And to-day he had probably forgotten her, if he did
not relate this audacious, comical and tender farce
to his comrades over their cups.
Had she seen him again? Did she still love him?
And I thought: Here is an instance of modern
love, grotesque and yet heroic. The Homer who
should sing of this new Helen and the adventure of
her Menelaus must be gifted with the soul of a Paul
de Kock. And yet the hero of this deserted woman
was brave, daring, handsome, strong as Achilles and
more cunning than Ulysses.
Major Graf Von Farlsberg, the Prussian commandant,
was reading his newspaper as he lay back in a great
easy-chair, with his booted feet on the beautiful
marble mantelpiece where his spurs had made two holes,
which had grown deeper every day during the three months
that he had been in the chateau of Uville.
A cup of coffee was smoking on a small inlaid table,
which was stained with liqueur, burned by cigars,
notched by the penknife of the victorious officer,
who occasionally would stop while sharpening a pencil,
to jot down figures, or to make a drawing on it, just
as it took his fancy.
When he had read his letters and the German newspapers,
which his orderly had brought him, he got up, and
after throwing three or four enormous pieces of green
wood on the fire, for these gentlemen were gradually
cutting down the park in order to keep themselves warm,
he went to the window. The rain was descending
in torrents, a regular Normandy rain, which looked
as if it were being poured out by some furious person,
a slanting rain, opaque as a curtain, which formed
a kind of wall with diagonal stripes, and which deluged
everything, a rain such as one frequently experiences
in the neighborhood of Rouen, which is the watering-pot
of France.
For a long time the officer looked at the sodden turf
and at the swollen Andelle beyond it, which was overflowing
its banks; he was drumming a waltz with his fingers
on the window-panes, when a noise made him turn round.
It was his second in command, Captain Baron van Kelweinstein.
The major was a giant, with broad shoulders and a
long, fan-like beard, which hung down like a curtain
to his chest. His whole solemn person suggested
the idea of a military peacock, a peacock who was carrying
his tail spread out on his breast. He had cold,
gentle blue eyes, and a scar from a swordcut, which
he had received in the war with Austria; he was said
to be an honorable man, as well as a brave officer.
The captain, a short, red-faced man, was tightly belted
in at the waist, his red hair was cropped quite close
to his head, and in certain lights he almost looked
as if he had been rubbed over with phosphorus.
He had lost two front teeth one night, though he could
not quite remember how, and this sometimes made him
speak unintelligibly, and he had a bald patch on top
of his head surrounded by a fringe of curly, bright
golden hair, which made him look like a monk.
