Alfred de Vigny

“ If there is a God up there, He only knows how what I am going to tell you took place; as for me, I know nothing about it, but it was seen and heard, as I see and hear you. At the moment of the fire, she raised her hand to her forehead, as if a ball had struck her there, and sat down in the boat without fainting, without screaming, and returned to the brig just when they wanted her, and just as they wanted her. I went to her, and talked to her a long time, the best I could. She seemed to be listening to me, and looked me in the face, rubbing her forehead with her hands. ”

“ I beheld even the tender submission of woman reach its limits, the law taking up her defence, when the authority she obeys commands a wrong. But military obedience is blind and dumb, because at the same time passive and active—receiving its order and executing it—striking with eyes shut, like the Fate of antiquity. I followed out, through all its possible consequences, this abnegation of the soldier, without retreat, without condition, and leading him sometimes to tasks of illest omen. ”

“ I did not listen to him, although he grew quite warm, in endeavoring to prove to me the superiority of infantry over cavalry.
Night came on; we did not get along fast; the mud became thicker and deeper. Nothing on the road, and nothing at the end of it. We stopped at the foot of a dead tree, the only tree on the road; he bestowed his first cares on his mule, as I did on my horse; he then looked into the wagon, as a mother would have done into the cradle of her child. ”

“ The good chef-de-bataillon prepared himself deliberately to speak, with all the pleasure of a child. He adjusted his shako on his head, which was covered with black oilcloth, and gave that peculiar shrug of the shoulders, which none can imagine who have not served in the infantry,—that shrug of the shoulders which the soldier gives to raise his knapsack, and ease its weight for a moment. It is a habit of the soldier, which, when he becomes an officer, remains as a trick. ”

“ I looked at the old commandant; he walked on with long strides and untiring energy, whilst his mule could hardly keep along, and even my horse began to droop his head. The brave old fellow took off his shako from time to time, to wipe his bald forehead and the few gray hairs on his head, or his white moustache from which the rain was dripping. He did not think anything about the effect his recital might have produced on me; he had made himself out neither better nor worse than he was; he had not deigned to draw himself; he did not think of himself ”

“ I have often since sought around me for a man like that one, and capable of such an entire and careless abnegation of self. During the fourteen years I have lived in the army, it is only there, and above all in the poor and despised ranks of the infantry, that I have found those men of an antique stamp carrying out the feeling of duty to all its possible consequences ”

“ I then abruptly gave him an enthusiastic shake of the hand; he did not know what to make of it.
"You are a worthy man," said I.
"What for?" he answered. "Because of this poor woman? You see perfectly well, my boy, that was a duty." And he began to talk again about Massena.
The next morning, by daylight, we arrived at Béthune, an ugly little fortified town, the ramparts of which, in narrowing their circle, seemed to have squeezed the houses together upon each other. ”

“ The commandant carefully scraped the mud from his boots with the end of his sword; he then mounted on the step of the wagon, drew forward over Laurette's head the hood of a little cloak she had on, took off his own black silk cravat, and put it round the neck of his adopted daughter; after which he gave a kick to his mule, and saying, "Get along, you lazy beast!" we continued our journey.
The rain was still falling gloomily; we found on the road only dead horses, abandoned, with their saddles. The gray sky and gray earth stretched out without end ”

“ The poor little soul, I must always give her the best I have; you see, I put it on one side for her; she cannot bear to suffer the vicinity of a man, since the affair of the letter. I am old, and she seems to fancy me to be her father; yet she would strangle me, if I attempted to kiss her, even upon her forehead. ”

“ I placed it in my cabin, under the glass of a poor little English clock, which was nailed up over my berth. Mine was a real sailor's bed, if you know what that is. But what am I talking about?—you have lived at most but sixteen summers; you can never have seen anything of that kind. A queen's chamber cannot be so neatly arranged as a sailor's cabin—be it said without boasting. Everything has its own place, and its own nail; nothing can move. The vessel may toss as much as she chooses, without putting anything out of order. ”

“ And, to do what? To print five or six poor ideas, common-place enough, read only by those who like them, and thrown into the fire by those who hate them, serving no other end but to bring persecution upon us. ”

“ As such she has always been respected. These things are managed better in the army than they imagine in Paris. She went through all the wars of the Emperor with me, and I have always kept her out of harm's way. She has always been kept warm; with straw and a little wagon that is never impossible. She has had pretty comfortable things about her; and as I was a chef-de-bataillon, with good pay, my legion of honor pension, and the Napoleon month, the pay of which was double in those times, I was always well off, and she gave me no trouble. ”

“ I went on deck to take a little air.
"Laurette was that day so pretty, that I would not go near her. She had on a little simple white dress, her arms bare to her neck, and her long hair flowing, as she always wore it. She was amusing herself with dipping her other dress into the sea, from the end of a cord, and laughed to see that the ocean was as tranquil and pure as a spring of which she could see the bottom. ”

“ No captain of a vessel will ever be forced to turn executioner, except when governments of assassins and thieves get on foot, who will take advantage of the habit a poor man has of always obeying, blindly obeying with a miserable mechanical compulsion in spite of his very self. ”

“ This made her a little anxious, the sweet child, and she raised her pretty head out of the hammock, like a bird out of its nest, and looked at him with her lips parted, not venturing to speak again.
"At last he said: 'Oh! dear Laura! the nearer we approach to America, I cannot help it, but so much the sadder I become. ”

“ I was telling you, I believe, still about that little Laurette! Poor girl!—What clumsy people there are in the world! My sailors were so stupid as to take the boat straight ahead of the brig. After all, it's true one cannot foresee everything. ”

“ She shut his mouth playfully with her fingers, so as to have all the speaking to herself, and wiping his eyes with her long hair, as with a handkerchief, she said: 'And is it not a great deal better to have a wife with you who loves you—say, dearest? I am perfectly content to go to Cayenne; I shall see savages and cocoa-nut trees, like those of "Paul and Virginia," sha'n't I? We will each plant our own. We shall see who will be the best gardener. And we will make a little hut for us two. I will work all day and all night, if you wish. I am strong ”

“ But the epaulette once off, I know no longer admiral nor anything else.'
"'The fact is,' he answered, mournfully shaking his brown head, though a little powdered, as was still the fashion of that day,—'the fact is, I think it would be dangerous for you, captain, to seem to know us. We laugh because we are young; we look happy because we love one another ”