October 5, 1914.

Plenty!

I wake at twenty minutes to five, or, by French time, twenty minutes to four. There is a glimmer of moonlight in the casemate. The place looks like a fantastic sawmill with piles of planks lying about on the floor. The snores rise and fall rhythmically. However much divided our prisoners may be by day (as divided as men are in time of peace, and perhaps more so, for intimate association emphasizes differences and accentuates shocks), they, unknown to themselves, attain harmony in sleep.

As you know, I find this harmony distasteful. Moreover, for some time past, with the chill coming of dawn a violent rheumatic pain in the loins has rendered the recumbent position intolerable to me. I determine to rise.

Moving gently, in order to avoid waking Guido, who is an extremely light sleeper, I throw off my coat, which has been tucked round my neck, and lay it down to the right of my couch, close to my kÉpi, which I have lately pressed into service at night as a receptacle for the miscellaneous articles from my pockets. At this moment I should have appeared to you like a mummy, torso rolled up in the French military rug, brown with a red stripe, and the rest of the body, from the waist to the feet, tightly enveloped in the Ingolstadt blanket, stamped with the royal arms.

It is quite a business to get rid of these wrappings, for my straw is now mere chaff, and Bertrand, doubly soft as a betrothed lover and as a PhocÆan, has a nose extremely sensitive to dust. Still recumbent, by means of slow contortions from right to left I unswaddle the upper part of my body. Then, sitting with my back against the wall, I take off my nightcap—my ancient nightcap, thoroughly impregnated with the dirt of Lorraine and of Bavaria, as dirty as Queen Isabel’s shift. (I sleep with it pulled well down over the ears, to protect my head from the chaff.) At length I rise to my feet. The second wrapping, which confines the lower extremities, makes me look like a man about to take part in a sack race. I untie it at the hips. It falls to the ground like a skirt. Now I am dressed. I fold up my two rugs with infinite precaution and put them on the top of my knapsack. Seated on this improvised stool, I take off my night slippers and put on my heavy military boots, delightfully supple since DevÈse, the cook-butcher, anointed them for me with a wonderful preparation of beef marrow. Emptying my kÉpi of watch, pipe, tobacco, pipe-lighter, pocket-knife, purse, and handkerchief (the huge regulation handkerchief), I stuff all these things into the pockets of my trousers. It is done. Guido has not stirred; he dreams misanthropically. Bertrand has not sneezed; he dreams amorously. With catlike stealth, kÉpi on head, coat tucked beneath my arm, and shouldering my two haversacks, respectively containing my papers and the small articles of my kit, I hasten to the kitchen. To my great surprise I find the place lighted up.

That villain Marie, pipe in mouth, sticky, greasy, smeared with blacks, alert as a fox-terrier just let out for a run, is rummaging in his stoves. While I was still dreaming he had shaken up from their slumbers two others: Lambert, most devoted of men, my good little Lambert; and a famished specimen from the 6th corps, by trade a charcoal-burner in the forest of Argonne, who would cut up an oak for you in return for a piece of rancid bacon rind. Yesterday evening there was not a scrap of wood in the kitchen. Dutrex “rowed” the cooks about it. But Marie, the wiliest of all the Normans in Normandy, rose by moonlight. Where can he have been? How, knowing not a word of German beyond nichts and ja, did he manage to circumvent the guard? Anyhow, axe in hand, Lambert and the charcoal-burner are vigorously and noisily attacking logs of pine. I am surprised. These logs have a strong resemblance to the timber-shores of the outer ditches. What has he been up to, this Marie!

“Canaille!” Dutrex sometimes exclaims to him.

“That’s all right,” says Marie cheerfully; “that’s the only sort that knows how to live!”

In fact, he does know how to live. Always on the go, doing little services for every one in turn, swapping for chocolate the cigars which are given him, reselling this chocolate retail, buying with the money packets of tobacco and cigarettes, which he hawks for halfpennies in the dark passage outside the kitchen—he will find his way back to the valley of Auge with a nest-egg.

But I fancy he will get rid of some of it on the way. “Just think of it, you fellows,” he frequently exclaims. “‘MÉzidon, fifty minutes’ stop!’ I tumble to the ground. I put away the first bottle of Calvados [cider brandy] I can get hold of. Then, ‘Lisieux, fifty minutes’ stop!’ Won’t it be splendid to get a little good Norman stuff into one’s guts, after the ditch-water of Fort Orff! One will get home to the missus thoroughly cheerful.”

This Marie is a delight to me. Our philosophies differ considerably. He has no pity, he says, for lame ducks. But he has such keen vision, he is so spirited and plain-spoken, and he is so original in his methods of expression, that he is above criticism.

While Lambert and the charcoal-burner (his name is DeschÊnes and he has been through two campaigns in Morocco) are apportioning for the stoves the spoils of Marie’s raid, I empty on to the table the second of my haversacks. I wash and shave. Marie pours me out half a pint of steaming coffee. “Ja, ja,” he says, as he adds a lump of sugar, smiling his mischievous and knowing smile. Ja, in his vocabulary, signifies everything that is good; nichts, on the other hand, denotes everything that is bad. This done, he returns to the plutonic region.

Then, in the blessed solitude of the “salon,” by the pale and smoky light of the distant lamp and of the dawn, I withdraw from the manuscript haversack the packet about which I fancy I have been dreaming all night.

You will think me very materialistic, I fear. But as you read, bear in mind that I am extremely well, that I am working as hard as usual, and that my appetite, with which you are acquainted, has to be satisfied here with a daily allowance that in Paris would barely have sufficed for a single meal.

It was Fritz Magen, the Gefreiter, the leading private of our Bavarian guard, who gave me this parcel yesterday evening. I had no thought of such a windfall. In the same mood as any other prisoner, I was waiting like the rest in No. 17 at the foot of my “bed” for the brisk appearance in the casemate of the men to take the roll-call.

It is half-past eight. Suddenly the door opens. “The roll-call,” bellows Dutrex, bursting in gustily, followed by the Feldwebel and the lantern-bearer. Dutrex rapidly counts us. “Zweiundzwanzig,” he announces to the Feldwebel. “Twenty-two.” He shakes me by the hand, saying: “Gute Nacht, mein Freund; schlafe wohl.” The round passes on.

But Magen, the rear-guard, about to shut the door, lays down his lantern, produces a good-sized box, and thrusts it into my hands in a manner that is almost timid. “Da,” he explains to me in German, “my wife sent me a hamper this morning.”—“Oh, thanks,” I reply. But he hastens off with his lantern to join the Feldwebel in No. 18.

Greatly touched by this unexpected mark of friendship, I turn to Guido. We tell over the contents of the box. Five apples; two walnuts; a piece of thick pancake, smelling of the gnÄdige Frau Magen’s frying-pan; and half a bilberry tart! What luck! Monsieur Magen, Bavarian as you are, you are a brother, ein Bruder, a true comrade! I love you! I give Guido his share. I put mine away in the haversack of papers. I go to sleep to the thought that to-morrow, instead of the wretched thin coffee with rye and barley bread, I shall have a succulent fruit breakfast. This thought immediately transports me to Dully, to Fontainebleau, to LablachÈre. But what is there that does not transport me there, visions of longing and of hope?

Thus it is that to-day, at earliest dawn, slowly pacing the deserted “salon,” I make the first good breakfast since my imprisonment.