Now that he was no longer inclined to the saddle and liked to keep his room, General Cartier de Chalmot had reduced his division to cards in small cardboard boxes, which he placed every morning on his desk, and which he arranged every evening on the white deal shelves above his iron bedstead. He marshalled his cards day by day with scrupulous exactitude, in an order which filled him with satisfaction. Every card represented a man. The symbol by which he henceforth thought of his officers, non-commissioned officers and men, satisfied his craving for method and suited his natural bent of mind. Cartier de Chalmot had always been noted as an excellent officer. General Parroy, under whom he had served, said of him: “In Captain de Chalmot the capacity for obedience is exactly balanced by the power of command. A rare and priceless quality of the true military spirit.”

Cartier de Chalmot had always been scrupulous in the performance of his duty. Being upright, diffident, and an excellent penman, he had at last hit upon a system which fitted in with his abilities, and, in command of his division of cards, he applied his method with the utmost vigour.

On this particular day, having risen according to his custom at five o’clock in the morning, he had passed from his tub to his work-table; and, whilst the sun was mounting with solemn slowness above the elms of the Archbishop’s palace, the general was organising manoeuvres by manipulating the boxes of cards that symbolised reality, and that were actually identical with reality to an intelligence which, like his, was excessively reverent towards everything symbolic.

For more than three hours he had been poring over his cards with a mind and face as wan and melancholy as the cards themselves, when his servant announced the AbbÉ de Lalonde. Then he took off his glasses, wiped his work-reddened eyes, rose, and half smiling, turned towards the door a countenance which had once been handsome and which in old age remained quite simple in its lineaments. He stretched out to the visitor who entered a large hand the palm of which had scarcely any lines, and said good-day to the priest in a gruff, yet hesitating voice, which revealed at the same time the diffidence of the man and the infallibility of the commander. “My dear abbÉ, how are you? I am very glad to see you.”

And he pushed forward to him one of the two horsehair chairs which, with the desk and the bed, comprised all the furniture of this clean, bright, empty room.

The abbÉ sat down. He was a wonderfully active little old man. In his face of weather-worn, crumbling brick, there were set, like two jewels, the blue eyes of a child.

They looked at one another for a moment, understandingly, without saying a word. They were two old friends, two comrades-in-arms. Formerly a chaplain in the Army, AbbÉ de Lalonde was now chaplain to the Dames du Salut. As military chaplain, he had been attached to the regiment of guards of which Cartier de Chalmot had been colonel in 1870, and which, forming part of the division…, had been shut up in Metz with Bazaine’s army.

The memory of these homeric, yet lamentable, weeks came back to the minds of these two friends every time they saw one another, and every time they made the same remarks.

This time the chaplain began:

“Do you remember, general, when we were in Metz, running short of medicine, of fodder, running short of salt?…” AbbÉ de Lalonde was the least sensual of men. He had hardly felt the want of salt for himself, but he had suffered much at not being able to give the men salt as he gave them tobacco, in little packets carefully wrapped up. And he remembered this cruel privation.

“Ah! general, the salt ran short!”

General Cartier de Chalmot replied:

“They made up for it, to a certain extent, by mixing gunpowder with the food.”

“All the same,” answered the chaplain, “war is a terrible thing.”

Thus spoke this innocent friend of soldiers in the sincerity of his heart. But the general did not acquiesce in this condemnation of war.

“Pardon me, my dear abbÉ! War is, of course, a cruel necessity, but one which provides for officers and men an opportunity of showing the highest qualities. Without war, we should still be ignorant of how far the courage and endurance of men can go.”

And, very seriously, he added:

“The Bible proves the lawfulness of war, and you know better than I how in it God is called Sabaoth—that is, the God of armies.”

The abbÉ smiled with an expression of frank roguishness, displaying the three very white teeth which were all that remained to him. “Pooh! I don’t know Hebrew, not I.… And God has so many more beautiful names that I can dispense with calling him by that one.… Alas! general, what a splendid army perished under the command of that unhappy marshal!…”

At these words, General Cartier de Chalmot began to say what he had already said a hundred times:

“Bazaine!… Listen to me. Neglect of the regulations touching fortified towns, culpable hesitation in giving orders, mental reservations before the enemy. And before the enemy one ought to have no mental reservations… Capitulation in open country.… He deserved his fate. And then a scapegoat was needed.”

“For my part,” answered the chaplain, “I should beware of ever saying a single word which might injure the memory of this unfortunate marshal. I cannot judge his actions. And it is certainly not my business to noise abroad even his indubitable shortcomings. For he granted me a favour for which I shall feel grateful as long as I live.”

“A favour?” demanded the general. “He? To you?”

“Oh! a favour so noble, so beautiful! He granted me a pardon for a poor soldier, a dragoon condemned to death for insubordination. In memory of this favour, every year I say a mass for the repose of the soul of ex-Marshal Bazaine.” But General Cartier de Chalmot would not let himself be turned from the point.

“Capitulation in open country!… Just imagine it.… He deserved his fate.”

And, in order to hearten himself up, the general spoke of Canrobert, and of the splendid stand of the… brigade at Saint-Privat.

And the chaplain related anecdotes of a diverting kind, with an edifying climax.

“Ah! Saint-Privat, general! On the eve of the battle, a great rascal of a carabineer came to look for me. I see him still, all blackened, in a sheepskin. He cries to me: ‘To-morrow’s going to be warm work. I may leave my bones to rot there. Confess me, monsieur le curÉ, and quickly! I must go and groom my little mare.’ I say to him: ‘I don’t want to delay you, friend. Still, you must tell me your sins. What are your sins?’ In astonishment he looks at me and replies: ‘Why, all!’ ‘What, all?’ ‘Yes, all. I have committed all the sins.’ I shake my head. ‘All, my friend—that is a good many!… Tell me, hast thou beaten thy mother?’ At this question, my gentleman grows excited, waves his great arms, swears like a Pagan, and exclaims: ‘Monsieur le curÉ, you are mocking me!’ I reply to him: ‘Calm yourself, friend. You see now that you have not committed all the sins.’…”

Thus the chaplain cheerily narrated pious regimental anecdotes. And then he deduced the moral from them. Good Christians made good soldiers. It was a mistake to banish religion from the Army.

General Cartier de Chalmot approved of these maxims.

“I have always said so, my dear abbÉ. In destroying mystical beliefs you ruin the military spirit. By what right do you exact of a man the sacrifice of his life if you take away from him the hope of another existence?”

And the chaplain answered, with a smile full of kindliness, innocence and joy:

“You will see that there will be a return to religion. They are already going back to it on all sides. Men are not as bad as they appear and God is infinitely good.”

Then at last he revealed the object of his visit.

“I come, general, to ask a great favour of you.”

General Cartier de Chalmot became attentive; his face, already sad, grew sadder still. He loved and respected this old chaplain, and would have wished to give him pleasure. But the very idea of granting a favour was alarming to his strict uprightness.

“Yes, general, I come to ask you to work for the good of the Church. You know AbbÉ Lantaigne, head of the high seminary in our town. He is a priest renowned for his piety and learning, a great theologian.”

“I have met AbbÉ Lantaigne several times. He made a favourable impression on me. But…”

“Oh! general, if you had heard his lectures as I have done, you would be amazed at his learning. Yet I was able to appreciate but a trifling part of it. Thirty years of my life I have spent in reminding poor soldiers stretched on a hospital bed of the goodness of God. I have slipped in a good word along with a screw of tobacco. For another twenty-five years I have been confessing holy maidens, full of sanctity, of course, but less charming in character than were my soldiers. I have never had the time to read the Fathers; I have neither enough brain nor enough theology to appreciate M. l’abbÉ Lantaigne at his true worth, for he is a walking encyclopedia. But at least I can assure you, general, that he speaks as he acts, and he acts as he speaks.”

And the old chaplain, winking his eye roguishly, added:

“All ecclesiastics, unfortunately, are not of this kind.”

“Nor are all soldiers,” said the general, smiling a very wan smile.

And the two men exchanged a sympathetic glance, in their common hatred of intrigue and falsity.

AbbÉ de Lalonde, who was, however, capable of a little guile, wound up his eulogy of AbbÉ Lantaigne with this touch:

“He is an excellent priest, and if he had been a soldier he would have made an excellent soldier.”

But the general demanded brusquely:

“Well! what can I do for him?”

“Help him to slip on the violet stockings, which he has richly deserved, general. He is an admitted candidate for the vacant bishopric of Tourcoing. I beg you to support him with the Minister of Justice and Religion, whom, I am told, you know personally.”

The general shook his head. In fact, he had never asked anything of the Government. Cartier de Chalmot, as a royalist and a Christian, regarded the Republic with a disapproval that was complete, silent and whole-hearted. Reading no newspapers and talking with no one, he undervalued on principle a civil power of whose doings he knew nothing. He obeyed and held his tongue. He was admired in the chÂteaux of the neighbourhood for his melancholy resignation, inspired by the sentiment of duty, strengthened by a profound scorn for everything which was not military, intensified by a growing difficulty in thought and speech rendered obvious and affecting by the progress of an affection of the liver.

It was well known that General Cartier de Chalmot remained a faithful royalist in the depths of his heart. It was not so well known that one day in the year 1893 his heart had received one of those shocks which can only be compared with what Christians describe as the workings of grace, and which bring with the force of a thunderbolt deep and unlooked-for peace to a man’s innermost being. This event took place at five o’clock in the evening of the 4th of June in the drawing-rooms of the prefecture. There, among the flowers that Madame Worms-Clavelin had herself arranged, President Carnot, on his way through the town, had received the officers of the garrison. General Cartier de Chalmot, being present with his staff, saw the President for the first time, and instantly, for no apparent reason, on no explicable grounds, was pierced through and through by a terrible admiration. In a second, before the gentle gravity and honest inflexibility of the head of the State, all his prejudices fell away. He forgot that this sovereign was a civilian. He revered and loved him. He suddenly felt himself bound with ties of sympathy and respect to this man, sad and sallow like himself, but august and serene like a ruler. He uttered with a soldierly stutter the official compliment which he had learnt by heart. The President answered him: “I thank you in the name of the Republic and of our country which you loyally serve.” At this, all the devotion to an absent prince which General Cartier de Chalmot had stored up for twenty-five years welled forth from his heart towards the President, whose quiet face remained surprisingly immobile, and who spoke in a melancholy voice with no movement of cheek or lips, on which his black beard set a seal. On this waxen face, in these slow, honest eyes, on this feeble breast, across which blazed the broad red ribbon of his order, in the whole figure of this suffering automaton, the general perceived both the dignity of the leader, and the affliction of the ill-fated man who has never laughed. With his admiration there was mingled a strain of tenderness.

A year later he heard of the tragic end of this President for whose safety he would willingly have died, and whom he henceforth pictured in his thoughts as dark and stiff, like the flag rolled round its staff in the barracks and covered with its case.

From that time he had ignored the civil rulers of France. He cared to know nothing save of his military superiors, whom he obeyed with melancholy punctiliousness. Pained at the idea of answering the venerable AbbÉ de Lalonde by a refusal, he bethought himself for a moment, and then gave his reasons.

“A matter of principle. I never ask anything of the government. You agree with me, don’t you?… For from the moment that one lays down a rule for oneself…”

The chaplain looked at him with an expression of sadness that seemed as though thrown over his happy old face.

“Oh! how could I agree with you, general—I who beg of everybody? I am a hardened beggar. For God and the poor, I have pleaded with all the powers of the day, with King Louis Philippe’s ministers, with those of the provisional government, with Napoleon III.’s ministers, with those of the Ordre Moral and those of the present Republic. They have all helped me to do some good. And since you know the Minister of Religion …”

At this moment a shrill voice called in the passage:

“Poulot! Poulot!”

And a stout lady in a morning wrapper, her white hair crowned with hair-curlers, entered the room with a rush. It was Madame Cartier de Chalmot, who was calling the general to dÉjeuner.

She had already shaken her husband with imperious tenderness, and exclaimed once more: “Poulot!” before she became aware of the presence of the old priest crushed up against the door.

She apologised for her untidy dress. She had had so much to do this morning! Three daughters, two sons, an orphan nephew and her husband—seven children to look after!

“Ah! madame,” said the abbÉ, “it is God himself who has sent you! You will be my providence.” “Your providence, monsieur l’abbÉ!”

In her grey dressing-gown her figure revealed the ample dignity of classic motherhood. On her beaming moustachioed face shone a matronly pride; her large gestures expressed at once the briskness of a housewife habituated to work and the ease of a woman accustomed to official deference. The general disappeared behind her. She was his household goddess and his guardian angel, this Pauline who carried on her brave, energetic shoulders all the burden of this poverty-stricken, ostentatious house, who played the part of seamstress to the family, as well as cook, dressmaker, chambermaid, governess, apothecary, and even milliner with a frankly gaudy taste, and yet showed at big dinners and receptions an imperturbable good breeding, a commanding profile, and shoulders that were still beautiful. It was commonly said in the division that if the general became Minister of War, his wife would do the honours of the hÔtel in the Boulevard Saint-Germain[F] in capital fashion.

The energy of the general’s wife spread freely over into the outer world and flourished vigorously in pious and charitable works. Madame Cartier de Chalmot was lady patroness of three crÊches and a dozen charities recommended by the Cardinal-Archbishop. Monseigneur Charlot showed a special predilection for this lady, and said to her sometimes, with his man-of-the-world smile: “You are a general in the army of Christian charity.” And, being a professor of orthodoxy, Monseigneur Charlot never failed to add: “And there is no charity outside the Christian charity; for the Church alone is in a position to solve the social problems whose difficulties perplex the minds of all and cause special anxiety to our paternal heart.”

This was just what Madame Cartier de Chalmot thought. She was lavishly, glaringly pious, and not free from the rather loud magnificence that was aptly accented by the sound of her voice and the flowers in her hats. Her faith, voluminous and decorative like the bosom which enshrined it, made a splendid show in drawing-rooms. By the breadth of her religious sentiments she had done much harm to her husband. But neither of them paid any heed to this. The general also believed in the Christian creed, although this would not have prevented him from having the Cardinal-Archbishop arrested on a written order from the Minister of War. Yet he was regarded with suspicion by the democracy. And the prÉfet, M. Worms-Clavelin himself, though little of a fanatic, regarded General Cartier de Chalmot as a dangerous man. This was his wife’s fault. She was ambitious, but the soul of honour and incapable of betraying her God. “How can I be your providence, monsieur l’abbÉ?”

And when she heard that the point at issue was the raising to the bishopric of Tourcoing of AbbÉ Lantaigne, a man of such noble, steadfast piety, she caught fire and showed her courage.

“Those are the bishops we want. M. Lantaigne ought to be nominated.”

The old chaplain began to make use of this happy valiancy.

“Then, madame, induce the general to write to the Minister of Religion, who turns out to be his friend.”

She shook the crown of curlers on her head vigorously.

“No, monsieur l’abbÉ. My husband will not write. It is useless to persist. He thinks that a soldier ought never to ask for anything. He is right. My father was of this opinion. You knew him, monsieur l’abbÉ, and you know that he was a fine man and a good soldier.”

The old Army chaplain smote his forehead.

“Colonel de Balny! Yes, of course, I knew him. He was a hero and a Christian.”

General Cartier de Chalmot interposed:

“My father-in-law, Colonel de Balny, was chiefly commendable for having mastered in their entirety the regulations of 1829 on cavalry manoeuvres. These regulations were so complicated that few officers mastered them in their completeness. They were afterwards withdrawn, and Colonel de Balny conceived such a disgust at this that it hastened his end. New regulations were imposed, possessing the unquestionable advantage of simplification. Yet I question whether the old state of things was not preferable. You must exact much from a cavalryman in order to get a little out of him. It is the same with the foot-soldier.”

And the general began anxiously to manipulate his division of cards drawn up in the boxes.

Madame Cartier de Chalmot had heard these same words very often. She always made the same reply to them. Once more this time she said:

“Poulot! how can you say that papa died of chagrin, when he fell down in an apoplectic fit at a review?”

The old chaplain, by a crafty wile, brought the conversation back to the subject which interested him.

“Ah! madame, your excellent father, Colonel de Balny, would have certainly appreciated the character of M. Lantaigne, and he would have offered up prayers that this priest might be raised to a bishopric.”

“I also, monsieur l’abbÉ, will offer up prayers for that,” answered the general’s wife. “My husband cannot, ought not to make any application. But if you think that my intervention will be useful, I will drop a word to Monseigneur. He doesn’t terrify me at all, our Archbishop.”

“Doubtless a word from your mouth…” murmured the old man. “… The ear of Monseigneur Chariot will be open to it.”

The general’s wife announced that she would be seeing the Archbishop at the inauguration of the Pain de Saint Antoine, of which she was president, and that there…

She interrupted herself:

“The cutlets!… Excuse me, monsieur l’abbÉ…”

She rushed out on to the landing and shouted orders to the cook from the staircase. Then she reappeared in the room.

“And there I shall draw him aside, and beg him to speak to the nuncio in favour of M. Lantaigne. Is that the right way to go to work?”

The old chaplain made as if to take her hands, yet without actually doing so.

“That’s just the way, madame. I am sure that the good Saint Anthony of Padua will be with you and will help you to persuade Monseigneur Charlot. He is a great saint. I mean Saint Anthony.… Ladies ought not to believe that he devotes himself exclusively to finding the jewels which they have lost. In heaven he has something better to do. To beg him for bread for the poor, that is assuredly far worthier. You have realised that, dear madame. The Pain de Saint Antoine is a fine work. I must inform myself more fully about it. But I shall take good care not to breathe a word of it to my good sisters.”

He was referring to the Dames du Salut, to whom he was chaplain.

“They have already too many undertakings. They are excellent sisters, but too much absorbed in trifling duties, and far too petty, the poor ladies.”

He sighed, recalling the time when he was a regimental chaplain, the tragic days of the war, when he accompanied the wounded stretched out on an ambulance litter and gave them a drop of brandy. For it was by doles of tobacco and spirits that he was in the habit of carrying on his apostolic labours. He again gave way to his love of talking about the fighting round Metz and told some anecdotes. He had several concerning a certain sapper, a native of Lorraine called Larmoise, a man full of resources.

“I did not tell you, general, how this great devil of a sapper used to bring me a bag of potatoes every morning. One day I asked him where he picked them up. Says he: ‘In the enemy’s lines.’ ‘You villain,’ I say to him. Thereupon he explains to me how he has found some fellow-countrymen among the German guards. ‘Fellow-countrymen?’ ‘Yes, fellow-countrymen, fellows from home. We are only separated by the frontier. We embraced one another, we talked about our relatives and friends. And they said to me: ”You can take as many potatoes as you like.”’”

And the chaplain added:

“This simple incident made me feel better than any reasoning how cruel and unjust war is.”

“Yes,” said the general, “these annoying intimacies occasionally occur at the points of contact of two armies. They must be sternly repressed, having due regard, of course, to the circumstances.”