Short Fiction

appeared in the East.

“A distant voice cried:

“ ‘Who goes there?’

“The whole detachment halted, and I went forward to reassure the sentry. We were arriving in the French lines.

“As my men filed past headquarters, an officer on horseback, to whom I had just told our story, asked in a loud voice, as he saw the litter go by:

“ ‘What have you got in there?’

“A fair, smiling little face, with disordered hair, promptly appeared, and replied:

“ ‘It’s me, monsieur.’

“A laugh went up among the men, and our hearts leaped for pure joy.

“It was then that Pratique, who was marching beside the litter, waved his cap and shouted:

“ ‘Vive la France!’

“And I don’t know why, but I felt quite stirred, I thought the gesture so brave and gallant.

“I felt as though we had just saved the country, had done something which other men would not have done, something simple, something truly patriotic.

“I’ll never forget that little face of hers, and if I were asked for my opinion on the abolition of drums and bugles, I would propose substituting for them a pretty girl in each regiment. It would be better than playing the ‘Marseillaise.’ Good Lord, what a spirit it would put into a private to have a madonna like that, a living madonna, marching beside the colonel.”

He paused for a few seconds, then resumed with an air of conviction, nodding his head:

“Yes, we’re great lovers of women, we Frenchmen.”

Bed No. 29

When Captain Épivent passed in the street all the ladies turned to look at him. He was the perfect type of a handsome hussar officer. He was always on parade, always strutted a little and seemed preoccupied and proud of his leg, his figure, and his moustache. He had superb ones, it is true, a superb moustache, figure and leg. The first-mentioned was blond, very heavy, falling martially from his lip in a beautiful sweep the colour of ripe wheat, carefully turned at the ends, and falling over both sides of his mouth in two powerful sprigs. His waist was thin as if he wore a corset, while a vigorous masculine chest, bulged and arched, spread itself above his waist. His leg was admirable, a gymnastic leg, the leg of a dancer, whose muscular flesh outlined each movement under the clinging cloth of his red trousers.

He walked with muscles taut, with feet and arms apart, and with the slightly swinging gait of the horseman, who knows how to make the most of his limbs and his carriage, and who seems a conqueror in a uniform, but looks commonplace in a mufti.

Like many other officers, Captain Épivent did not look well in civilian clothes. He had no elegance as soon as he was clothed in the grey or black of the shop assistant. But in his proper setting he was a triumph. He had, besides, a handsome face, the nose thin and curved, blue eyes, and a good forehead. He was bald, and he never could understand why his hair had fallen out. He consoled himself with the thought that, with a heavy moustache, a head a little bald was not so bad.

He scorned everybody in general, with a difference in the degrees of his scorn.

In the first place, for him the middle class did not exist. He looked at them as he would look at animals, without according them more of his attention than he would give to sparrows or chickens. Officers, alone, counted in his world; but he did not have the same esteem for all officers. He only respected handsome men; an imposing presence, that true, military quality being first. A soldier was a gay fellow, a devil, created for love and war, a man of brawn and muscle, with hair on his chest, nothing more. He classed the generals of the French army according to their figure, their bearing, and the stern look of their faces. Bourbaki appeared to him the greatest warrior of modern times.

He often laughed at the officers of the line who were short and fat, and puffed while marching. And he had a special scorn for the poor recruits from the École Polytechnique, those thin, little men with spectacles, awkward and unskilful, who looked as appropriate in a uniform as a bull in a china shop, as he often asserted. He was indignant that they should be tolerated in the army, those abortions with the lank limbs, who marched like crabs, did not drink, ate little, and seemed to love equations better than pretty girls.

Captain Épivent himself had constant successes and triumphs with the fair sex.

Every time he took supper in company with a woman, he thought himself certain of finishing the night with her upon the same mattress, and, if unsurmountable obstacles prevented victory that evening, he was sure, at least, that the affair would be “continued in our next.” His comrades did not like him to meet their mistresses, and the merchants in the shops, who had their pretty wives at the counter, knew him, feared him, and hated him desperately. When he passed, the merchants’ wives, in spite of themselves, exchanged glances with him through the glass of the front windows; those looks that avail more than tender words, which contain an appeal and a response, a desire and an avowal. And the husbands, impelled by a sort of instinct, suddenly turned, casting a furious look at the proud, erect silhouette of the officer. And, when the Captain had passed, smiling and content with his impression, the merchants, handling with nervous hands the objects spread out before them, would declare:

“What a big fool! When shall we stop feeding all these good-for-nothings who go clattering their ironmongery through the streets? For my part, I would rather be a butcher than a soldier. Then if there’s blood on my table, it is the blood of beasts, at least. And he is useful, is the butcher; and the knife he carries has not killed men. I do not understand how these murderers