“Two days later Monsieur de Bourneval killed
Monsieur de Courcils in a duel. My brothers,
to avoid a terrible scandal, held their tongues.
I offered them and they accepted half the fortune
which my mother had left me. I took my real father’s
name, renouncing that which the law gave me, but which
was not really mine. Monsieur de Bourneval died
three years later and I am still inconsolable.”
He rose from his chair, walked up and down the room,
and, standing in front of me, said:
“Well, I say that my mother’s will was
one of the most beautiful, the most loyal, as well
as one of the grandest acts that a woman could perform.
Do you not think so?”
I held out both hands to him, saying:
“I most certainly do, my friend.”
Ever since he entered France with the invading army
Walter Schnaffs had considered himself the most unfortunate
of men. He was large, had difficulty in walking,
was short of breath and suffered frightfully with
his feet, which were very flat and very fat. But
he was a peaceful, benevolent man, not warlike or
sanguinary, the father of four children whom he adored,
and married to a little blonde whose little tendernesses,
attentions and kisses he recalled with despair every
evening. He liked to rise late and retire early,
to eat good things in a leisurely manner and to drink
beer in the saloon. He reflected, besides, that
all that is sweet in existence vanishes with life,
and he maintained in his heart a fearful hatred, instinctive
as well as logical, for cannon, rifles, revolvers
and swords, but especially for bayonets, feeling that
he was unable to dodge this dangerous weapon rapidly
enough to protect his big paunch.
And when night fell and he lay on the ground, wrapped
in his cape beside his comrades who were snoring,
he thought long and deeply about those he had left
behind and of the dangers in his path. “If
he were killed what would become of the little ones?
Who would provide for them and bring them up?”
Just at present they were not rich, although he had
borrowed when he left so as to leave them some money.
And Walter Schnaffs wept when he thought of all this.
At the beginning of a battle his legs became so weak
that he would have fallen if he had not reflected
that the entire army would pass over his body.
The whistling of the bullets gave him gooseflesh.
For months he had lived thus in terror and anguish.
His company was marching on Normandy, and one day
he was sent to reconnoitre with a small detachment,
simply to explore a portion of the territory and to
return at once. All seemed quiet in the country;
nothing indicated an armed resistance.
But as the Prussians were quietly descending into
a little valley traversed by deep ravines a sharp
fusillade made them halt suddenly, killing twenty
of their men, and a company of sharpshooters, suddenly
emerging from a little wood as large as your hand,
darted forward with bayonets at the end of their rifles.
