Guillaumin

“ I climbed down when Guillaumin came to me that same evening much against his will—for he hated telling tales—to give me a friendly warning.
"You look out! They can't stand you!"
"No! Is it as bad as all that?"
"Quite. It's better that you should know about it."
"What do they object to about me?"
"The way you get out of things, and shirk the tiresome jobs. They can't stand that. Directly your back was turned, just now, they exploded. A regular chorus! It's just the same every evening!"
[Pg 89]
"Descroix and Humel?" I asked scornfully.
"And Playoust too." ”

“ Would life be any the better for it? Yes. In what way? [Pg 95] I did not know. But I was firmly convinced of it.
In Guillaumin I had a surprising source of high spirits and enthusiasm. He lived in a state of exaltation. He was the only one to read between the lines, in the daily reports, endless sensational pieces of news, extraordinarily favourable to us, withheld, he said, through an excess of modesty.
"They're afraid the public might lose their heads."
If I pretended to be alarmed:
"What's become of the concentration? Look at all the regulars that are about still!" ”

“ Guillaumin cited some examples: Poor little Frémont. He had talked to him a long time, the day before Mangiennes, about Françoise, his sweet Françoise. It was to her that he offered all the privation and weariness, for her sake that he gave proof of such a confident, charming spirit. And De Valpic! Guillaumin suspected him of holding out even when ill, in the touching and feverish longing to prove his valiance to someone....
He suddenly lowered his voice:
[Pg 292]
"And you, Michel ... whom are you fighting for?" ”

“ There is a canvas in the Caillebotte Collection in the Luxembourg which, in its broadness of treatment and extensive planes, suggests Gauguin both as to gamut and conception. Guillaumin was the most masculine talent of the early Impressionist group. He cared less for the transient views of nature than for its eternal aspect. His colour, by its liberality of application, counts more forcibly than that of Pissarro, Monet or Sisley. ”

“ De Valpic stretched out his arms and drank in the health-giving air, soaked with light.
"Ah! How good it is!" he said. "How one lives here! How one realises—too late—that one was ill-suited for living in towns, that one would have done better in beautiful country like this!"
Guillaumin laughed. "A little flat, this country. It's certainly not up to Argonne!" ”

“ The surroundings of the Camp de Châlons.
De Valpic was shivering and stayed in his waggon. Guillaumin said to me below his breath:
"I wonder—if I'm dreaming?"
"Why?"
"I thought I heard...."
"Well?"
"Firing!"
I listened attentively. No, there was nothing. I chaffed him on his hallucinations! Was he profiting by Ravelli's teaching? Firing indeed! An excellent joke! We had left the enemy more than a hundred and thirty miles behind.
Guillaumin did not persist. The time which had been fixed passed by. Then we were told that we should be there for another two hours. ”

“ I listened to Guillaumin as he extolled their sound good sense, and sturdy morale. It was too much to ask of this poor food for cannons.
But one thing struck me, nevertheless; the small, the infinitesimal number of men who "groused." Not a sign of "shirkers." It was astounding to me to note, in the days that followed, how this spirit had spread. I did not see any great enthusiasm, but rather determination, or perhaps it was resignation. There was at all events, no reluctance, no little underhand plots, elaborated with a view to remaining at the depôt. I have quoted our friend Belloeil ”

“ This attitude drew upon him, besides Playoust's quips, the animosity of the company sergeant-major who, sticking his nose in at the door, would call him slyly:
"Halloa there! De Valpic! As you're doing nothing!"
Guillaumin continued to be my only intimate companion. I did not tell any one but him of my discovery of a hay-loft looking over the Principal's garden. He soon got in the habit of coming there often to join me. It became our headquarters.
I now succeeded in persuading him to go about the town with me. We hardly left each other's side. ”

“ Guillaumin exclaimed. "Tell us what you think and what you know!"
What he knew? The other protested that he was not admitted to the secrets of the gods, that he was lacking in the necessary technical knowledge concerning military matters, but that what he feared from certain reliable data, was the "kolossal" force—the word is laughable, not the thing it stands for—of this horde of invaders about to fall upon us. People in France reassured themselves by the aid of simplex calculations. ”

“ Guillaumin did not give in:
"You'll see!" he said. "You don't realise that all that eats away and undermines.... It is bound to show itself in time!"
It was true enough! What a difference there was in the morale of the two platoons.
In ours, for instance, nobody ever reported sick unless he was suffering tortures. They made it a point of personal pride. In theirs, on the contrary! One morning, Guillaumin, who was sergeant of the day, had [Pg 346] put down eight men for medical parade. A mere trifle! He calmly undertook to cure them all by suggestion. ”

“ Guillaumin took possession of our bundle, and, mounted on a heap of flints, began the distribution.
A sea of humans surrounded him, faces stretched forward feverishly, arms raised tirelessly—De Valpic in the front row between Bouillon and Humel.
I had been pushed forward. What did I expect? A line from my father when he heard the terrible news? Hm! He would hardly have got mine. No. I expected nothing. One by one the names escaped: Gaudéreaux, Descroix, Lieutenant Henriot. Comrades answered to a certain number of them. ”

“ The captain requisitioned the entire contents of her cellar, at tenpence a bottle, indiscriminately!
We might once more have been at manœuvres. We ate and drank, and got a good afternoon's nap; what could we wish for more! One of Guillaumin's corporals found a way of hiring himself out to give a hand to the publican in the village. He had his work cut out for him, dashing out from the tap-room to the tables in the garden, but he was richly rewarded for his pains, in the evening, by the great pailful of wine which he brought back in triumph. ”

“ Laraque took possession of the piano and romped through a "tango" which was applauded. Miquel was called upon again; but he refused point blank this time, and it was not very long before he left, perhaps because he was offended.
Then Guillaumin and I went to swell a group which had formed in a corner, round Fortin, who was holding forth.
A robust fellow, with an enormous forehead, and a clever, ugly face, he was repeating the lessons he had just brought back from Germany where he had been living for some time. His rich voice carried wonderfully, supported by his energetic gestures. ”

“ What these people want, is...."
"To pick our pockets," cried Guillaumin.
"Yes, to pick our pockets, and also...."
Fortin let himself be carried away. Was it paradox or conviction?
"Would you like to know what they want? Well, simply the reign of reason, of their reason. To their physical need for conquest is added this intellectual need. I think that in the case of a crushing victory they would not be exacting, that they would content themselves with re-organising and ordering the world to their ideas. The triumph of 'Kultur,' yes! ”

“ Or Châlons? I remember a long stop in the middle of the night on a siding on the outskirts of Noisy-le-Sec.
Some of the men were awake, eating bread and cheese. I felt a tap on my shoulder.
"Well, are you going to make up your mind to it?" Guillaumin asked me.
"To what?"
I yawned.
"To take a nap. Why you're so sleepy you can hardly stand up! Come along and lie down!" ”

“ Where on [Pg 88] earth?... Why of course among the wives of the regulars who had left on the day of mobilisation.
Guillaumin had not much taste for this class of bragging. Nor I, for that matter, but I recognised in this popular cynicism a kindred spirit to my own. And then Playoust made up to me and always liked to count me among his audience when he was playing the fool. It was no time before he had gained a singular hold over a certain set of our comrades. Were we there to be bored? He organised "manilles" in which Descroix and Humel and Hourcade took part from the beginning. ”

“ And to think—De Valpic inclined to the idea—that they were without doubt excellent Frenchmen, who, when it came to getting killed, would do the thing in style!
In any case nothing exasperated Guillaumin like their attitude. He announced his intention of going to the C.O. to get him to put an end to the scandal, at least twenty times. We restrained him, being opposed to all tale-telling. We endeavoured to prove to him that their wild talk had no effect. Playoust had had the reputation of being a wag ever since the beginning. None of the men would take his nonsense seriously. ”

“ The old chap kicked against the pricks. Paper-money? Wot good was that to any one nowadays, you wouldn't get a hunk of bread for it!
He obviously distrusted me. I was on the point of losing my temper. Guillaumin angrily dubbed the old man a robber and a blooming Bosche. The latter got annoyed and made as if to take back his poultry. Bouillon kept his eyes fixed on me, and was [Pg 371] only waiting for a sign to hurl himself upon the old man. ”

“ Loriot most of all. I went to see for myself, the others were in the same predicament. They were openly discussing the ill-feeling which was beginning to establish itself between the commanding officer and the captain. Every time there was a particularly filthy billet going, it would be for the 22nd!
I was hesitating about lying down when Guillaumin came up beaming.
"Breton certainly has a flair for comfortable quarters; there's no denying it. Do you know what they've rooted out? A hay-loft. And a clean one, too! [Pg 171] We'll have it all to ourselves. We must get hold of De Valpic." ”

“ And so Guillaume’s feelings of humanity and justice revolted, for he knew the real Salvat,—a man of tender heart and dreamy mind, so liable to be impassioned by fancies,—a man cast into life when a child without weapon of defence, ever trodden down or thrust aside, then gradually exasperated by the perpetual onslaughts of want, and at last dreaming of reviving the golden age by destroying the old, corrupt world. ”

“ The mere privation of life is, perhaps, more quickly effected by this instrument than by any other means; but when we recollect that the preparation for, and apprehension of, death, constitute its greatest terrors; that a human hand must give motion to the Guillotine as well as to the axe; and that either accustoms a people, already sanguinary, to the sight of blood, I think little is gained by the invention. It was imagined by a Mons. Guillotin, a physician of Paris, and member of the Constituent Assembly. ”

“ Lately the squalid spectators of the noisome spectacle on the Place de la Guillotine had had few of these very welcome sights: an aristocrat —a real, elegant, refined woman, with white hands and proud, pale face—mounting the steps of the same scaffold on which perished the vilest criminals and most degraded brutes.
Madame Guillotine was, above all, catholic in her tastes, her gaunt arms, painted blood red, were open alike to the murderer and the thief, the aristocrats of ancient lineage, and the proletariat from the gutter. ”

“ Guillaume made no rejoinder, for at that very moment, in that remote, deserted nook, where they could fancy themselves at the world’s end, a most extraordinary spectacle was presented to their view. Something or rather someone leapt out of a thicket and bounded past them. It was assuredly a man, but one who was so unrecognisable, so miry, so woeful and so frightful, that he might have been taken for an animal, a boar that hounds had tracked and forced from his retreat. ”

“ You can't be a Salvat who murders or a Bergaz who steals! Remember the pillage of the Princess's house and remember the fair-haired, pretty child whom we saw lying yonder, ripped open. . . . You do not, you cannot belong to that set, brother—"
With a wave of his hand, Guillaume brushed these vain reasons aside. Of what consequence were a few lives, his own included? No change had ever taken place in the world without millions and millions of existences being stamped out.
"But you had a great scheme in hand," cried Pierre, hoping to save him by reviving his sense of duty. ”

“ The quiet words certainly had a soothing effect on poor Guillaume, though his eyes continued to roll wildly.
"It is the Terror," he groaned. "Jean M'rie brought the news. There are men from Paris, men of Brittany, who come with evil tongues to bid our people rise and murder their masters. Ohé, they are very clever, clever as Monsieur Satan himself, and the fools listen to them. Already they cry, 'Vive la nation,' 'Vive la guillotine!' 'Vive liberté!'"
"Tsch, tsch," smiled Père Mouet, "their throats will soon get hoarse, and then they will drink and go to sleep. ”

“ The belief in the evil eye has been almost universal, and may be found in tribes the most remote from each other either in distance or in time. If it were not that Guillim is so ostentatiously loyal, and, like all heralds, a zealous upholder of rank and state, one might suspect him almost of a touch of bitter sarcasm in ascribing royal rank to the cockatrice, not from his magnanimity, not from his noble bearing, not from his beauty, but from the power of inflicting injuries that he so especially displays. ”