum I'd bought at 
 Noisy-l'-Sec. I takes a swig. I says to 
 myself: "Hot stuff!" That brings a 
 big gawk of a Boche officer who seems 
 to be snooping round everywhere. I 
 shout: "Lookin' for the corpse? '11 right, 
 stop lookin'; I'm the corpse." Fellows, 
 he comes at me makin' fancy steps and 
 tucks his gun under my nose. I says 
 to him: "That's the stuff! that's the 
 stuff!" "You're wounded ?"sezee. "A 
 mite, my lad!" Then he calls another 
 Boche, who begins to cut my pants 
 away. Boys, maybe there wasn't some 
 blood inside! The Boche got both 
 hands full, all right! 'n he asks me, 
 [83] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 like that, by signs, for my bandage. I 
 hand it over. He ties up one hip. 
 Says I: "That's some better!" He 
 asks me for another roll o' bandage. I 
 only had one ! He's not surprised, the 
 chap; he takes his own! He does up 
 my other hip. I says to myself: "Hot 
 stuff!" Then he leans over, I catch 
 him by the neck, and off we go. From 
 time to time he stops because, it seems, I 
 strangle him. You see, I had him by the 
 neck, me, like a brother! At last he 
 dumps me in a house where they're 
 three, four wounded Boches who call 
 me "Kamerad! Kamerad!" and show 
 me photos of their kids, and ask me 
 how many I've got. I show 'em four 
 fingers. I might as well have made it 
 a dozen. You're on I want some 
 sympathy. "Awful! Awful!" they say. 
 Then they give me cigarettes, sausages, 
 and cochineal. They had big boxes of 
 [84] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 canned stuff: boxes as big as lobster- 
 pots. I was there, just going to have 
 a snack, when I see a French cuirassier 
 go gallopin' past the window. I says 
 to myself: "Things look to be bright- 
 enin' up!" And then comes another, 
 a whale of a chap, with a sabre, who 
 comes in and says to me: "What the 
 deuce you doing here?" I says: "You 
 see, I'm a prisoner." Sezee: "No more 
 you ain't. And these chaps?" "Them, 
 my boy," I explain, "are wounded 
 Boches." "Bodies! "he rips out. "The 
 suckers ! I can't take 'em prisoner, those 
 bums!" He makes like he'd cut their 
 throats! The Boches yell: " Nicht ka- 
 put! Don't kill us!" He, with his 
 big stupid of a sabre, was going to 
 make 'em go down into their cabbages 
 again. ... I says: "Old dear, these 
 are brothers of mine. What's more, 
 I dare you to touch 'em. If you feel 
 [85 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 like killing, go kill somewhere else. Be- 
 sides, these are my prisoners." "Good 
 Lord," he keeps sayin' over and over, 
 " what am I to do with 'em? What 
 am I to do with 'em?" My, when 
 he'd gone, if you'd seen my four Boches ! 
 They were crazy; they plain bawled 
 for joy! One of 'em was shot in the 
 foot, and he danced a jig on one leg! 
 And right away they threw all their 
 equipment out the window. "Nicht 
 war!" they yelled. "Nicht Parisse!" 
 And hop! went their guns hop! went 
 their clodhopper shoes; hop! hop! hop! 
 " Deutschland uber alles!" . . . We all 
 got together again at the hospital later 
 on.' 
 
 "I have told the story very badly, 
 for you haven't laughed. Those who 
 listened to the way the wounded man 
 told it laughed fit to kill. And this yarn 
 of the chasseurs whose unlucky game 
 [86] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 he was crowded, beaten, peppered 
 seemed to him the most ridiculous farce 
 ever. At a near-by table a great red- 
 faced commissariat officer, fat enough 
 to burst, listened and rolled his big eyes. 
 The other fellow snapped out at him: 
 ' What ails you, old man? You've gone 
 pale ! If you keep on like that, my boy, 
 you'll have to see a doctor I' Then, 
 when he'd paid for his bottle of wine, 
 'Come, old chap, look sharp that you 
 don't cut yourself with your fountain 
 pen!' and went limping off. ... That 
 doesn't sound much like tragedy and 
 tremolo, does it, now?" 
 
 This time Madame Baumer smiles. 
 
 "Maurice, since seeing you again I'm 
 almost reconciled to the war." 
 
 The blue is a deeper shade than ever 
 
 on the other side of the windows. But 
 
 I shall never cure myself of the bad 
 
 habit of going right on talking after I 
 
 [87] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 have said my good-by, and making two 
 or three partings of it. 
 
 "Madame," I say, with my hand on 
 the door, "they used to tell me that the 
 morals of a country suffer when, for 
 several years running, the winters 
 aren't cold. It seems that then there 
 are hard times and the Chambers lack a 
 quorum. And I had an old aunt who 
 would say, laying down her newspaper: 
 * There is no such thing as reverence 
 any more. We need a good war.' ' 
 
 "Alas! Maurice. ..." 
 
 "Come, come, madame!" 
 
 "Good-by," she repeats once more. 
 "I hope that " 
 
 She does not finish. And as I see 
 that she has flushed: 
 
 "I hope so, too," I say, laughing. 
 
 And now on the staircase, where I 
 skip half the steps, making as little 
 [88] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 noise as possible with my thick hob- 
 nailed boots, I hum a waltz. The 
 street again and just the hour I love ! 
 
 I walk straight ahead, young, happy, 
 and it is all I can do to keep from run- 
 ning. The daylight, evenly distributed, 
 is as if filtered through parchment. 
 The shop-windows glitter in it. The 
 mirrors show gracious reflections. The 
 eyes of passers-by have something of 
 its limpid luminosity. The women are 
 extraordinary. 
 
 And yet, after a few steps, I feel a 
 sensation of flatness, a weariness of 
 myself, that sense of emptiness which 
 comes to one on days when one has 
 done too much talking. The idea of 
 seeing still more faces which will re- 
 flect my own becomes all at once quite 
 insupportable. I ought to have ac- 
 cepted Fabienne's dinner invitation. 
 Heavens, but I am lonely. After all, 
 [89] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 though, what was the telephone invented 
 for? 
 
 In the booth where I impatiently 
 turn the pages of the telephone-book I 
 have the frightful presentiment that 
 Fabienne will not be in. I wonder why 
 I'm looking for her number? I still 
 remember it. I will verify, but, yes, I 
 was right. 
 
 Madame is in. I am so blissful that 
 I tremble. . . . Her voice is surprised 
 at first, then delighted. "But I am de- 
 lighted!" she tells me in a tone calmer 
 than my pride could have desired. No 
 matter! She is expecting me. We will 
 dine alone at her apartment. 
 
 I call a taxi, which, after a little de- 
 tour (for I want some cigarettes), will 
 glide to the rue Tronchet. The light of 
 day is taking itself away with coquetry, 
 singing as it goes a funeral march in 
 blue. Its luminance still rests on all 
 [90 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 bright objects, which it picks out for 
 a light caress. Everything has become 
 precious. The street is as if under glass. 
 
 I find an exquisite Fabienne: happy, 
 alert, and with her hair rearranged. 
 
 "Take off that awful helmet," she 
 says. "You look like a fireman. You 
 know, Mr. Change- Your-Mind, that the 
 dinner is brought in from outside. So 
 we'll have to take it as it comes. . . . 
 Stay right here and be good. I'll be 
 back in ten minutes." 
 
 I implore her: 
 
 "No, no! No surprises! Let me 
 believe that it is all very simple a sol- 
 dier who invites himself to a pot-luck 
 dinner. Fabienne! Fabienne! Don't 
 go!" 
 
 But she has already gone. They bring 
 
 me some newspapers. In them I find 
 
 opinions and speeches, but few facts. 
 
 It seems we have advanced in Cham- 
 
 [91 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 pagne! Well, I shall see about that 
 for myself, to-morrow. Only the car- 
 icaturists seem tolerable to me. They 
 at least know how to deal with real- 
 ities. The rest of the paper doesn't 
 even focus my attention. At the front 
 sometimes I used to bear to my colonel, 
 in the little grove where he was living, 
 the three-o'clock communique. The col- 
 onel would rise and, in a changed voice, 
 say to the officers who made up his four 
 at bridge: "The communique, gentle- 
 men!" He read with mock gravity in 
 a tone by which he tried to lend to 
 the official news an importance that his 
 intelligence had long since failed to 
 find in it. The others, during this 
 reading, stopped playing cards, but not 
 thinking about their play. I could 
 easily enough see how their minds were 
 wandering. Since then I've come across 
 this same mental attitude of the front 
 [ 92 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 which instinctively feels that this enor- 
 mous affair is not its affair. Our officers 
 think as we do about this. Nothing 
 concerns them but the orders for their 
 sector. It is not we " to see the struggle 
 from too elevated a point of view. 
 One becomes too tiny a .combatant. 
 One no longer believes in his own role. 
 
 Fabienne returns, her arms full of 
 flowers, of clusters of a fine madder-red 
 that I used to know by name. With a 
 deft hand she spreads them over the 
 dming-room table. After which we 
 sink into the cushions of .two settles on 
 each side, of the chimney, fire which re- 
 places, th,is, even ing, the Boche heater. 
 
 Fabienne would like to know what I 
 think of the, Russian retreat, and whether 
 the Rumanians really do love France. 
 I bring her round, without much diffi- 
 culty, to more feminine subjects. Some 
 easy transitions, and now ( we are off on 
 f 93 1 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 stories of her girl friends. I listen to 
 these thin little comedies and watch the 
 play of them over her subtle features, 
 to which the wisely arranged lights lend 
 just the right effect, and which warmth 
 and animation are commencing to un- 
 powder. A pretty thing is a pretty 
 woman ! Her gestures follow her stories, 
 quite as, to the peals of her laughter, 
 responds the sparkling of the big dia- 
 mond on her little white hand. 
 
 "Fabienne," I say, "play some- 
 thing!" 
 
 "Oh!" she exclaims, aghast. "But, 
 my friend, we are at war! My neigh- 
 bors would be shocked to pieces!" 
 
 "So much the worse for them, Fa- 
 bienne. I'm hungry for some music. 
 And play something really lively. Ah ! 
 If you can, the last movement of the 
 Ninth Symphony. But, perhaps, you 
 don't know it?" 
 
 [94] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 "But Beethoven is German!" 
 "That is so. They'd have you put 
 out, I suppose. Well, it doesn't matter. 
 Play anything you like." 
 
 She rises, obedient, and goes to the 
 piano. Her supple body, while she is 
 walking, flows in the long pure lines 
 which repeat themselves as from an 
 inexhaustible source. She plays the 
 famous air of Moussorgski which Lit- 
 vine sang so well. An issue of /'//- 
 lustration lies open wide on the music- 
 stand. Sometimes these views are sub- 
 lime syntheses, and this one gives me 
 a positive thrill. It is a line of men, 
 all of them waiting on their knees 
 for the moment to spring forward at 
 the signal for the charge. Fabienne 
 does not see them, these men. She will 
 never see them. She is singing. She 
 sings without art, but in a clear and 
 correct voice whose middle register is 
 [95 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 really beautiful. My eyes are fixed on 
 her shadowed neck, which commences 
 her nudeness. Ah, how can we be so 
 silly as to reproach woman with her 
 dormant animality? Have we not made 
 her like that? And need we drag her 
 into these pretentious stories of men, 
 these heavy and tragic affairs in which 
 it was our part to have foreseen and to 
 have known how to escape? No! Let 
 her preserve for our return her calm and 
 her serene beauty. Here are a piano 
 and flowers. . . . The table beside us 
 is set. Daylight has not abandoned 
 Earth. Sing, sing, my creature ! 
 
 But as she reaches the last measures, 
 and as her head turns, while her fingers, 
 on the keys, let fall the last harmonies, 
 I draw near and say: 
 
 "Fabienne!" 
 
 She faces round, divines, rises, hesi- 
 tates. I seize her: she takes fright, 
 [96] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 implores, grieves, weakens, and al- 
 ready, as I bear her off, I feel her 
 poor thralled flesh which adores me and 
 dedicates itself. . . . 
 
 And now we are peacefully dining, 
 and prattling on good-naturedly. The 
 confidences of the flesh do so simplify 
 relations! Everything we say amuses 
 me, and my fork seems very light in 
 my hand. We are joking spontane- 
 ously I already detached, like one upon 
 the point of parting; she marvellously 
 adaptable, like those who live only in 
 the present. 
 
 Also the clock is racing on. Already 
 anxious about the time, I absently pluck 
 grapes from the bunch. I see a black vi- 
 sion of railroad-trains instead of the luxu- 
 rious course before me. I await the end 
 of the long story that Fabienne is tell- 
 ing me in a caressing voice. Ah, now! 
 [971 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 "Good-by, Fabio!" 
 
 "Oh, so soon I" she cries, really 
 wounded. 
 
 Her eyes are big and moist. She 
 sighs as she offers me her narrow little 
 head that I take in my open hands and 
 bring to my lips as a fruit. 
 
 " Let's hope that this hideous war " 
 
 " will soon be over. Yes, Fa- 
 
 bienne." 
 
 "You'll write to me?" 
 
 "Naturally." 
 
 Her brows gather for an instant. 
 
 "It's lasted thirteen months," says 
 she. "All the same, when one stops to 
 think, the time has passed pretty fast." 
 
 "Ah, my dear, that," I say with 
 fervor, "that is the jolliest thing any 
 one has said about it yet!" 
 
 Entering the motor which waits for 
 me below, I see her. She waves to me 
 [ 98 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 from her bright window. It is true, all 
 the same, that women have lost some 
 of their importance ! 
 
 I smile, however, in my corner to 
 think of the young male I have just 
 been, taking without any fuss, as in 
 passing, this simple and merited plea- 
 sure. Alfred would approve of me. 
 
 The air enters by the open window 
 and its freshness on my eyes already 
 dims the pictures of a fleeting eve- 
 ning. During this brief motor trip, at 
 least, I should like to devote a friendly 
 thought to the pleasures I am leaving 
 behind. But the stern present con- 
 flicts with such a desire. 
 
 At this hour Paris is dark as a village. 
 I don't know very well the names of 
 these quarters. The shaded street- 
 lamps throw strange crepe-like shadows 
 on the houses as we pass them. ... Is 
 this la Villette, or Pantin? I do not 
 [99 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 know but it is gloomy here I Always, 
 when one is a passer-by, something in 
 one takes the impress of the place trav- 
 ersed. In certain avenues of Paris I 
 become a lordling. Everything seems 
 happy to me, and easy. In these sub- 
 urbs one feels himself humble, and the 
 weight of life crushes one down; one's 
 heart is as heavy as a crowbar. These 
 suburbs of the workers are big, too ! It 
 is near here that Alfred's home should 
 be, where his wife and daughter are 
 waiting for him. It is from one of these 
 steep houses that he left, the same day 
 as I, with a cheese in one pocket, a 
 sausage in the other, a flask of rum 
 slung to his shoulder-belt, and at the 
 bottom of his wallet, between his 
 union-card and his voting-card, a pho- 
 tograph of his wife in her Sunday best. 
 Alfred, among the comrades that chance 
 has given me out there, there are some 
 [ 100 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 from whom I am so far that daily con- 
 tact with them makes my task still 
 heavier; there are othefsy*, }ike yc&fc' 
 without whom I should, perhaps, ,hyp, 
 chucked it. To'*y<fa','-Alfiedr*i*'.Gfa: 
 much, and my heart feels you to 
 be very near! Till to-morrow, old 
 friend ! 
 
 The city gate, a long boulevard, a 
 region I do not know. It has been rain- 
 ing. It is raining still, even. My 
 vehicle stops at Bourget, at the little 
 cafe where the convoys are dining. I 
 find Bossard, who has been waiting 
 for me. He shows me the way. From 
 the station of Bourget- Echange, where 
 we are, we must go to recover at Bour- 
 get-Triage the wagon Px50712, which is 
 ours. We walk into the rails, run 
 against signal-wires, slide on the screen- 
 ing that the rain has made so slippery. 
 Bossard curses. I follow him, docile. 
 [ 101 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 And it rains on the horses, on the soaked 
 wagon-tops. 
 
 Px50712 * "is part of a train, the 
 last wagon of which we enter. Tired 
 or Bo-ssard, -tired- of Bourget, I wrap 
 myself in my rug and stretch out on the 
 greasy floor. I make haste to put 
 myself out of range of these lamps, these 
 engines, this complex network of track- 
 age, my head heavy with impressions. 
 But even in this corner of black night 
 I cannot pull myself together. I am all 
 expectation and fatigue. 
 
 Long hours pass. At Chalons I must 
 descend and join Bossard in a train 
 full of men on leave. I seat myself 
 next to some murmuring soldiers. A 
 laugh in a neighboring compartment 
 finds no echo. But a dispute that has 
 just started up runs on, begins all over, 
 and will never finish. 
 
 The men are talking all at the same 
 [ 102] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 time. I watch them. What vigor! 
 These peasants, these workmen, are real 
 soldiers now. But in listening to them 
 I divine little by little the cause of their 
 heavy dejection, unlocked for in men I 
 know so well, and not to be explained 
 merely by fear of the life they are re- 
 turning to and regret for what they 
 are leaving behind. No, these men left 
 the front with the delicious idea that 
 they were going to cry out their dis- 
 tress, get rid of their stored-up com- 
 plaints, and tell all about the mud, the 
 blood, the horror, the torture. . . . 
 But they have been petted and feted. 
 Paris has shown them its enthusiasm, 
 has applauded their prowess, has re- 
 counted their legend to them. Flat- 
 tered, they have, little by little, told 
 the story that was expected of them. 
 The heroic role prepared for them in 
 advance by other people's imagina- 
 [ 103 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 tions, they have played it without really 
 taking it in. And now, in this gloomy 
 train that is bringing them back to their 
 misery, they realize that they have told 
 nothing of the things they had to tell. 
 
 Again a change of cars, and we must 
 pack ourselves in, the best we can, in a 
 long, unlighted train, whose locomotive 
 even has all its fires screened; then on 
 again, slowly, till we get off at last 
 in a pitch-dark station. There I lie 
 down till dawn in a shadowy waiting- 
 room, where stretched-out men are 
 sleeping. Others are talking in a low 
 voice. The cannon, very distant, sound 
 faintly in the ear, but vibrate all 
 through one's body, as when some one 
 who is not very heavy shakes the floor 
 overhead. 
 
 'The pigs!" growls a soldier. 
 
 And at last, after tedious hours, the 
 regimental train carries me as far as 
 [ 104 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 the bombarded village near which the 
 trenches commence. Blue sky shines 
 through holes in ruined walls. Thou- 
 sands of birds are fluttering about, and 
 near the canal a man, completely naked, 
 is picking off lice. An adjutant is'fish- 
 ing with a line. 
 
 Now I am walking over the plain 
 whose first undulations even have been 
 ploughed with shells. The soil is sown 
 with old iron. Calmly I walk in the 
 silence, but a brand-new shell-hole, 
 that I find in my path, gives me an un- 
 expected uneasiness, and makes me 
 quicken my pace. And suddenly a shell 
 bursting on my left makes me hit it up 
 even faster. Here are the former first 
 lines. I progress with difficulty, tired 
 out. Strands of detached wire stick 
 up in the air like stumps that stir in 
 the breeze the agonized pulsing of a 
 nightmare vegetation! A pine wood 
 [ 105 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 opposite shows no more than skeletons 
 of trees. 
 
 And here are the first corpses. 
 
 The Germans are ugly, earthy. The 
 soiled green of their uniforms accentu- 
 ates their lividity. A panic still to be 
 read in their attitudes and their fea- 
 tures has grouped them here, in piles, 
 like clusters of the damned. Dead 
 horses, swollen like full ulcers, stretch 
 their rigid legs skyward, like monstrous 
 wooden playthings. And then the little 
 men in blue, hugging the soil with 
 knotted hands that bespeak the despair 
 of dying here before they reach the goal: 
 poses of children who have flung them- 
 selves on their faces to sob their hearts 
 out. The white spots all about are 
 their letters, the dear trifles that never 
 left them, and that have been scattered 
 now by those who have gone through 
 their pockets. For there is always 
 [ 106] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 some one to take from the corpses their 
 last few sous. They are so far away, 
 and so poor! And, as looters are 
 shot on sight, they are quick at their 
 work and shamelessly discard papers, 
 photographs, postal-cards, just where 
 they happen to find them. So it was 
 that, near a fallen body, in the thick of 
 scattered papers, I picked up one day 
 the letter which moved Madame Bau- 
 mer. 
 
 At present, before these ugly sights, 
 I recover my unfeeling heart, my dead- 
 ened heart of the habitue. But, as I 
 cross one by one all the circles of this 
 hell which will all winter surround me, I 
 conjure up again my trip in the op- 
 posite direction that I made one morn- 
 ing toward silence and cities. While, 
 between gullies, over a ruptured and 
 terrible soil, I see once more the inverse 
 stages, the gendarmes, the ambulance- 
 [ 107 ] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME . . . 
 
 cars (first humble reawakening of human 
 pity), the fires of the kitchen-wagons 
 then, farther on, the first motors, the 
 first railway-station, the first faces of 
 women. . . . But I must make faster 
 progress. Come, be quick! Let's 
 run! 
 
 Panting, I throw myself flat to earth, 
 and make myself small on the rough 
 ground. A rumbling clatter, whose 
 pitch rises as it passes overhead, shatters 
 my nerves, stops my very breath. . . . 
 
 It's over. My throat relaxes. I gulp 
 a great swallow of air, and set out again 
 at a good clip. 
 
 Let us hope that this frightful war 
 will soon be finished. 
 
 Ah! Paris! 
 
 Extract from the "Official Journal of 
 the French Republic" (Orders of the 
 Day): 
 
 [ 108] 
 
THE WAR, MADAME 
 
 Vernier, Maurice, Corporal of the 
 th Regiment of Infantry. Already 
 
 cited. Gravely wounded November 3, 
 J91S, -at the moment when, armed with 
 bombs, he was leading his men to an 
 attack on an enemy trench. Has suc- 
 cumbed to his wounds. 
 
 [ 109 ] 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIB