“It seemed to me as if we had just saved the
whole of France and had done something that other
men could not have done, something simple and really
patriotic. I shall never forget that little face,
you may be sure; and if I had to give my opinion about
abolishing drums, trumpets and bugles, I should propose
to replace them in every regiment by a pretty girl,
and that would be even better than playing the ’Marseillaise:
By Jove! it would put some spirit into a trooper to
have a Madonna like that, a live Madonna, by the colonel’s
side.”
He was silent for a few moments and then continued,
with an air of conviction, and nodding his head:
“All the same, we are very fond of women, we
Frenchmen!”
Fifteen years had passed since I was at Virelogne.
I returned there in the autumn to shoot with my friend
Serval, who had at last rebuilt his chateau, which
the Prussians had destroyed.
I loved that district. It is one of those delightful
spots which have a sensuous charm for the eyes.
You love it with a physical love. We, whom the
country enchants, keep tender memories of certain springs,
certain woods, certain pools, certain hills seen very
often which have stirred us like joyful events.
Sometimes our thoughts turn back to a corner in a
forest, or the end of a bank, or an orchard filled
with flowers, seen but a single time on some bright
day, yet remaining in our hearts like the image of
certain women met in the street on a spring morning
in their light, gauzy dresses, leaving in soul and
body an unsatisfied desire which is not to be forgotten,
a feeling that you have just passed by happiness.
At Virelogne I loved the whole countryside, dotted
with little woods and crossed by brooks which sparkled
in the sun and looked like veins carrying blood to
the earth. You fished in them for crawfish, trout
and eels. Divine happiness! You could bathe
in places and you often found snipe among the high
grass which grew along the borders of these small
water courses.
I was stepping along light as a goat, watching my
two dogs running ahead of me, Serval, a hundred metres
to my right, was beating a field of lucerne.
I turned round by the thicket which forms the boundary
of the wood of Sandres and I saw a cottage in ruins.
Suddenly I remembered it as I had seen it the last
time, in 1869, neat, covered with vines, with chickens
before the door. What is sadder than a dead house,
with its skeleton standing bare and sinister?
I also recalled that inside its doors, after a very
tiring day, the good woman had given me a glass of
wine to drink and that Serval had told me the history
of its people. The father, an old poacher, had
been killed by the gendarmes. The son, whom I
had once seen, was a tall, dry fellow who also passed
for a fierce slayer of game. People called them
“Les Sauvage.”
